by Jayne, Chris
Coldly, Angela wondered exactly where the body was now.
She kept her face carefully quiet and went back to her work, deliberately not noting Dovner’s presence at Saldata’s home as Point #3. That, she left off the list.
#3. 10:35 AM on Monday: A phone call less than one hour later from Dovner to Sea View Elementary school. GPS tracking showed her on a residential street in the Miami suburb of Pinecrest.
#4. 10:38 AM on Monday: A phone call from Dovner’s nanny, Simone Moreau, to Dovner. Moreau was at Dade Community College, Dovner was at the same location where she’d made the call to the school only minutes earlier.
#5. 10:42 AM on Monday: A phone call from Dovner to Michelle Krushke, her employee. Dovner was close to, but not exactly at the same location where she’d been only minutes earlier during the previous two phone calls. Angela appended a note to this data point. Moving?
#6. 11:10 AM on Monday: The moment at which Dovner and Moreau had arrived at the school to pick the kids up in the nanny’s Toyota.
Angela enlarged her satellite imagery of the Pinecrest neighborhood to the maximum and looked back at her note pad, doodling an idle circle between numbers three and four. Dovner had been static. Had she been in a house, or just parked on the street? Unfortunately, the GPS data from the cell coverage wasn’t precise enough to tell.
Then, the big question? How had Dovner gotten from the location in Pinecrest, where she’d been for the third and fourth calls, to the school? Angela had plotted the distances carefully. She’d driven obviously, but what?
There had not been enough time for Moreau to leave the college, go to the Pinecrest neighborhood location, and pick Dovner up, then get back to the elementary school. The only way the numbers worked was if Moreau drove directly from the community college to the children’s school and Dovner drove from Pinecrest and met the nanny; that meant that Dovner either drove herself or was given a ride from Pinecrest to the school.
But Saldata had admitted to Angela that the back window of Dovner’s vehicle, a Range Rover, had been shot out and that the police were looking for the vehicle. He didn’t say where the back window had been shot out, but Angela’s guess was that it had happened here, at this house. Because of this, Saldata told Angela, they guessed she was not driving the Range Rover any longer but could not prove it.
Angela looked back at her notes, again at the third data point, then back at the map on which she’d been plotting Dovner’s movements. A random neighborhood? Angela didn’t think so. If Dovner were trying to hide, she would have gone to the mall, to an airport, somewhere where there were a lot of people around. Rabbits on the run scurried back to their burrows. If she came here, to this place, it was known to her. She didn’t live here, so someone else must.
Another stack of papers sat on Angela’s desk: Dovner’s cell phone records, which were a dead end. “Stack” was accurate. Dovner had used a single cell phone for both business and personal calls; there were literally thousands of numbers that either she had called or had called her. Pulling the owner of a cell phone number was a lot trickier than for a hardline phone. It was possible, but every time a request was made, it left a paper trail. No way could they do it for hundreds of numbers.
Their best opportunity was to try to find whatever she was driving. There were only two ways Dovner could have gotten from Pinecrest to the elementary school in time to meet the nanny and pick up her children by 11:10. She’d either driven herself in her damaged Range Rover or she was in another car. If it were another car, someone either had to drive her or to loan her a car.
What about a ride-share or a cab? Angela considered that, but rejected it. They had access to Dovner’s email and credit cards, and no payment for a ride-share had come through. A cab, Dovner could have paid for in cash, but a regular cab would have to have been called using her phone, and she hadn’t.
No, if what Dovner had seen had terrified her enough that within barely one hour she’d figured her children were at risk and she’d gotten to them, she was smart enough to not be driving around in her own car. And the only way you get a car in less than an hour is if someone you know gives it to you.
