The Bubble Gum Thief (44 page)

As her fingertips began to prune, Dagny had a more troubling thought. Maybe Brent had been betraying her all along. Maybe Fabee asked Brent to befriend her, to share little bits of information to build trust, and then to infiltrate their investigation. Maybe it wasn’t mere coincidence that Brent was at Percy Reynolds’s house in New Mexico, or even that diner near Bethel.

Dagny dried off and dressed, and then headed to the kitchen and handed Fabee a Radar Scope. Fabee seemed puzzled. “It tells us if he’s inside his house. For all we know, he slipped in while you were trying to scare me in the garage.”

“I wasn’t trying to scare you.”

“Regardless. Take one of these and circle his house to make sure he isn’t inside. To get it to work, you press—”

“I know how these things work,” Fabee said, storming out the back door. She enjoyed giving orders to an assistant director. If she was going to throw away her career, she might as well do it in style.

Fabee returned a few minutes later, tossed the Radar Scope onto the kitchen counter, and pulled up a chair next to Dagny. “Davis is right, you know. We’re on the same team. No reason for you to be upset.”

“I’m not upset,” Dagny lied.

“He was just following orders.”

“An order to spy on us.”

“Considering the Professor’s background, I don’t think you have any right to complain.” Fabee paused for emphasis. “Besides, you were supposed to keep us informed of what you were doing. Director’s orders.”

“It seemed like you had your hands full.”

“You know what I think, Dagny? You’ve got your own agenda, and you’ve been using the Professor and Victor, and you were using Brent, too. This case is personal for you. I’d feel the same way if I were you. But our job is to catch Draker, not kill him. That’s why you want to keep a few steps ahead of me. Because you know that I’ll catch him, but you’ll kill him.”

She hated Fabee for saying it, even though she knew it was true. “We all have our own agendas, Fabee. Even you.” There was a reason he had come to Tracy, California, alone. Fabee wasn’t looking to share credit with anyone. He wanted to be the one to catch Draker. So why was Dagny still there? Maybe he needed her.

Fabee smiled, rose from his chair, and walked to the refrigerator. “It’s time for breakfast. You want eggs? Scrambled okay?”

Dagny sighed, keeping her eyes on the monitors. “Weren’t you going to take a nap?”

“Hey, you and me—we may be here awhile,” Fabee said. “So maybe we ought to be civil.”

“Scrambled is fine.”

They sat at the kitchen table, watching the camera feed. It wasn’t easy to keep scanning from monitor to monitor, surveying static pictures, watching nothing happen for hours at a time. And it wasn’t any easier sitting next to the man she’d viewed as a rival since the start of the case. She’d worked hard to try to get ahead of Fabee, and yet here they were, approaching the finish line together.

He made quesadillas for lunch and stuffed them with a blend of cheeses, chicken, peppers, and tomatoes. The tortillas were perfectly crisp. It was a good lunch, Dagny had to admit, but not out loud, since they weren’t talking.

Finally, Fabee broke the silence. “I liked his paintings, you know. He was very, very good.”

“Yes. He was.”

“He really could capture the human spirit. Most painters try to capture the human condition, or the human pathos. I hate that stuff.”

“Me, too.”

Fabee pulled out his wallet and removed a picture of a little girl. He handed it to Dagny. “Her name is Veronica. She’ll be three in July.” She was standing next to a rocking chair full of stuffed animals, her hand grasping one of the spokes on the back of the chair, steadying her stance. She had big cheeks and an even bigger smile.

“She’s adorable.”

“I saw her yesterday for the first time since this whole thing started,” Fabee said, tucking the picture back into his wallet. “The things we do...”

“It would only get worse if you’re made director.”

“Maybe. Long days, sure, but at least I’d stay in town more.” He pulled the picture out of his wallet and studied it again. “Been divorced a year, almost. I could blame the job, I guess. But the problem isn’t the job—it’s me. I guess I’m just an asshole.”

Dagny glanced over briefly at Fabee’s hand and saw that he was still wearing his wedding ring. He noticed.

“Yeah, I’m an asshole, but I still love her. Just can’t bear to take the ring off.”

