We were upset that we might have misread the murders of Clinton Seigle and Walter O’Neill, only we didn’t know what to do about it. We decided it was best to stick to the original plan. So, while Freddie held down the fort, I made my way to the lot where my Camry was parked. Along the way I called Brooke St. Vincent. She told me that she had lost contact with Hayley.
“I don’t know what to do,” Brooke told me. “I keep calling, but she must be swiping left.”
I told her I was sorry to hear it.
“I tried calling Axis Mundi. No one answered. I left a message. An hour later, Maura called. She said that Hayley left home eight days ago and she hasn’t seen her since. She said she’s very concerned.”
Eight days ago, I told myself, would have been Monday, two days after the lawyers received the emails from NIMN.
“What happened after I left the Institute of Art?” Brooke asked.
I explained.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Brooke said.
“Hayley’s made a lot of enemies.”
“Why? Who? It can’t be her family, can it?”
“I don’t know.” God, how I hated those three words.
“I’ll keep calling,” Brooke said.
“If you would give me her number—”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“Not without her permission. I’m sorry, Taylor.”
“No. That’s a good thing. Be loyal to your friend. She needs it.”
“I can’t give you the number at Axis Mundi, either.”
“I understand.”
“If I reach Hayley, I’ll tell you.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Where will you be?”
“For now I’m heading to the Library just in case she tries to use the computers there.”
“You’re a good person, Taylor. When all this is settled, I hope you’ll call on me.”
As quickly as a lightning strike I flashed on the times I could have hit on Brooke and didn’t, and now she was telling me what I had wanted to tell her. There’s a lot to be said for the slow game, I told myself.
“I will,” I said. “Count on it.”
I had consumed four twelve-ounce cups of coffee and a turkey pesto sandwich by early evening with no sign of Hayley O’Brien.
There are tricks to staying alert while conducting surveillance. One of them is to stay active. The worst thing you can do is just sit still and watch a doorway for eight hours or more. If you don’t actually fall asleep, your mind will meander to the point where a polka-dot elephant could wander past without you noticing it.
I wondered if that was what had happened to Walter. If he had allowed his concentration to drift. If that’s why his killer was able to approach his vehicle without him noticing. Or did he notice? Did Walter know his killer?
I shook the questions from my head and instead focused on the job. I conducted my surveillance from inside the café itself, the parking lot, the bookstore, and outside again with numerous stops in the café’s restroom. I wore a couple of different hats and jackets so no one noticed me. At least no one bothered to call the cops to complain about the stalker who was now sitting in a Camry on the far side of the street with a clear view of the Library’s entrance.
It helped that I was able to park in the shade. It was sunny and seventy degrees outside, about average for the Twin Cities in late September. Yet it slowly climbed to over ninety degrees inside my Camry with the tinted windows up. Windows up make it harder for the subject to see you while you’re seeing them.
I was thinking that trading the furnace for a table inside the café again wasn’t a bad idea. There had been a shift change. The current baristas hadn’t seen me before, and the Library was busier now than it had been earlier in the day. I slipped on a light jacket, no hat, and opened the car door. That’s when I saw her.
I ducked back inside the car.
Hayley was wearing the same clothes as the day before and carrying the same backpack. She paused at the door, looked up the street and down, and stepped inside. I crossed the street in a hurry while wondering what she was going to do when she saw me—fight or flight?
She did neither. Instead, she closed her eyes and sighed as if I were a bad habit she just couldn’t shake.
“Would you please leave me alone?” she said.
I rested my hand on her shoulder. “I am so relieved to see that you’re okay. Brooke St. Vincent will be, too.”
Hayley shook my arm away. “Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
We were standing inside the café in front of the bank of computers.
“You’re kidding me, right?” I said. She couldn’t possibly be that naïve. “Someone was shooting at you.”
“I don’t know that. It could have been you.”
“Lady, I’m just a hired hand. You’re the one making people angry. Angry enough to kill.”
“Are you going to protect me from them?”
