by Ben Rehder
“What about the cops?” she asked.
“What about ’em?”
“Don’t they have to agree that Boz is dead? Same with the coroner? And that don’t seem likely anytime soon, ’cause the cops keep coming at me like I’m in on some kind of big con job.”
“Annoying detective named Ruelas?”
Ruelas had a first name, but I never used it—when speaking to him or about him—because I didn’t want to accept that sort of familiarity. In fact, I was always hoping I’d never see him again. He was a prick. A jerk. He used too much hair product.
He also refused to believe me when I was convinced that I had seen a missing six-year-old girl in the company of a mutt named Brian Pierce. Ruelas had been patronizing. Condescending. Dismissive. And usually stylishly dressed.
Then, later, after Pierce had been killed, and when I’d finally determined where the little girl was being held, I gave Ruelas a chance to help me get her out. Instead he sent a cop to try to stop me. I busted through the door anyway and found the girl, and even though making Ruelas look bad had no bearing at all on why I’d done it, it sure was a nice little perk of the job.
“That’s him,” Erin Gentry said.
I nodded. “He’s an asshole, huh?”
“First he came on tough, then he tried flirting, and then he went back to being tough. I finally told him I wasn’t answering no more questions. Tyler said I wouldn’t get the money until there was a death certificate, and that won’t happen until the cops finish up with their so-called investigation.”
“That’s true, yes. So the more people looking for your husband, the better, right?”
She didn’t appear convinced, but she said, “I guess.” She flicked her cigarette butt into the yard.
“So you don’t mind a few questions?”
Right then, I heard something I didn’t expect. A sound, from somewhere deep in the house, like someone closing a door or a cabinet. Apparently she had a visitor. Then again, maybe it was another dog. Or a noisy appliance of some sort. Erin Gentry didn’t seem to notice it.
Instead, she said, “You can ask. Don’t know if I’ll answer.”
Excellent. She was going to cooperate.
“I’m hoping you can give me the names of his closest friends. Places where he hangs out. Like, where would he go if he wanted to fake his own death? Things like that. Anything you think might be helpful.”
She stared at me for a few seconds, obviously wondering if it would be worth her time. Or maybe wondering if she could trust me. Then she started talking, and it was good stuff. Even better, most of it matched up with what was in the files Heidi had sent me, and with what Tyler Lutz had told me.
When she was done talking, I asked for her phone number, in case I had questions later. She gave me a cell number. Then, before I left, she said, “So that’s it, huh?”
“Unless you have something else,” I said.
“Ain’t you gonna even ask if he’s here?” Almost a dare.
“Who, Boz?” I said.
“Well, who else?” she said.
“I was thinking Vladimir Putin,” I said.
“Everybody else seems to think I was involved, so you might as well ask,” she said. “You know you’re wondering. You’re thinking, ‘Why won’t she let the cops search her house if he’s not in there?’”
“Because it’s your constitutional right,” I said.
“Damn right, it is,” she said. “Speaking of which, I know how guys like you work.”
“You do?”
“You follow people around with a camera, right? When they’re not watching?”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“Okay, well, I’m telling ya—you follow me around or hide a camera on my place, I’ll find it and kick your ass.” She was giving me the slightest smile to soften the blow.
“I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute,” I said. “You have my word—no cameras.”
And I stuck to my word. No cameras. But I did sneak back after sundown and attach a GPS tracker to the underside of her aging Ford Focus.
6
While I was interviewing Erin Gentry, Mia was having a bad day. Of course, I wouldn’t hear about it until the following morning, because she didn’t want to tell me about it that evening. Her reasoning was that it would’ve made me angry—and she was right. And that it would have kept me from sleeping well that night—and she was right about that, too.
Here’s what happened: One of the men in the car with Jens Buerger during the alleged accident was Craig Evans, who was claiming to have a herniated disc. Evans was only twenty-two, but he had a fairly impressive record, including burglary and assault. On the other hand, unlike all three other members of the group, Evans had no prior history of insurance fraud, so Mia decided he might be the least wary of the group. The least likely to be on the lookout for anyone watching him. Same conclusion I would’ve reached.
So, after lunch, Mia set up at a shopping center where she could watch the main boulevard coming out of Evans’s neighborhood. She got lucky, because he drove past in his truck less than an hour later. He was pulling a trailer with a load of landscaping timbers on it, which seemed a hopeful sign. Hard to move lumber with a bad back.
But the day started going poorly when Evans hopped onto Interstate 35 and went south, past the city limits. It’s never fun when your subject decides to leave town. You have to decide whether or not to follow. Will it be worth the time investment? Mia followed. Evans passed through San Marcos. Then New Braunfels. Then into San Antonio. Mia was following at a discreet distance, but traffic was heavy, so she couldn’t fall too far back or she might lose him. She was starting to wonder if Evans would keep going all the way to Laredo, but then he took an exit on the east side of San Antonio.
