Linwood Barclay - A Tap on the Window

“What are you talking about?”

“The guy in the black pickup. He was keeping an eye on you today. But he’s good. He was able to stay way back where you’d never, ever see him. What’d you do? You tell him where you were going to be?”

“You get a good look at the driver?” I asked.

Tony shook his head. “Wait, so he’s not watching out for you?”

“Describe the truck.”

“Just a black pickup. Dark, anyway. Tinted windows. Might have been blue.”

“Plate number?”

“Nope, never made note of that.” He grinned. “So, like, is there anyone who hasn’t been following you around?”

On the way back to Griffon, I got out my phone. It had rung once while I was tied up in the trunk. I had one message.

“Hey, Cal. Augie. Call me when you get a minute.”

He could wait.

I tried to give Tony some cash when we got back to my house. It was a feeble gesture, I know. Kind of, “Hey, you saved my life, here’s forty bucks.” I had my wallet out, ready to give him the two twenties that were in there, but he refused.

“Think of it as gas money,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Just do that thing for me.”

“Okay,” I said. “But it’ll have to be in person. I can’t do it over the phone. So it might be a couple of days. I’ve got some other things to wrap up.”

Tony nodded his understanding. As he drove off, I glanced down the street and saw Donna’s car turn the corner. I waited, watched her pull into the drive, moved over by her door, pulled it open for her.

“Hey,” she said. “Did you order the pizza?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Whaddya been doing? I’m starving.”

“This and that,” I said.

“What the hell have you done to your clothes? You been playing football or something?”

Rather than answer, I pulled her into my arms and held her tight.

“What’s going on?” she said, her voice suddenly full of worry. “Tell me everything’s okay.”

“You remember what you said, the other night? I agreed with you, but now I’m not so sure.”

“What, Cal? What are you talking about?”

“Right now, at this very moment, I’m happy.”

She buried her face in my chest and wept.

Donna had questions. She saw the bruise on my face, the handful of painkillers I swallowed, the way I winced when I moved certain ways.

“I had a run-in with someone,” I told her. “No big deal.” I grinned. “You should see the other guy.”

“You don’t want me to know,” she said.

I smiled. I couldn’t tell her what had really happened. She couldn’t know how close she had come to losing me. Not now. Maybe not ever.

She ordered the pizza. While we waited, she said, “I’m going to start researching the trip tonight. If I find something, should I go ahead and book it?”

“Give me a week to wrap things up. Anytime after that.”

“Okay.”

The pizza took forty minutes to arrive. We opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio. After dinner, she worked for a while on her charcoal sketches of Scott. Took three of them out back onto the deck, held them at arm’s length and gave them a shot of the fixative. She spread the drawings on the kitchen table after.

“They’re good,” I said.

She was silent for a moment. “I haven’t got it yet. I have to do this. I want to get it right. Before we go away.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Enough for now,” she said. “Where’s the laptop? I’ve got work to do.”

Even though Augie had called, it was Bert Sanders I phoned when I went to my office.

“God, what’s going on?” he asked. “I’ve been waiting to hear from you.”

“If I’d found Claire, I’d have called, believe me. Did you find out anything?”

The mayor said no. “Not much, and I don’t know who else to call. Nobody knows where she might have gone, but Dennis’ name came up a few times.”

“Yeah. I went to see his father today. He’s not talking. I’m—”

The call-waiting beeped.

“I have to go,” I told him. “If I hear anything, I’ll call.”

“But—”

“I’ll call.” I hit the button, thinking I might have waited too long, that I’d lost the other caller. “Hello?”

“Jesus, you don’t return messages?”

Augustus Perry.

I said, “You were next on my list.”

“Yeah, sure, I believe you,” Augie said. “I talked to Quinn. Got his ass down here.”

“And?”

“He denies it.”

“Which part?”

“Quinn says he never told officers Brindle and Haines to take your car in.”

“Somebody’s lying,” I said.

“Thank you, Cal,” Augie said. “You’re good at this.”

“Have you talked to Brindle and Haines?”

“Can’t raise either of them. Haines is off sick.”

“So you’ve only talked to Quinn. You believe him?”

Augie hesitated. “I don’t know. I’ve never been high on him. Something about the guy. Don’t know what it is. But someone wanted your car brought in. I want to know whose decision it was.”

“It wasn’t touched,” I said. “Everything was in its place.”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Looking for Claire.”

Augie grunted. “When you’re talking to Bert, tell him I said he could kiss my ass.”

“You should have called earlier. I just got off the phone with him. You’ll have to call him yourself.”

Augie hung up without saying good-bye.

I sat there, thinking.

Why would someone take my car in if they didn’t want to search it?

Something Tony had said to me at the bar popped into my head.

“The guy in the black pickup. He was keeping an eye on you today. But he’s good. He was able to stay way back where you’d never, ever see him. What’d you do? You tell him where you were going to be?”

I got out of my chair and went back down to the kitchen. Donna looked up from the laptop. “What about walking the Golden Gate Bridge? You up for that?”

I breezed through. “Sure.”

I grabbed my car keys, went outside, hit the button. Interior lights came on as I opened the trunk and all four doors, like I was getting ready to vacuum it. Then I stepped back and stared at the car.

Looking for anything that seemed different.

My sunglasses were still in the storage compartment in front of the console shift. The cord I used to recharge my phone off the cigarette lighter was there. The wig Hanna wore was on the floor of the backseat.

I looked in the trunk. All my stuff appeared to be in order.

I got down on my knees by the right front tire and felt inside the fenders. If someone were going to attach a GPS device, this would be a good spot. It could be fitted with a magnet that would allow someone to reach under and attach it to a car in seconds. I reached into all the wheel wells, felt around.

Nothing.

It would have been easy to slap on a tracking device under a fender without hauling the car into the garage. So maybe one had been tucked away in a much better hiding spot.

Coming up to the open driver’s-side door, I got on my knees and reached in under the seat. I ran my hand over the carpet, then reached up into the springs of the upholstery.

Donna had come outside and was watching me.

“It’s always the last place you look,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“What, exactly, did you lose?”

“Nothing,” I said.

I’d gone back to the open trunk. Could someone put a tracking device right into a spare tire? It was tucked away under the trunk floor. I cleared things out of the way enough to lift up the access hatch and get a look at the spare. Without X-ray vision, I really couldn’t tell, but it struck me as unlikely. Suppose I got a flat and had to put on the spare? The tracker would be spun to death. It’d throw the wheel off balance.