What am I missing?
The only hope Horton held on to as he prepared to figure out how to flag down Lisa Morris was that no one would get hurt in the process.
CHAPTER 26
Lisa left Latham at around 8:00 A.M. She was frantic, worried and, she later admitted, excited about the prospect of having sex with Evans one more time before he was taken away from her for good.
I’m going to get laid.
She had made a specific request to Horton that she be allowed to hole up with Evans in a hotel room for “just an hour,” so she could have sex with him one last time before they handcuffed him and took him away.
Horton had been firm: “No way!”
But Lisa, driving like an outlaw to make her meeting with Evans, believed she could somehow convince Horton, considering all she had done to help the Bureau get to the point where they had Evans in their sights, to let her have just one last session of “marathon sex” with him.
As planned, by 10:00 A.M., Horton’s team was in position, waiting for Evans to make his first move. Horton and Lang drove to the outskirts of town and stationed themselves near the only exit ramp leading into town. With any luck, Lisa would drive right by them as she made her way into town. Horton had Lang drop him off by the exit ramp, and told him to drive about a quarter of a mile up the road and park the car in a commuter lot.
Horton found a good spot near the off-ramp and nestled himself like a mouse down in the brush, radio in hand. Every once in a while, when he heard a car descend down the ramp, he’d peer up and see if it was Lisa.
Luckily, it was sunny and warm that morning and the grass Horton was sitting in wasn’t strewn with dew.
Several different scenarios had played out in Horton’s mind throughout the past twelve hours, but he never expected to be lying on his back in the brush, staring at the sky, waiting for Lisa to drive into town. The plan had always been for her to meet up with Evans at McDonald’s. But what if she decided to take a different route? Every local cop had reassured Horton that if Lisa came into town she would have to drive down that particular ramp. There was no other way into town. But what if she and Evans had pulled one over on him? What if Evans planned on doing the same thing: heading Lisa off at the exit ramp?
There is a time in every cop’s life when he has to rely on the snap decisions he makes. This was one of those times, Horton said later. “I had to think like Gary Evans. Knowing what I knew about him, I had this gut feeling he was going to do something to Lisa.”
Their only chance was to make Evans believe Lisa was going to show up. They had thought about using a Trojan horse method, whereby a cop would hide in Lisa’s trunk, or the backseat of her car, and then surprise Evans. But it was too risky, not to mention dangerous for civilians. The only way they would get Evans without hurting anyone else was to make him think Lisa was coming, and then ambush him.
In position near the off-ramp, Horton could radio Lang, who was just up the road, if he needed help.
Any car coming down the off-ramp had the potential to be Lisa. Within five minutes of sitting in the brush, Horton heard the roar of a car engine and popped his head out of the brush.
As if right on cue, there she was barreling down the ramp in her beat-up old shitbox of a car. Horton, spying her while she was at the top of the ramp, quickly ran into the road, radio in hand, and flagged her down.
Lisa was startled, of course. Reacting instinctively to what was, literally, a man in the middle of the road, she hit the brakes and skid to a stop near a road sign at the bottom of the ramp. With her jaw nearly on the dashboard, she could hardly believe Horton was standing in front of her.
What the fuck?
“You’re not meeting him, Lisa,” Horton said right away, walking toward the driver’s-side window.
“Jim…what…what do you mean? What the fuck are you doing here?”
Horton ran around to the passenger side and hopped in the car. “Drive up there,” he said, pointing to where Lang was parked.
After Lisa parked her car next to Lang’s cruiser, Horton said, “It’s way too dangerous, Lisa. No way.”
By this point, she was ranting and raving, saying how bad she needed to see him, even if it was for only ten minutes. “Come on, Jim. Please,” she pleaded.
“No, Lisa. Sorry.” Horton grabbed her by the arm and pulled her off to the side so they could talk privately for a moment. She was crying now.
“Please, Jim. I need to see him. Please.”
She was, Horton said later, “desperate to have sex with Evans just one last time.” She begged: “It’s been a long time…. Just let us get a hotel room.”
To stave off any more problems—“…the last thing I needed at that point was a hysterical female on my hands”—Horton said, “Okay, Lisa, I’ll think about it. Let me run it by the Vermont State Police. Maybe. Maybe.”
While they were talking, Lang yelled for Horton.
“What’s up?”
Lang pointed to the radio inside his cruiser. “Listen,” he said.
It was about 10:30. One of the investigators sitting in his car in the parking lot of McDonald’s radioed in a whisper that he thought he had spied Evans pulling into the parking lot.
“Target is here,” the investigator finally confirmed. “He just locked up his bike.”
Son of a bitch, Horton thought.
Standing about twenty yards away, Lisa was still rambling on about seeing him, but had no idea what was going on.
Horton looked over at her, his ear to the radio. “Lisa, shut up!” Leaning in closer to the radio, he continued listening.
“Target is inside restaurant…walking around,” someone said.
Evans had pulled into the parking lot, rode his bike—which he had stolen out west—up to the bike rack near the front doors and, in a moment of poetic irony, took out a chain and locked it up.