Idly, feeling like she was running up against a wall, Angela reloaded the camera feeds from the pickup zone at the front of the school, trying to see what she was missing. Suddenly she froze, hit with a lightning bolt of realization. She whipped out the map again and studied it carefully. Yes, yes, yes! While it would be possible to take alternate routes, the most direct route from both the community college and the Pinecrest neighborhood to the school was directly down Ocean. Driving that direction, south, the school was on the right side of the street, and logically, to get into the school’s pick-up zone, a driver had to turn right off of Ocean. Not left, right.
But when Dovner and her nanny had come to get the children, they’d come from the opposite direction. They’d been driving north on Ocean and turned left to get into the pick-up zone. In all likelihood, Dovner had met the nanny somewhere near the school and that meeting place was beyond the school. That meant that both the nanny in the Toyota and Dovner, in whatever she was driving, must have passed the school in the minutes prior to picking the kids up. She studied the maps again. It was the only thing that made sense. And, oh so conveniently, the video feed of the school’s pick-up zone gave a relatively clear shot to the road.
Quickly Angela rewound the tape to 10:55 and began tapping through, and almost instantly she had her answers. First, at 10:57 a dark blue Toyota Corolla passed the school. While there was no way to be sure, it looked exactly the same as the car that picked the children up thirteen minutes later. In addition - Angela checked her notes - allowing ten minutes from the time Dovner talked to the nanny for the nanny to leave a classroom and get to a parking lot at the community college, and then ten minutes to drive, this Toyota passed the school within two minutes of the time the GPS predicted.
And then, there it was. Angela’s gaze froze on the grainy feed in front of her. As if on cue, a large black SUV with its turn signal flashing, slowed almost to a stop in front of the school, and then zoomed off. With a certainty that bordered on clairvoyance, Angela knew exactly what had just transpired.
Dovner was going to get the children herself. She had been ready to turn in; then, at the very last second, the presence of cameras had occurred to her. Because she was no longer in her Range Rover, she had to keep whatever she was driving a secret.
Angela checked the time stamp and almost cheered out loud, 11:01. Exactly what the GPS predicted the travel time would be from the neighborhood in Pinecrest to the school. She froze the frame and squinted. She wasn’t sure whether it was a Suburban or an Escalade or whatever the big Ford SUV was called - Navigator maybe? There were highly detailed photo files at the FBI that could identify the car in an instant. What mattered was that they had a car that was almost certainly what Dovner was driving. It had to be.
Angela lifted her head. Saldata’s office had a private deck, and he was out there now, obviously on a phone call that she assumed he did not want her to hear. She hesitated for just a moment, but realized to conceal this would be foolish. If she didn’t reveal it now, someone else was going to find it eventually. Hide it, and she got nothing. Give up what she knew and her stock with Saldata would go up astronomically. If she was going to get out of this alive, she had to earn his trust now.
She stood, motioned to him, then motioned again more insistently. He saw her through the glass, clicked off the phone, and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. The heavy double glass door (hurricane proof, she assumed) slid open with a hiss on a smooth rubber gasket and he came in, his face still and impassive.
“I have something,” Angela said. “I’m pretty sure I have the car.”
Two minutes later, Saldata straightened. He’d run through the video and Angela’s reasoning twice. “It’s good,” he said, and then he did something completely unexpected. He smiled at her. And then, as he turned and walked away, he said, “Ju jeni me
vlerë çdo qindarkë që kemi paguar për ju.”
Angela blinked. The smile was terrifying in itself, but the Albanian astonished her so much that, for a second, her brain could not even translate, and then it came to her. “You are worth every cent we ever paid for you.”
Not knowing what else to do, to his departing back she whispered, “Faleminderit.” Thank you.
Twenty minutes later, Nico Rossi burst into Saldata’s office. “You found the car?” he asked, his gaze flipping back and forth between Saldata and Angela.
“Yes.” Angela flipped her computer towards Rossi and went through the same explanation she’d given Saldata. “It’s an Escalade.” Because she wasn’t asking for, or supplying, any identifying information about the car, Angela had been able to submit her request for basic model identification directly to the FBI’s database and she knew the request would not be tracked. Within three minutes of uploading the car’s profile photo, the technician had responded not only with the fact that it was an Escalade, but with the year as well.