She wanted to look at Fabee—to read his face, his eyes, his expression—but she kept her gaze on the monitors instead. “Why do you want to be director so badly? You love the field, so why shoot for a desk job? You’re supposed to work at a desk now, and you can’t stay parked.”

“I don’t know.” Fabee shrugged. “You went to Harvard Law, right? So you were one of those kids that always had to get the best grades, take the hardest courses. An AP geek?”

“Yep.”

“I bet you didn’t stop and ask yourself why you kept pushing yourself to do better. It’s just ingrained in who you are. If you got an A minus, you wanted an A. And when you got an A, you wanted an A plus.”

“That’s right.”

“When I was a special agent, I wanted to make ASAC, and once I got that, I wanted to be SAC, and so on. Maybe it’s...I don’t know. Low self-esteem? But I like what I do.” Fabee got up from the table, walked over to the coffeepot, and poured himself a cup. “Want one?”

“No.”

“The caffeine will help.”

“I’ve been doing fine on adrenaline.”

Fabee carried his mug back to the kitchen table and sat down, then leaned back in his chair. “When this is all over, what do you want to do, Dagny? Continue as an SA? Work with the Professor on his next academic paper?”

“I guess I sort of assumed that my career would be over. I’ve burned a lot of bridges.”

“No,” Fabee said. “You’ve done a stellar job.”

“I’m sure I’ve made things difficult for others.”

“Yeah, sure.” Fabee laughed. “But you’re tenacious and resourceful. And a hero, according to the papers. I think you’re pretty safe at the Bureau, if that’s what you want to do. I can understand if you want to keep working with the Professor. But then again, the Professor’s an old man, you know.”

“I know.” She hadn’t thought about the future in a long time, not since Mike was alive. “Right now, I have only one goal in mind.”

“I hear you, Dagny. I do. But what if it doesn’t do what you think it will for you?”

Fabee made a spicy chicken pasta with an olive-oil-and-garlic sauce for dinner. While they ate, they took turns staring at the surveillance feed while the other read the day’s news aloud off the Internet. They agreed not to read anything about Draker. It was a relief to know that the Nationals were only three games back, that Congress was fighting over the minimum wage, and that two discount airlines were planning to merge, because this meant that the world continued to turn, and that maybe there would be something to head back to when the case was done.

Dagny read Fabee a restaurant review for the latest Asian-fusion restaurant in Dupont Circle—a combination Vietnamese noodle shop/English pub called Pho Britannica—then handed the laptop back to Fabee. He clicked around a bit and then started chuckling.

“What is it?”

“Nah, it’s about the case. Can’t read it.”

“Read it.”

“It’s the gossip page.”

“Go ahead.”

“‘Which skinny actress is so desperate to be cast in the planned Dagny Gray movie that she dressed as a secret agent and infiltrated Harvey Lettleman’s office with fake FBI credentials, proceeding to handcuff the hefty mogul? Sources say that Lettleman liked the performance so much that he had her bring the handcuffs to his home later that night. We aren’t saying who she is, but don’t be surprised if Jana Bloom gets the part.’”

“Are you joking?”

“Swear to God, I’m not.”

Dagny sighed. “I was hoping for Kate Beckinsale.”

At ten o’clock, Dagny retreated to the guest bedroom for a short nap, leaving Fabee to watch the monitors. She set the alarm for two a.m. and crawled under the covers. Although she was never much for intuition, she fell asleep certain that tomorrow would be the day Draker would die.

May 3—Tracy, California

In the black-and-white glow of the monitors, everything was still except the gentle shimmy of grass in the late-afternoon breeze. When the wind died, Dagny worried that the feed had frozen, but it hadn’t. A photograph is just a movie of nothing happening, Dagny thought.

Fabee spent most of the day in the garage, yammering on his cell phone, coordinating the efforts of the Fabulous. The house walls muted all but the occasional expletive, so Dagny couldn’t hear what they were planning. He was keeping his team at bay, he said, because more agents meant it was more likely they’d tip off Draker by accident. Dagny didn’t buy this for a minute. Fabee was keeping the Fabulous away because Fabee and his ego wanted to be the one to capture Draker. She didn’t care about Fabee’s ego or the Fabulous; she just cared about the four monitors in front of her. Still, she wouldn’t have minded if Fabee were sitting next to her, keeping her company, discussing the news or baseball scores or his daughter. In the past twenty-four hours, she’d grown to like the guy.

