Gone The Next

The woman he was watching this time was in her early thirties. Thirty-five at the oldest. White. Well dressed. Upper middle class. Reasonably attractive. Probably drove a nice car, like a Lexus or a BMW. She was shopping at Nordstrom in Barton Creek Square mall. Her daughter — Alexis, if he’d overheard the name correctly — appeared to be about seven years old. Brown hair, like her mother’s. The same cute nose. They were in the women’s clothing department, looking at swimsuits. Alexis was bored. Fidgety. Ready to go to McDonald’s, like Mom had promised. Amazing what you can hear if you keep your ears open.

He was across the aisle, in the men’s department, looking at Hawaiian shirts. They were all ugly, and he had no intention of buying one. He stood on the far side of the rack and held up a green shirt with palm trees on it. But he was really looking past it, at the woman, who had several one-piece swimsuits draped over her arm. Not bikinis, though she still had the figure for it. Maybe she had stretch marks, or the beginnings of a belly.

He replaced the green shirt and grabbed a blue one covered with coconuts. Just browsing, like a regular shopper might do.

Mom was walking over to a changing room now. Alexis followed, walking stiff-legged, maybe pretending she was a monster. A zombie. Amusing herself.

He moved closer, to a table piled high with neatly folded cargo shorts. He pretended to look for a pair in his size. But he was watching in his peripheral vision.

“Wait right here,” Mom said. She didn’t look around. She was oblivious to his presence. He might as well have been a mannequin.

Alexis said something in reply, but he couldn’t make it out.

“There isn’t room, Lexy. I’ll just be a minute.”

And she shut the door, leaving Alexis all by herself.

When he first began his research, he’d been surprised by what he’d found. He had expected the average parent to be watchful. Wary. Downright suspicious. That’s how he would be if he had a child. A little girl. He’d guard her like a priceless treasure. Every minute of the day. But his assumptions were wrong. Parents were sloppy. Careless. Just plain stupid.

He knew that now, because he’d watched hundreds of them. And their
children. In restaurants. In shopping centers. Supermarkets. Playgrounds
and parks. For three months he’d watched. Reconnaissance missions, like this one right now, with Alexis and her mom. Preparing. What he’d observed was encouraging. It wouldn’t be as difficult as he’d assumed. When the time came.

But he had to use his head. Plan it out. Use what he’d learned. Doing it in a public place, especially a retail establishment, would be risky, because there were video surveillance systems everywhere nowadays. Some places, like this mall, even had security guards. Daycare centers were often fenced, and the front doors were locked. Schools were always on the lookout for strangers who —

“You need help with anything?”

He jumped, ever so slightly.

A salesgirl had come up behind him. Wanting to be helpful. Calling attention to him. Ruining the moment.

The first time I ever heard the name Tracy Turner — on a hot, cloudless Tuesday in June — I was tailing an obese, pyorrheic degenerate named Wally Crouch. I was fairly certain about the “degenerate” part, because Crouch had visited two adult bookstores and three strip clubs since noon. Not that there’s anything wrong with a little mature entertainment, but there’s a point when it goes from bawdy boys-will-be-boys recreation to creepy pathological fixation. The pyorrhea was pure conjecture on my part, based solely on the number of Twinkie wrappers Crouch had tossed out the window during his travels.

Crouch was a driver for UPS and, according to my biggest client, he was also a fraud who was riding the workers’ comp gravy train. In the course of a routine delivery seven weeks prior, Crouch had allegedly injured his lower back. A ruptured disk, the doctor said. Limited mobility and a twelve- to sixteen-week recovery period. In the meantime, Crouch couldn’t lift more than ten pounds without searing pain shooting up his spinal cord. But this particular quack had a checkered past filled with questionable diagnoses and reprimands from the medical board. My job was fairly simple, at least on paper: Follow Crouch discreetly until he proved himself a liar. Catch it on video. Testify, if necessary. Earn a nice paycheck. Continue to finance my sumptuous, razor’s-edge lifestyle.

You’d think Crouch, having a choice in the matter, would’ve avoided rush-hour traffic and had a few more beers instead, but he left Sugar’s Uptown Cabaret at ten after five and squeezed his way onto the interstate heading south. I followed in my seven-year-old Dodge Caravan. Beige. Try to find a vehicle less likely to catch someone’s eye. The windows are deeply tinted and a scanner antenna is mounted on the roof, which are the only clues that the driver isn’t a soccer mom toting her brats to practice.

Anyone whose vehicle doubles as a second home recognizes the value of a decent sound system. I’d installed a Blaupunkt, with Bose speakers front and rear. Total system set me back about two grand. Seems like overkill for talk radio, but that’s what I was listening to when I heard the familiar alarm signal of the Emergency Alert System. I’d never known the system to be used for anything other than weather warnings, but not this time. It was an Amber Alert. A local girl had gone missing from her affluent West Austin neighborhood. Tracy Turner: six years old, blond hair, green eyes, three feet tall, forty-five pounds, wearing denim shorts and a pink shirt. My palms went sweaty just thinking about it. Then I heard she might be in the company of Howard Turner — her non-custodial father, a resident of Los Angeles — and I breathed a small sigh of relief. Listeners, they said, should keep an eye out for a green Honda with California plates.

Easy to read between the lines. Tracy’s parents were divorced, and dad had decided he wanted to spend more time with his daughter, despite how the courts had ruled. Sad, but much better than a random abduction.

The announcer was repeating the message when my cell phone rang. I turned the radio volume down, answered, and my client — a senior claims adjuster at a big insurance company — said, “You nail him yet?”

“Christ, Heidi, it’s only the third day.”

“I thought you were good.”

“That’s a vicious rumor.”

“Yeah, and I think you started it yourself. I’m starting to think you get by on your looks alone.”