As any other patron might, he entered McDonald’s and proceeded to walk toward the rest rooms in the back of the restaurant. He was wearing blue jeans, an army green lumberjack-type dress shirt, sneakers and a bandanna around his head. Sporting a full beard and pencil-thin mustache, he looked stronger and more muscular than he had at any other point in his life. There was no doubt he had been lifting weights while out west.
Across the street from McDonald’s, which was located right in the middle of the town square, was a beauty parlor, a Chinese restaurant and the bank where Sully and DeLuca were stationed in the president’s office. There was a stone monument, directly across the street, about five feet high, four feet wide, that looked like a stone replica of a podium.
At the last minute, DeLuca repositioned himself in a house right next door to McDonald’s. The VSP had gained access to it by asking the owners if they could use it for the day. He was staring out of the north-side window with binoculars, a shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm.
Evans never went into the bathroom, but instead just cased the entire building and walked quickly back outside, unlocked his bike and began to make his way out of the parking lot. In total, he was inside the restaurant about two minutes. The place had been packed with a breakfast crowd, so it was impossible to mace him or approach him. Additionally, McDonald’s hadn’t been notified as to what Horton and his team were up to. Horton thought it best to keep the operation as confidential as possible.
DeSantis and Couch, who had a car parked near the restaurant but were on foot, holding hands, walking up and down the street in front, didn’t have a clear view of Evans as he began making his way out of the parking lot. The cop with the K-9 walking in front of the restaurant didn’t see Evans until he was well out of the parking lot and heading south, away from him. So it didn’t make sense to unleash the dog on him.
As Evans worked his way out of the restaurant and onto his bike, no one had said anything over the radio. For about two minutes, Horton and Lang had no idea what was going on.
Back at base camp, Horton began pacing. “Where is he now?”
&nbs
p; “Don’t know,” someone said.
“Come again?”
“We can’t find him. Target is gone.”
Fuck me…
Lang tried to calm Horton the best he could, but Horton, although not surprised, was more frustrated and disappointed than anything else. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. They were good cops. If they could have taken him, he knew, it would be over by now.
“He’ll be back,” Horton told the team. “Don’t worry about it. Just sit tight.”
But he thought differently. Did we just miss our only chance? Did he make someone? Will he return? Why didn’t anyone take him when they had the opportunity?
Evans had, literally, disappeared off the street. One minute, he was riding his bike; the next, he was gone. It wasn’t as if the streets were packed with tourists and townies. It was a normal day, as far as traffic was concerned. But Evans, elusive and slippery, had managed to vanish in front of a team of aptly trained cops who were put in place to catch him.
CHAPTER 27
Horton spent the next hour, like an expecting father, wound up and stressed out. He paced. He sat. He talked to Lang and, at times, went off by himself to go through everything in his head one more time. Have I done all the right things? What if I missed something?
Lisa had been sitting in Lang’s cruiser, not saying much of anything. She still had it in her head that she was going to meet Evans after they captured him.
Horton’s standing orders to the team were to take Evans into custody if conditions appeared safe. The first time Evans showed his face, everyone agreed, was much too dangerous. There were too many people around. But Horton made it clear that if he emerged again, they would have to make a move.
They wouldn’t get a third chance.
After a harrowing hour and ten minutes, the call Horton had been waiting for finally came over the radio: “Target once again in sight.”
Without Lisa’s help during the past eight months, Horton knew he would not be in a position of possibly capturing Evans. Because of her courage, here they were ready to detain a fugitive suspected of three murders—someone who, just days ago, seemed invisible, “uncatchable.”
After some prudent thought on the notion of perhaps letting Lisa meet with Evans one last time, if and when they apprehended him, Horton decided to do what any cop in his same position might do: lie.
“Lisa, listen to me,” Horton said, approaching her shortly before Evans had been spotted the second time. “The Vermont State Police will have jurisdiction over Gary if we get him. I’ve been talking to Lieutenant Lang and there is no way you can meet with Gary, he said. I’m sorry. I have nothing to do with the decision. I thought I did. But we’re not in New York.”
It was all bullshit. Horton was running the show. If he wanted Lisa and Evans to have one last fling, he could have set it up and nobody could have denied it.
Lisa started crying. “Please, Jim. I just need to have sex with him. When we’re done, you can take him.”
“Lisa…I’m not saying this again. Absolutely not. It won’t happen.”
“You lied to me, Jim.”
“It’s too damn dangerous for you. The Vermont State Police don’t understand the relationship we’ve had, Lisa. They laughed at me when I asked them.”
What Horton planned on doing, to pacify Lisa’s desire to see Evans again, was put a fake wiretap in her car and send her to McDonald’s to wait. She had no idea what was going on. She would wait, and when Horton thought she had waited long enough, he would drive there and tell her they had taken Evans into custody—that is, if they caught him.
At 12:55 P.M., an investigator stationed inside McDonald’s indicated he had Evans in his sights.
“It’s him,” another investigator said. “He’s here.”