“I’m trying.”
“Why? You’re not my father.”
“I used to be a father. My daughter died in a car accident. She’d be about your age if she had lived.”
“Is that true?” Hayley said. “Or just something you’re telling yourself?”
“Does it matter?”
“Once I do what I came to do, everything will be fine.”
“No, it won’t.”
“You don’t know.”
“What are you? Eight? This is grown-up shit that you’re doing, and it’s dangerous. Three people have been killed already. I knew one of them personally.”
“What?”
“Goddammit, Hayley. Will you do what I ask? Will you let me help you?”
I didn’t realize I was shouting until I felt the silence that followed. It seemed everyone in the café had quit their own conversations and was now staring at us. Hayley was staring as well, at some point far off in the distance. Something must have clicked inside her head. She suddenly lost her defiance and started trembling, to the point where she seemed to be bouncing up and down like a tennis ball.
“None of this was supposed to happen,” she said. “People being killed. Your friend, you said your friend…”
A young man sitting with a young woman at a nearby table abruptly stood up. “Are you okay?” he asked. He was speaking to Hayley, but I noticed he kept glancing down at his date, and I thought, he’s not the first guy to do something foolish to impress a girl.
Hayley’s eyes refocused. “Do I look like I’m okay?” she said.
“If he’s bothering you—”
“Bothering me?”
I rested my hand on Hayley’s shoulder again. “Please,” I said.
Hayley nodded her head. At least I think she nodded her head. In any case, she didn’t stop me from grabbing hold of her elbow and leading her out of the Library. The young man did nothing to stop us.
As I opened the door for her, I moved to relieve her of the backpack.
“No,” she said and clenched it to her chest.
It wasn’t quite night, yet most of the vehicles zipping by had their headlights on. We managed to cross the street without getting run down, but it required effort. When we reached the sidewalk, I nudged Hayley in the direction of my car. That’s when frat boy and his friend stopped us.
“Hayley,” frat boy said.
She was startled enough to curl into me so that her face was pressed against my chest. My left arm went around her shoulder. My right went slightly behind my hip not far from where the Beretta was holstered beneath the jacket.
“I knew you’d come back,” frat boy said. “Where else were you gonna go? You don’t have any friends.”
“I thought you were my friend,” Hayley said. She refused to look at him.
“Me? I’m just the guy who was fucking you.”
“Why are you doing this, Sean?”
Now you know who’s who, I thought.
“For the money, why else,” Sean said. “Now give me the files.”
“No.”
“They belong to me.”
“No. Taylor?”
“You heard the lady,” I said.
“This ain’t got anything to do with you.”
That came from Sean’s pal. I pivoted so that he was on my left and Sean on my right with the street at my back.
“You were wrong before, Sean.” I used his name as if we had known each other for a thousand years. “Hayley does have friends.”
“Yeah, like who?”
“Me, to start with.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the one with a hand six inches away from the butt of a nine-millimeter Beretta semiautomatic handgun.”
Hayley’s head came off my chest. She looked at me as if she couldn’t believe what I was saying. Sean seemed confused as well. His fingers went to his puffy nose and probed for a bit before he slowly dropped his hand.
“You’re the guy from before,” he said.
“That’s right.”
His friend took a step forward. I remembered the Colt he had pulled the other day, the one that was now locked in my office safe. I wondered if he had another gun and decided, why wouldn’t he? It’s easier to get a gun in this country than a driver’s license. I watched his hands carefully.
Sean seemed to sense the danger. “Chad,” he said.
His friend stopped moving.
We stood there for a second or two without speaking.
Sean said, “We can make a deal.”
“I love deals,” I said. “What do you get?”
Hayley spun in my arm until she was facing Sean.
“No deals,” she said.
“What do you get?” I asked again.
“Taylor—”
“I get the files,” Sean said.
“What do we get?”
Sean and Chad exchanged looks. From the expressions on their faces I could tell we weren’t going to get anything except the wrong end of the stick.
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Hayley and I are leaving.”
