Isabel's Run (21 page)

“Dude, you’re a genius!” I said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“And humble, too,” Toni called out.

We were excited again. We were back in business. Now that we had an address, it looked like a good old-fashioned stakeout was in order.

* * * *

We have three vehicles that we’ve converted especially for surveillance over the past four years. The first two are nearly identical windowless vans—a white one and a dark green one. Seeing as how we’re particularly clever, we generally slap a colorful commercial sign on the sides of the vans to disguise us. The vans are tricky, but our mack daddy, crown-jewel surveillance rig is our 1982 Winnebago Brave motor home. No one ever suspects it.

With their work areas concealed by a curtain, all three vehicles look harmless from the outside. Inside, though, they’re all business. They’re loaded with audio, video, communication, and computer gear and with a bevy of recording devices. We can take clear photos from one hundred yards, clear video from fifty yards. With a boom mic, we can record a conversation from nearly one hundred yards away if ambient conditions are favorable.

In addition to being workhorses, the vehicles are also long on creature comforts—especially the Winnebago. All the vehicles feature a sink and a microwave, a mini-fridge under the desk, and—best of all—a small enclosed toilet. Anyone who’s ever spent time on a stakeout in an automobile would look at a surveillance assignment in any of our vehicles and think they’d died and ascended to the right hand of God. With all these features, it’s easy to remain on station for hours at a time. I figure that by rotating the crews, the vans are good for a full day in place without attracting too much attention, while the motor home should be good for three or four days without arousing suspicion. The Winnebago would be the perfect choice for watching the house on Fortieth for a couple of days.

The Bryant Neighborhood Playground, directly across the street from our target house, has a parking lot at the north end alongside 165th. By parking in the far western part of the lot, the target house would be only 150 feet from the motor home—perfect surveillance distance. At ten the next morning, I backed the motor home into a parking space such that our left side faced the target house across a corner of the park. The parking spot was ideal—close enough for effective surveillance, and far enough removed to be essentially inconspicuous. Even if someone did notice us, what was threatening about a small motor home in a park? Toni followed me in her car and pulled in on my east side, blocked from view of the house by the motor home. She left an empty space between us. We were to take the 1000 to 1400 shifts plus the 1800 to 2100 shifts on both Saturday and Sunday. Kenny and Doc would relieve us at two o’clock and cover the 1400 to 1800 and 2100 to 0000 shifts. It wasn’t round-the-clock, but we only have four people, and it would have to do.

Once we were in position, we started watching the house. Donnie Martin’s white BMW was parked in the driveway, alongside a red late-model Honda Accord. I called Kenny and read him the Honda’s license plate number. Ten minutes later, he called back with the owner: Patricia Denise Wallace with a Kirkland address. Was this Crystal?

The house was a neat, little two story with well-kept landscaping. It appeared quiet. I fired up the high-powered video camera mounted to the roof of the motor home. The camera is hidden inside a smoked plastic dome on the roof that looks a little like a satellite dish. When I pointed the camera at the front door, I was able to nearly fill the screen with a pretty sharp image—good enough for our purposes.

We opened the main door on the “away” side to let some air in. I extended the awning, rolled out the carpet, and set up a couple of chairs. We wouldn’t be spending any time sitting outside, but it made the cover story all the more convincing.

Being that it was June 9—an odd-numbered date, it was my day to pick the tunes. I couldn’t get too wild and crazy, though. After all, we were scheduled for the next day as well. Best not to annoy Toni if she and I were going to be spending the better part of the next two days elbow to elbow.

* * * *

“Movement!” Toni whispered, excitedly. It was her turn at the console, monitoring the front door of the residence. I’d been leaning back, completely relaxed, in the motor home’s lounge chair, listening to “Uncaged” by the Zac Brown Band. I snapped out of it quickly, though, and looked at the clock on the wall. It was 12:10 p.m. I looked at the console. A tall, thin, well-dressed black man and a white female with medium-length dark hair were coming out of the house.

“Tighten up,” I said. Toni twisted the control, and the camera zoomed in closer on the two.

“Donnie Martin?” I asked.

“Watch,” Toni said.

The two walked over to the white beemer and got in. A second later, the car fired up. A few seconds after that, it backed out of the driveway and headed south on Fortieth.

“It’s him,” Toni said.

“How do you know?”

“He got in the car. It’s his car.”

Duh. “Good point. You’re probably right,” I said. “You think that was Crystal?”

“Could be. The age fits. That woman didn’t look like a teenager to me.”

“True,” I said. “But in the photos, Isabel didn’t look like she was just sixteen, and Paola didn’t look like she was fifteen, either. It looks like I’m no judge.”

“It’s hard. Especially since the young girls are trying to look older and the older girls are trying to look younger.”

“Geez,” I said. “No wonder I can’t figure it out. Roll back, will you. Let’s have another look at these two.”

Toni went back to the two of them coming out of the house. “Can you capture that? Let’s see if we can clean it up with Photoshop and print.”

We kept an eye on the house for the next hour and a half while we worked on enhancing the photos. In the end, we were able to isolate each person, compensate for grain and shadows, and end up with a pretty decent ID shot. “That oughta work,” I said.

“Cool,” she agreed.

My phone rang—caller ID: Doc.

“What’s up, Doc?” I said. I know. It’s corny.

“We’re two minutes out. Clear to relieve?” Doc was asking if there was any reason why he shouldn’t pull in next to us now—like, for example, if the subjects were out in their front yard or something like that.

“Stand by,” I said.

I panned the camera as far down Fortieth Avenue as I could. There were no cars visible and, more important, no potential bad guys standing around who might get suspicious of us being there.

“Come on in,” I said. “You’ll see Toni parked east of the rig. The spot on the east side of her is open. Go ahead and park there.”

