Chapter 34

CHAPTER 34

T HE CAFé WAS ON THE second floor so they rode down the escalator to the ground floor after Devine had phoned Saxby. She was taking a taxi over to pick up Odom.

They waited by the glass front doors. In the reflection Devine could see the same woman, who had also ridden down the escalator after them, as she browsed through a shelf of magazines. She was good, thought Devine. She never looked their way, but somehow, he knew, the woman was still watching them.

When Saxby showed up, Devine took Odom out to the car and she got in.

“I’ll be by later, then we can get ready for tomorrow,” he told them.

Devine returned to the bookstore and headed toward where he had seen the woman last. Only she wasn’t there. And she had not come outside. The escalators were clear of customers, but there was an elevator. He noted that the doors had just closed and it was heading up to the second floor. He hurried up the escalator and was waiting by the elevator when it arrived on the second floor.

The doors opened but no one was inside it. He heard a door close somewhere close by. He saw the exit sign at the rear of the floor and Devine ran for it.

He burst through the door and heard the door on the first floor open. Devine raced down the stairs, jumping the last three steps, kicked the door open, and found himself in an alley behind the bookstore. He looked searchingly both ways but saw or heard no one.

That seemed impossible but then he saw a door on the other side of the alley that was open about a foot.

He hustled across the alley, gripped the door, and tugged it fully open. He found himself in a dusty hall with minimal lighting. He heard nothing up ahead of him, which didn’t mean much if his prey was moving with stealth. He pulled his weapon, and pointing it in front of him, Devine advanced down the hall.

He quickly found that the building was being renovated. Construction materials were stacked neatly along the corridor. He could smell fresh paint and sawdust and he spied a makeshift locker room that housed work clothes, filter masks, and heavy boots. He made sure no one was lurking in there before heading down the hall once more.

He pushed open a set of makeshift double doors and found himself in the main space of the structure. It had been gutted, but sections of wooden studs had been set up on the concrete slab, carving out where demising walls would later be. There were no workers around and Devine assumed, at this hour, they had already finished for the day.

Devine found the front door but it was securely padlocked. He ran back down the hall, then out into the alley and around to the front of the building.

Plywood had been set up over the street-front plate glass windows. Construction permits and warning signs were stapled to the wood.

So, she followed us to the bookstore, then took the time to set this place up for her escape, then returned to the bookstore and took up her surveillance. Then when she saw I had made her, she sent the elevator up without her in it. Followed me up the escalator, and while I was spinning my wheels waiting for the car to open, she commenced her escape and I gave chase.

But there was a problem with that theory, namely, where had she gone? The front doors were padlocked. If she came in the open rear door, how had she gotten out? There were no other exit doors.

Making no sense of this, another thought occurred to Devine. She might have made a mistake, based on something that Devine had noted at the bookstore.

He hurried back over there, found a manager, flashed his badge and ID, and made his demand about the woman he was seeking. He was led into a back, cluttered room where a computer monitor was set up on a metal desk piled with books.

The manager, a woman in her forties with sandy hair and an excited expression, said, “The security cameras’ footage is fed into here, Agent Devine.”

“I want to see the last half hour in the café and then ten minutes ago down on the first floor by the elevator in particular,” said Devine.

The woman sat down and began clicking keys while Devine pulled up a chair and studied the screen.

“There,” he said when the woman came up on the screen. “You can follow her on the feed.”

The manager let the recorded footage run and Devine silently watched the woman, who kept her face downward and shuffled around, giving off the image of feebleness. However, Devine knew what she was really doing was avoiding looking into the cameras.

She bought a coffee and a banana from the café and he noted that she paid in cash, probably the only person to do that here all day.

She sat at the table for a while. Devine knew that was when she had been watching him and Odom at their table.

“Okay, take me to the first floor, elevator.”

She did so and he watched as, just as he had predicted, she stepped into the elevator car, pushed a key, and then got off. She moved behind a shelf. The next moment Devine ran up, paused, and then hustled for the escalator. The woman emerged from hiding and followed him up the escalator.

While Devine broke for the elevator, she went to the exit door and left that way. She was now moving far more swiftly and without a hint of any physical impediment.

“I’ll need a copy of what we just saw.”

She downloaded one onto a USB stick and handed it to him.

“You got plastic, scissors, tape, and some paper?” he asked the woman.

“Yes.”

“Go get them, please.”

She brought the items back, and Devine used the plastic and tape to cover the elevator button on the first floor and the exit door handle on the second. He made signs stating that both the elevator and the door were out of order.

He then called Walker. She didn’t answer. She was probably still working away on the 4Runner. He left her a message to get a print lift team over to the bookstore. He gave her the manager’s name and contact info along with exactly what he wanted done. Then he told the manager to expect them.

He walked up to the second floor and taped off the table where the woman had sat, for Walker to later process. He next questioned the employee who had rung up the purchase of the coffee and banana, getting a description of the woman that he figured was of negligible value at best, since she was clearly in disguise. But any bit of information was more than what he’d had previously.

Devine noted that she had left neither the cup nor the banana peel behind.

Okay, you’ve been all action up till now. Slow it down, and think it through.

He closed his eyes and went over everything that had happened in the last hour. It was like doing battlefield reenactments in the Army to see what had gone right and, more important, what had gone to hell.

Something was off. He could feel it. Now he just had to locate it.

Two minutes went by, then five, then five more.

On the next click of his mental clock, Devine opened his eyes.

The best way was usually the most direct and simplest. This held true in pretty much any task or mission, because simple meant there were fewer opportunities to screw it up. From meal recipes to building anything to running for your life.

So the woman could have simply walked out the main floor exit once she had decoyed Devine to the second-floor elevator area. Her clever plan had worked and she would have plenty of time for a leisurely stroll to anywhere she wanted.

So why waste time going up the escalator after him, and then exiting out a door, and while doing so, making enough noise for Devine to notice?

He followed her exit route once more, looking for something he might have missed before. In the alleyway he stared at the open door into the space being renovated, through which he had gone earlier, as had, presumably, the woman.

Up and down the alley he saw tradesmen entrances and several large Dumpsters. All the doors were closed, no doubt for security purposes.

So why hadn’t she closed this door? It would have taken all of a second. And if she had, there would have been no way for Devine to know where she had gone. Then it struck him.

She wanted me to go in there. Which means there’s something she wants me to find.

So Devine went to find it.