“Not until she returns my property,” Sean said.
“It’s mine.” Hayley’s confidence seemed to be returning. “It belongs to me.”
“I’m the one who did all the work to get it.”
“You wouldn’t have known where to look if I hadn’t told you, and I told you so we could post it on the internet, not use it to blackmail my family.”
“What difference does it make? You hate your family.”
Hayley clenched one fist, the other holding tight to the backpack. My left hand continued to rest on her shoulder. My right was touching the hem of my jacket.
“It makes a big difference,” she said.
“Give me the files.”
“Make me.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’re done here.”
“Hell we are,” Chad said.
He moved his hands too much for my comfort, so I filled mine with the Beretta. I pointed it at his face. I didn’t like shooting with one hand, a snap shot from the shoulder, but he was just seven feet away and I figured my chances were good.
Sean spread his hands wide.
“No, no, no,” he chanted. “No, no, no. No. No, no. Stop it.”
Chad froze in place. His eyes grew wide and fixed on the muzzle of the gun.
“I said we’re leaving,” I told them. “You got a problem with that?”
“Leave, then,” Sean said. “We don’t want any trouble.”
I turned my head just in time to see a red dot center on his chest.
I screamed, “Get down.”
Sean’s chest exploded.
There was very little noise. Just a kind of thud. Sean didn’t cry out. Neither did Chad.
I pushed Hayley down on the sidewalk and covered her body with mine.
Sean’s body fell backward against the concrete.
Chad stared down at him, a bewildered expression on his face.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“Get down,” I told him.
He went to Sean and cradled him in his arms.
“What did you do?” he asked again.
I half pulled, half carried Hayley as quickly as I could, following the line of cars parked along the street until we reached mine. I didn’t look back, not even when I heard another thud followed by a loud, slow exhale.
We took cover behind the vehicle that was parked directly in front of my Camry. Hayley was breathing heavily, her shallow breaths infused with soft whimpers.
I holstered the Beretta and pulled the key fob from my pocket. I used it to unlock the car doors. I grabbed Hayley’s hand.
“Ready?” I asked.
She didn’t know what I was talking about.
I pulled Hayley to the rear door on the driver’s side, keeping to the street side of the Camry, using it as a shield. I opened the door and stuffed her inside.
“Stay down,” I told her.
I shut the door and opened the driver’s door and squeezed inside, keeping as low as possible while still being able to see over the steering wheel. At the same time, I glanced down the sidewalk. Chad was slumped over the body of his friend. Neither of them was moving.
I started the car, worked it out of the parking space, executed a tight U-turn, and accelerated hard down the street in the opposite direction from the sniper. At least I hoped it was in the opposite direction. Once again, I hadn’t seen him.
Why them? I wondered. Why did the sniper shoot Sean and Chad? Why didn’t he shoot us? He had tried to shoot us in the park, hadn’t he?
Hayley had rolled into a tight ball on the floor directly behind my seat. I couldn’t see her in the rearview mirror, so I glanced briefly over my shoulder. She was shaking like tall grass in a hard wind.
She kept asking herself, “What did I do, what did I do?”
I curled my hand behind the seat and tried to give her a reassuring pat but couldn’t reach. Hayley became quiet.
By then we were on the freeway, and I was trying hard to keep the speedometer at the posted limit. I wanted no dealings with the police. Yeah, I was a material witness to a homicide, and the Private Detective Board has rules about that sort of thing, only I didn’t want to explain what happened outside the Library until I was able to sort out Hayley’s involvement in it—unless the cops came knocking on my door and asked, of course, in which case I’d spill my guts. They might, too. The City of Mound has its share of traffic cameras like everyone else.
“We need to talk,” I said.
Hayley didn’t answer, and I didn’t press the point. All I wanted to do at the moment was get as far away from the Library as possible.
We drove without speaking until we were in Minneapolis. The bright freeway lights illuminated the inside of the car. Hayley stayed on the floor, but her head came up and she looked at me for the first time.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.