He jumped on a major thoroughfare for a couple of miles, and Mia couldn’t help noticing that it wasn’t the nicest part of town. Trash was gathered around buildings. Weeds were growing on medians. Some businesses were boarded up. Lots of people walking slowly—almost shambling around—as if they weren’t headed anywhere in particular, and they didn’t have to get there anytime soon.
Then Evans ducked into a residential area—again, everything was sort of seedy and run-down—and he took a couple of turns before parking along the curb in front of a house with waist-high weeds in the front lawn. Mia had no choice but to drive past. She went deeper into the neighborhood for a few minutes, hit a dead end, then turned around and approached the house again. Pretending to be lost, or at least confused. Like she was looking for a certain address.
She didn’t see Evans. She didn’t see anybody.
Then a man—not Evans, but a larger, taller, older man in overalls—suddenly stepped into the street from between Evans’s truck and trailer and held up his hands in a STOP gesture. Mia had no choice. She stopped. There was no traffic coming from either direction. She waited. Now she recognized the man as Zeke Cooney, one of the other men involved in the fraud scam. Older than the other three players by about twenty years. Apparently, we hadn’t had his latest address.
And right behind Cooney came Evans, from behind his truck, where he had also been waiting. He casually walked in front of Mia’s SUV and came around the driver’s side, approaching the open window.
By this time, Mia had slipped her hand inside a zippered pocket of her specially designed purse, and her palm was wrapped around the grip of a .38 Special. She had her concealed-carry license, of course. That was one thing I had insisted on when she became my partner. What we do for a living is rarely dangerous—except for those times when it is. Sometimes the subject figures out who you are and what you’re doing, and then reacts poorly.
Like now.
Evans bent toward the window and grinned. In person, he didn’t look as young—or as friendly—as in photos. “I know who you are. Jens told me you’d be poking around. So I’m just gonna say straight out that you’d better quit fuckin’ following me. You understand?”
Mia and I h
ad discussed the appropriate ways to react when confronted under various circumstances. Right now, she was alone, she was outnumbered, and she didn’t have any sort of recording device running. There was little to gain in egging Evans on, as we’d done with Buerger, or to have any sort of conversation at all. Better to simply leave.
So she said, “Your friend is blocking the road. Please ask him to move.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“He’s impeding traffic, which is against the law,” Mia said.
“So is invading my privacy, you smug little bitch.”
“Your friend needs to move so I can be on my way.”
Now his eyes drifted downward to the hand inside her purse. He incorrectly assumed she was reaching for a cell phone. “Gonna call your faggy partner? Jens told me about him, too.”
I can’t recall anyone ever referring to me as “faggy,” but if someone was going to call me either “faggy” or “a lot like Craig Evans,” I’d take “faggy” every time.
I’m sure Mia was tempted to show him exactly what she had in her hand, but you don’t ever, ever, ever pull a gun unless you or someone else is in danger and you fully intend to shoot the bad guy. You don’t pull it just to scare someone away. You don’t pull it to shut someone up, or to show him that you aren’t scared. You pull it to use it. Period. Also makes sense from a tactical standpoint. Why let a potential attacker know what you’re packing? Better to keep the element of surprise.
Mia said, “At this point, you are keeping me against my will. That’s a felony.”
Well, maybe. She could still drop it into reverse, but as she admitted later, she was too rattled by then for that to have occurred to her. This was her first real confrontation with a subject. Worse yet, there was nobody else in sight except those two goons, so there would be no witnesses if anything should happen.
Evans placed his hands on the window opening and leaned in closer. “You know what? I got an idea. I didn’t mean to be so ugly. How about you pull over and come party with me and Zeke?”
“You and Zeke?” Mia said.
“That’s right.”
“You want me to party with you and Zeke?” Mia said.
“You get high? Zeke has some good weed. You got a boyfriend?”
“You absolutely cannot be serious.”
“We could have a lot of fun,” Evans said.
“But you’re not physically capable. You’re injured, remember? Wasn’t it a back injury?”
Evans grinned. “Oh, right. Almost forgot. I’m sure I could get by. You should come on inside.”
“Sorry, can’t,” Mia said. “Besides, just twenty seconds ago, you told me to quit following you.”
“That was before I got a good look at you, and damn, girl. You wanna party or what?”
“I didn’t bring any penicillin. Now get your hands off my car.”
“Do what?”
“Remove. Your. Hands,” Mia said. “Now.”
“Stuck-up bitch,” Evans said, and he made a grab toward her. Mia stomped the accelerator. She felt a thump—Evans’s arm hitting the doorframe—and heard him yelp.
Good ol’ Zeke stayed in the street as long as he could stand it, but he lost his nerve and finally jumped out of the way. Good thing, too, because as Mia told me later, she fully intended to run him over if necessary.
7
First thing I did the next morning was grab the laptop on my nightstand and see whether Erin Gentry had gone anywhere after I’d attached the GPS device to her car. She had, and her travels were all nicely illustrated on a map.
The tracker was smaller than a cell phone, and arguably every bit as powerful. It was known as a “slap and track” unit, and that described it perfectly. It had a magnetic case, along with a built-in antenna and battery, so you could slap it underneath a vehicle in seconds and begin tracking immediately.