“Roger,” Doc said.

A minute later, they pulled in. Kenny was driving. He shut his car off and hopped out. “Hey, this is nice,” he said as he checked out the awning and the chairs. “I haven’t seen it since you added the awning. All we need’s a barbecue.”

I laughed. “I should bring my Weber grill,” I said. “That would make for a pretty sneaky surveillance setup, you think?”

“No shit,” he said. “We’d be sitting right in front of them barbecuing Kobe burgers, completely invisible.”

“Best way,” I said.

Doc walked up. “I don’t see a beemer,” he said.

“Yeah, they left a half hour ago,” I said. “A guy we think must be Donnie Martin and a white girl—might be Crystal.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nope. Four hours. That was it.”

“Show me,” he said. As usual, Doc was all business.

We went inside. “Here’s a couple of photos we took. We think this is Donnie Martin—at least he was driving Donnie Martin’s car. And this is the girl who could be Crystal.”

Doc and Kenny peered in. “She looks a little older,” Kenny said.

“Exactly,” Toni said. “If she’s the bottom girl, that would make sense.”

Doc nodded.

“That your log?”

“Yep. That’s it. They left at 12:12 p.m.”

Doc nodded. “Okay then,” he said. “You guys are relieved. We got it.”

“You boys play nice,” Toni said, smiling.

AT 8:15 A.M. on Monday, we were back in the conference room. We’d decided to end the surveillance of the house on Fortieth Avenue last night at midnight—the Winnebago was already back at the storage lot.

“Scroll through them, slowly,” I said to Kenny. He was running through our combined logs for both days. We’d already been through them once; now we were tabulating visits.

“So it looks to me like Martin makes a total of seven trips. Four of those times, he’s with Crystal. Twice, he brings back this guy here—,” I pulled another photo out, “—who we think is DeMichael Hollins.”

“And Crystal makes four trips by herself in the red Honda,” Doc said. “Owned by Patricia Denise Wallace, aka: Crystal.”

I nodded.

“No other girls,” Toni said. “No Isabel.”

“Nope.”

“And I noticed something else,” Doc said. “These guys don’t seem to be too worked up about anything. If Isabel’s gone, they don’t seem too concerned, at least not outwardly. They seemed in a pretty good mood both times I saw them.”

“I think you’re right,” I said.

“Where are they coming from and going to?” Toni asked. “The other houses?”

“Could be,” I said. “They’d have to visit them sometime.”

“So, like Paola said, the girls are at one of the other houses,” Kenny said. “Maybe Isabel’s with them.”

“Perhaps. It would be really nice to know how they’ve got their operation set up—where everybody stays, what everyone does.”

“I know a way we can start filling in the blanks,” Doc said. “At least find out where the other houses are located.”

“Vehicle surveillance,” I said.

“Right. It will help us find out what they’ve got. We start following this guy Martin. See where he takes us.”

I usually don’t like to do vehicle surveillance because there are only four of us, and it’s really hard to do a proper job of following someone in a vehicle with only four cars. It’s too easy for a wary subject to ID the tail. Then, once you’re made, you’re worse off than when you started. “I normally try to avoid vehicle surveillance,” I said, “for reasons known to all of you. On the other hand—though I don’t want to underestimate the NSSB guys—they sure don’t look like they’re playing defense out there. If they are, they’re really good at hiding it.”

“What do you mean?” Toni asked.

“What I mean is that these guys don’t seem to have a care in the world. They walk outside from the house to the car, and they don’t even look around, for Christ’s sake. There could be a whole SWAT battalion parked at the house next door, and I’m not sure these clowns would even notice.”

“Your point?” Toni said.

“My point is it might be okay for us to follow them with just four vehicles. They probably aren’t even looking for tails.”

“Floating box?” Doc said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s assume the other houses are nearby. Did you notice the streets in that area?”

“Yeah,” Doc said. “They’re friggin’ skinny.”

“That’s right. A floating box might not work because you’d be stuck behind a slow-moving subject. Even a dimwit might get suspicious.”

“So we use cheaters,” Toni said. “Cheaters” are cars that are parked ahead of the subject’s route of travel. They relieve the previous vehicle by falling in ahead of or behind the subject as it reaches their position.

“I think that’s the best,” I said. “Kenny—pop open a map of the area.”

Kenny selected the proper file and zoomed to a map of our four-quadrant area.

“Go ahead and put a mark by the Fortieth Avenue house,” I said.

After he did, I asked, “Now—when Donnie leaves his house here,” I pointed to the red square Kenny had placed on the Fortieth Avenue address, “in which direction is he ultimately going to be headed?”

“West,” Doc said.

“West or south,” Toni said.

“I think west, too,” Kenny said. “Maybe south.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said, “that’s what he did every single time on Saturday and Sunday. He never went north or east that we can tell. Besides, if he does go north or east, the area tends to change to bigger, more expensive houses. If he goes west or south, it gets to be more and more apartments and college-type housing. My guess is, he’d probably not have the girls—or anyone else—living in a nicer house than he does.”

I smiled. “Well said. I hadn’t looked at that angle. But it makes sense. And it reinforces my strategy. Since we’re short on manpower, we’re going to have to take a few chances and be willing to swing again if we miss. Here’s the deal.”

I detailed a plan that took advantage of the fact that there was about a 99 percent chance that Martin would leave the area either westbound or southbound, as seemed to be his pattern. We’d all be wearing our VHF radios with hands-free headsets. This way, as long as Donnie did more or less what we expected, we should be able to follow him without being detected—at least for a while. I figured we’d roll into position by 11:45 a.m. since on both days, Donnie and Crystal had left the house between noon and twelve thirty. Apparently, they went to lunch. If this was a habit of theirs, we’d be able to capitalize on it.