“Good work,” Rossi said to Angela, though to Angela’s ears he didn’t sound much like he meant it. “Now what?”
“We need to find who the car belongs to,” Saldata said. “I would think that would be obvious to a man in your position.”
“Absolutely,” Rossi responded. “I only meant…” He took a deep breath, and addressed his question to Angela. “No license plate?”
“No, the angle is wrong. If she’d turned into the school we’d have it, but from the side like this, there’s no shot.”
“Do we pull the cameras from every business for miles around and hope that someone has a shot of the license?” Rossi addressed his comment to Saldata. “Very public. Very messy. We’ve gone on television now saying we are not looking for her.”
“We don’t have a choice. Not anymore,” Saldata snapped. “We must find this woman.”
“There might be another way,” Angela interjected. She handed a page of her notebook to Rossi.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a starting point.” She indicated the place on the map where Dovner had been parked while she made two phone calls. “The GPS is not precise enough to say whether she was in a house or just parked, but I’ve gotten the addresses of every house on this cul-de-sac from Google. Can we do DMV queries without raising too many flags? See if anyone who lives here has an Escalade.”
Rossi nodded slowly. “Yes,” he answered. “That’s no problem.” He looked at what Angela had written.
“Plus,” Angela continued, “if she took the Escalade, her car must be parked here somewhere. So, if someone here has a black Escalade, we have an easy answer. If not, then we look at our other options.”
Angela’s hunch paid off again. Within ten minutes, Rossi had an address and a name. Sylvia Hensen, age seventy-six, and the proof was crystal clear. Hensen lived in the house closest to where the GPS locator had put Dovner’s cell phone.
Rossi and Saldata looked pleased. Angela felt like she’d been punched in the gut.
How the hell was she going to get out of this?
Chapter 28
Lori
Friday
3:00 PM Central Time
Norman, Oklahoma
* * *
A knock sounded at the hotel room door. Crap, Lori swore silently. Simone had slipped out the sliding glass door with Brandon to take Sasha for a walk. Had someone, a groundskeeper maybe, spotted the dog and reported them? Had someone seen Simone and Brandon at the pool and recognized Brandon from TV? So far, Lori had managed to stay mostly out of sight at the hotel, so she didn’t think this could be about her. Fortunately, so far, no one seemed to have a picture of Simone, and Brandon was just another cute little kid, but still.
The knock came again, more insistent. “Manager!”
Swallowing hard, Lori walked to the door, peeped through the eyehole and opened the door slowly. “Ma’am?” the young man said. “Ms. Moreau?”
She blinked, momentarily startled, then she figured it out. He was taking the name off of the registration that Simone had filled out. “Yes?” she responded tentatively.
“I’m Travis Stapleton, the manager here, and when you checked in on Wednesday night, you said it was just for one night.”
“That’s correct.” Both Thursday morning and this morning, Lori had called down in the morning, asking to have the room for an additional night. “But my daughter isn’t feeling well, and we decided to stay.”
“We have two problems, ma’am. First, you paid with a debit card and we only ran the room for one night, so we do need to get additional payment from you. We should have yesterday, but the desk clerk missed that.” He paused. “I hope that will not be a problem.”
He waited, and Lori realized that he meant he needed payment that very second. She hurried to get the card from her purse, reflecting that it was very different from when you checked into a hotel with an American Express Platinum card. She retrieved the debit card and walked back to the door to hand it to him.
He shook his head in the negative, looking at the card in her hand. “I can’t take that from you. I need you to carry it down to the desk.”
“I can’t,” Lori asserted, jerking her head back towards the bedroom. “My daughter is really not feeling well. I can’t leave her.”
The man hesitated, then his face relaxed. “Okay. I’m not supposed to, but, well, okay.” He took the card, then paused. “There’s another problem.”