Flexible, too. You could use one of these units to track someone online in real time, with a live update of their location every ten seconds. Or the tracker could record data for up to 90 days, so you could look backwards in time and see where the subject had gone. In other words, you didn’t have to physically follow a subject if you followed them electronically.
Sometimes this was the ideal solution. If I was conducting surveillance on a subject who was suspected of committing fraud, I would almost always follow him or her in person, so I could shoot incriminating video or photos, if the opportunity presented itself. But this case was different. I had no idea where Boz Gentry might be. I was hoping Erin Gentry would lead me to him. I didn’t necessarily need to follow her—not yet—I just needed to know where she went.
The GPS data informed me that she had left her house at 1:12 a.m. Interesting. Odd time for a bereaved widow to be out and about, unless she was simply battling insomnia—maybe taking a drive to ease her anguish.
Actually, I couldn’t assume Erin Gentry was in the vehicle—especially considering that I might have heard someone else in her house when I’d interviewed her. But whoever was driving, her Ford Focus followed Riverhills to Bee Caves Road, went east toward Austin, then turned right less than a mile later on Barton Creek Boulevard, the main drag through a very ritzy area that centered around Barton Creek Country Club.
Erin Gentry’s Focus then turned left on Chalk Knoll Drive, which led into a gated community, which meant the driver had to have entered a punch code on a keypad to gain entry, or maybe had some sort of clicker device like a garage door opener. The secrets of the wealthy.
Bottom line, it didn’t really matter how the gate had been opened, but it had, and the Focus took Chalk Knoll down to a street called Portofino Ridge. Pulled into a driveway on the right, stayed for four and a half minutes, then followed the same path all the way back to Erin Gentry’s house.
It appeared someone or something had been dropped off. Or picked up. But who? Or what? Who lived at that house?
I jumped over to the website for the Travis County Appraisal District, keepers of the tax rolls, and did a property search for the address. Owner was named Alex Albeck. Also interesting. Because Alex Albeck was one of the names given to me by Erin Gentry. She’d told me that Alex Albeck was Boz Gentry’s best friend, buddies since kindergarten.
I was just about to start speculating about the possibilities of this new development when Mia called. And this was when she described what had happened to her the previous afternoon—the incident with Craig Evans and Zeke Cooney.
When she was done, I wanted to immediately track Evans down and talk to him. With a crowbar. But I remained calm and said, “You handled it well. Glad you’re okay.” I’d learned through a painful trial-and-error period, during the first few months of our partnership, not to start sentences with “What you should’ve done was...” or “If it had been me...”
“Thanks,” she said. “Evans seems like a harmless punk, and I think he was just trying to scare me, but you never know.”
“That’s exactly right. You just keep assuming that asshole is dangerous, please.”
“Worried about me, Roy?”
“Worried about you winding up in prison for busting his head open. You could be charged with cruelty to animals.”
“It won’t come to that,” she said.
“If he’s lucky.”
I wanted to offer advice on what she should do next, but she didn’t ask, so instead I told her what I’d been up to, including my recent discovery regarding Alex Albeck. We did this often—just talking about our cases, brainstorming—because more often than not, one of us would think of something the other had overlooked.
“Tell me more about Albeck,” Mia said.
“He’s a Taurus who likes Michael Bolton songs and long walks on the beach.”
“Hey, just like you,” Mia said.
“Albeck pretty much grew up in the same circles as Boz Gentry, but Albeck seems to have done a lot better for himself than all his buddies.”
“How do you define ‘doing better for y
ourself’?”
“You know, like setting goals and actually achieving them. Working hard. Helping old ladies cross the street. Staying off crack.”
“What line of work is Albeck in?”
“Real estate developer. He and his partners have built several high-dollar neighborhoods in the last decade or so. They buy ranches and cut them up. He’s made a bundle.”
“So he’s wealthy.”
“Lives near Barton Creek Country Club on a street named ‘Portofino Ridge.’ That right there just exudes class, don’t it?”
“Married?” Mia asked.
“No, I’m divorced, but it’s against company policy for me to date a fellow employee. Alex Albeck, on the other hand, is single.”
“Wealthy and single. What’s that address again?”
I gasped. “Gold digger!”
“You know me.”
“I do know you. I should mention that he lives in a gated community, which keeps harlots like you at bay.”
Gated communities were always a problem in our line of work. Worse than fences, dogs, alarm systems, even nosy neighbors. The worst possible scenario is a gated community with a competent guard at the entrance around the clock.
“You probably already thought of this, but there’s no way to know if Erin Gentry was actually driving,” Mia said, following the same thought process I’d followed earlier. “How certain are you that you heard someone inside her house?”
“I’m only certain that I heard something. Wouldn’t wager that it was a person. It was probably nothing.”
We were both quiet for several moments. This was typical. Just thinking.
Then Mia said, “Well, let’s get the most obvious scenario out of the way first. If Boz Gentry is alive, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if he’s hiding out with his best buddy, at least part of the time. Maybe she was dropping him off late last night.”
“Or picking him up.”