Evans had changed his appearance since they last saw him. Now he was wearing a “wife-beater” T-shirt and cutoff blue jean shorts. He had ditched the bandanna for a hat. It would have been easy to assume that he wasn’t carrying a weapon, suffice it to say he really didn’t have anywhere to hide it on his body, except he also had a large blue backpack draped over his shoulder, which quite possibly could be full of weapons.
Sitting, listening to the chatter between investigators, Horton felt powerless. He had waited for nearly a year for this day and—at least hands-on—he wasn’t part of it.
During his second sojourn into downtown, none of the investigators stationed around town had seen Evans walk in or out of McDonald’s parking lot. They weren’t sure if he had ever been in the restaurant. Sully, stationed in the bank president’s office across the street, looking out the window, had been the first to see Evans arrive. Evans had driven his bike by the window Sully was looking out, rode up a small incline, stopped directly across the street from McDonald’s, walked a few yards over to the monument and sat down.
Sully had a clear view of him from the bank window.
Sitting atop the monument, Evans cradled his chin with his right palm, while his large legs hung down off the front without touching the ground. He appeared calm, comfortable, just sitting, waiting, apparently, for Lisa to arrive. Every once in a while, he would look down at his watch and scan the entire area with his eyes.
“I don’t even know where he came from,” somebody said over the radio.
“Well, he’s back.”
“Shit,” Sully said, “I have him…. He’s sitting right here.”
All of the investigators in the field, Horton later noted, knew exactly what to do and when to do it. They certainly didn’t need some overly excited senior investigator barking orders as if he were some taxicab dispatcher, directing their every move. They were professionals. They had all done this before. If there was a chance to grab Evans, they would take it.
As much as it hurt him, Horton could only sit and wait—having no idea what was going on.
Without warning, one by one, each investigator emerged from his or her position and began to move in on Evans at the same time as he sat on the monument.
At first, Evans didn’t have a clue as to what was going on. Then, as he “felt everyone closing in” on him, he later told Horton, he leaped off the monument and took three quick steps toward the street, heading for the wooded area behind McDonald’s. There were immense pine trees, in perfect rows, like farmed Christmas trees, directly in back of the restaurant. The woods, beyond the trees, were thick and dense. Because it was the beginning of spring, the leaves on the trees and bushes had recently bloomed an army green dark color. It would be impossible for anyone to catch Evans once he bled into the aesthetics of the woods. Further, throughout the morning, it had become increasingly cloudier. The sun was covered by clouds now. Once Evans reached the woods, he would be in his element, the keeper of his own fate. A band of street cops from Albany would be no match.
As Evans bolted across the street, however, the K-9 cop, who was closest to him, unleashed the dog. A large German shepherd, trained to attack a moving target, took one leap and sank his razor-sharp teeth into Evans’s calf, tearing a gash in his flesh as if it were a piece of raw beef.
Evans fell immediately to the ground and began fighting off the dog.
Within seconds, every investigator in the field ran toward him and tackled him.
Sully, who had come running out of the bank toting his shotgun, ran up and, along with the others, pointed the barrel of his weapon directly at Evans’s head.
Do not move, motherfucker, seemed to be said in unison.
Horton had warned everyone about Evans’s penchant for being able to escape while in custody, not to mention the reputation he had for hiding razorblades and handcuff keys all over his body, in every imaginable cavity. The only way to monitor his behavior at all times and be sure he wasn’t “up to something,” Horton suggested, was to strip him naked.
So, after handcuffing him, two investigators stripped him.
A crowd had begun to swell as people in town began to figure out what was happening. One of the investigators
had already radioed for backup and several local and state police cruisers had arrived on-scene, lights blaring, sirens wailing.
Bare-assed and handcuffed, Evans now stood in front of what were scores of onlookers and law enforcement. At first, he tried wrestling the handcuffs off, hopping around, falling down, getting back up again, his right leg bloodied from the dog bite. But then, as he began to realize there was little chance of getting away, he broke into a violent rage, screaming aggressively in what could only be described as one of his Incredible Hulk moments.
Evans would later say he was, at that moment, picturing himself “caged” and locked up again. In his mind, it was over. No more running. No more hiding.
No more freedom.
Twenty-five to life.
Back at base camp, Horton and Lang hadn’t heard anything for about eight minutes. The last they had heard was that someone had spotted Evans in town. For all Horton and Lang knew, the entire plan had gone bust and Evans was gone.
Maybe someone had even gotten hurt? Horton thought.
Then, over the radio, came those words cops love to hear during stakeouts and surveillances—which were especially welcomed, Horton later admitted, in this case.
“Target in custody without incident.”
Horton looked over at Lang and shook his hand.
“Thank you, Lieutenant, for everything. Your men were amazing.”
CHAPTER 28
In the coming months, communities around New England would begin to understand that the stripping of Evans’s clothes on Main Street in St. Johnsbury would serve as a metaphor for what was about to happen as soon as Horton was able to secure extradition and bring Evans back to New York State. Evans hadn’t said a word to anyone as he was taken into custody. But an hour after he was processed and fingerprinted, he finally opened his mouth.
Every Move You Make Page 12