Lori’s stomach clenched, certain that someone had reported Sasha. Hopefully, the fact that he’d already asked her for payment for the coming night meant that he wasn’t going to kick them out. He’d probably just try to charge them some exorbitant cleaning fee for the dog.
Stapleton continued, “There’s a football game tomorrow night.”
“So?” Lori couldn’t imagine what that had to do with them. “I don’t understand.”
“The Sooners? University of Oklahoma football?” The man looked at Lori like she was a moron. “I really didn’t even have a room for you tonight. I managed to make it happen, but tomorrow? I’m actually overbooked. I’ve got nothing for you.” When Lori did not respond, he went on, looking nervous. “You can’t stay another night.”
“You need us to leave in the morning?”
“Yes, I’m afraid you’ll have to.”
“It’s fine,” Lori said. Grace was still running a fever and was nowhere near “well,” but she hadn’t thrown up in twenty-four hours. She could rest in the car as easily as in a hotel room. It was time. What was waiting back in Miami was not going away. While the talking heads on television might be stating that they had found her, that was a lie. Someone with considerable clout was still looking for her. Someone who had enough power to manipulate the story. Someone who would kill her.
“We’re leaving in the morning.”
“Thank you.” Relief flowed over Travis Stapleton’s face. “People do this all the time. They don’t have a room for the game so they check in during the week, three days early and then throw a huge fit when we ask them to leave.”
“We’re not here for the football game, I promise you,” Lori reassured him firmly, glad that something in her life was absolutely true. “No worries. We’re leaving.”
Five minutes later, a knock again sounded at the door and Lori rushed to answer it, nervously looking over her shoulder. She still had no clue whether Sasha was allowed here, but Simone would return with the dog any minute. The sliding glass patio door with direct access to the outside had been a godsend, but the last thing Lori needed was for Simone to show up with the dog and walk in with the hotel manager standing right there.
Lori opened the door and Travis Stapleton handed her debit card back. “Thank you, Ms. Moreau,” he said. “You have no idea how ugly some people can get when we tell them they have to leave. So, thanks again.” He started and then looked Lori in the face. “Have you stayed here before?” he asked suddenly.
“
No,” Lori said, drawing the word out, her stomach clenching at the unexpected question.
“You look so familiar to me,” the manager said. “I just can’t quite place it. You sure you haven’t stayed before?”
Lori dropped her eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. Thanks.” She closed the door firmly and leaned back against the wall, trying to slow her breathing, certain she knew why he asked. She could not prove it, of course, but, she knew.
The hotel provided hot breakfast at a self-serve buffet in a common room each morning. The first day, with Grace still so sick, Lori had just quickly scrambled some eggs for herself in the room’s kitchenette. However, this morning, with Grace and Brandon still asleep, and Simone passed out on the sleeper sofa in the suite’s main room, Lori had decided to go to the breakfast room.
As soon as she walked through the lobby she’d spotted it. Directly across from the check-in desk was a television, and that TV had been set to a 24-hour cable news network. Since she’d first seen her photograph used during the news conference on Wednesday, Lori had been monitoring the news networks non-stop. Every single time they discussed the senator’s death, and it was still coming on multiple times per day, they found some excuse to show her photograph.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out why she might look familiar, in spite of her changed hair, to someone who was staring at a TV screen all day. And now he was going right back down there, with the TV still running. The next time her picture came on the news, would he have an ah-ha moment?
What if he did? Something that was still confusing Lori was that they’d been announcing they found her. That law enforcement was talking to her and she was safe. So, even if the manager recognized her, he would have no reason to call the police.
Right?
She hoped so.
Still she wondered why? Why would the “powers-that-be” say they’d found her when they hadn’t? Was it so that whomever was looking for her didn’t have hundreds of tips called into law enforcement, but yet they hoped that some cop would see her? Could one story be put out to the media and a different one to law enforcement? Did the cops know she really hadn’t been found? Lori had no answers and no way to get them.