And then the picture from camera four shook.

It was the one attached to the fence. Dagny yelled for Fabee, who got there just in time to see the back of a man descending from the top of the frame.

Draker had just hopped the fence.

Fabee grabbed his gun and tossed Dagny hers. They stood at the monitor, watching Draker take a few steps toward the back patio, then drop to his knees in the grass. Was he looking for footprints? Draker ran his fingertips through the grass and then stood and walked to the far edge of the yard, shielding his eyes from the late-afternoon sun, studying his neighbor’s house. After ten seconds, he turned and walked back to the middle of his yard, staring at the Fernandez house with a fixed and steady gaze. Dagny felt as though Draker was staring through the walls, looking at her. Although she couldn’t see his face, she was sure that Draker was smiling.

Suddenly, Draker spun around and sprinted back toward the fence. He’d grown a thick, scraggly beard and looked haggard and worn. He was wearing an oversize T-shirt and loose blue jeans. His eyes fixed on the camera as he approached the fence. His sneakers hit the lens as he hopped the fence, knocking the camera to the ground.

Dagny and Fabee ran out the back door, darted through Draker’s backyard, and jumped over the fence. They landed in an array of discarded soda cans and sandwich wrappers that littered an overgrown, grassy ditch alongside a busy four-lane highway. Draker was nowhere to be seen.

“Look,” Fabee said, pointing at a footprint in a small spot of mud along the side of the road. The mud trailed onto the blacktop. “He crossed there.”

A steady stream of semis blocked the view across the highway. She tried to catch the gaps between them with her eyes, looking for a bearded man in sneakers.

“He’s in the woods,” Dagny said, spotting a flash of movement visible between the passing trucks.

Traffic continued down the highway at a steady pace. “Ever play Frogger?” Fabee asked as he darted into the street, dodging oncoming cars and trucks. Dagny raced out behind him, beating a UPS truck to the first dashed white line, then waiting in the middle of traffic for another gap to take her to the double yellow line at the center of the highway. The wind from passing vehicles made it hard to stand still, and she almost teetered forward into an oncoming truck.

“I hate Frogger,” Dagny yelled to Fabee, but he was already across the street. She waited for another truck to pass and then sprinted across the remaining two lanes. The driver of an oncoming Volvo slammed on her brakes and blasted her horn, but Dagny didn’t notice—she was running at full speed.

Fabee was already deep into the woods. She followed him, trusting that he had his sights on Draker. Although Fabee was adept at weaving between the trees and hurdling fallen trucks, Dagny was, too, and she was faster. As the ground sloped down toward a rushing creek, Fabee slowed to keep his footing, and Dagny charged past. The ground near the creek was muddy, but she did not fall.

A thirty-foot-tall stone wall on the creek’s far side kept the hillside from eroding. Dagny saw Draker pull his legs over the top of it. She leaped over the creek and ran to the wall, dug her left shoe into the crevice between the stone blocks, reached up to another stone with her right hand, and pulled herself up. Reaching higher with her left hand, she pulled up herself again until her right foot found another toehold, and then repeated the process.

Some of the stones along the way wobbled. She heard Fabee tumbling down the hill behind her, but she couldn’t hear Draker ahead of her. When her left hand reached the top of the wall, the stone under her left foot fell to the ground, along with several stones below it. Dagny grabbed onto a twisted root above her right hand as the stone under her right foot gave way, too.
Grabbing onto the root with both hands, she hauled herself to the top of the cliff.

Thick trees were surrounded by deep brush. Dagny scanned from left to right and back again. No sign of Draker. She listened for him. Nothing, except the faint crack of a branch in the distance. She ran toward it, pounding her feet in the dirt, barreling through the brush-filled gaps between the trees, and then following a path of freshly trampled undergrowth out of the woods and onto an empty soccer field. Draker was running across a two-lane road on the other side of the field. Dagny pulled her gun out of its holster and charged ahead.