Linwood Barclay - A Tap on the Window

I thought about that scene in The French Connection where they dismantled that Lincoln Mark III, searching for heroin, finally finding drugs in the rocker panels that stretched along the frame beneath the doors. (That was the one thing I never figured out in that movie — how they’d put the car back together so quickly, and so perfectly, before they returned it to the unsuspecting Frenchman. Had they replaced the car with an exact duplicate? And if so, how did they get one that fast? And did the NYPD really have the money to buy replacement Lincolns?)

I went around to the open front passenger door, looked at the rocker panel. If someone had ripped out the plastic molding and bored into the metal with a jackhammer, surely there’d be some evidence. I ran my hand along the top and felt nothing out of the ordinary.

Maybe I was being paranoid. I stepped back from the car again and stared. Donna stood and stared as well.

I looked at the wig.

Something about the wig.

When I’d been with Sean, and found it, I’d tossed it onto the backseat of the car. But now the wig was on the floor. Nothing else in the car appeared to have been touched. Of course, the wig could have just fallen off the seat. But it got me thinking that there was another spot worth searching.

I got into the car, tossed the wig to the other side of the center hump, and put my knees on the floor so I could dig my fingers into the crack between the seat and back cushions, like I was looking for lost change in a couch. I moved my fingers across the entire width of the seat and found nothing.

So I reached deeper into the crack with both hands, got hold of the seat cushion from the inside, and tugged. The entire seat tipped forward, revealing the car’s frame and various wires snaking their way back toward the rear taillights.

And something else.

A GPS transmitter, held in place on the frame with a strip of duct tape. I ripped it off, freed the transmitter, and got out of the car holding it delicately in both hands. A small red light pulsed silently at one end.

“What is that?” Donna asked, standing now by the open front door on the passenger side.

“GPS,” I said. “So someone knows where I am at all times. So they don’t have to follow close.”

She blinked. “Who put that in there?”

“That’s a good question,” I said, holding the device and studying it as though it were some ancient artifact.

Donna glanced down at the rocker panel I’d just been investigating. At least that’s what I thought she was looking at. She reached down between the doorsill and the passenger seat, grabbed hold of something, and held it up for me to see.

“You been looking for your phone?” she asked.

I put the GPS device on the roof of the Honda and patted my jacket for my phone. I felt it, but reached in to be sure and withdrew it.

“I have my phone,” I said.

“Well, this isn’t mine,” Donna said.

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

Donna handed me the phone. It was the same type as mine. I tried turning it on, but the battery was dead. Assuming it belonged to the person I figured it belonged to, it had been sitting in my car for a couple of days. Even before it had run out of power, I wouldn’t have heard it because the switch on the side had been set on.

“Whose is it?” Donna asked.

“I’m guessing Claire’s,” I said. “She had it on her knee before she got out of the car. Even if she realized pretty soon that she’d lost it, once Hanna had come out, she could hardly run back out to my car to get it, not with Hanna inside.”

I wouldn’t have to wait for it to fully recharge to see what clues it might hold. All I had to do was plug it into my charger in the kitchen.

“What are you going to do with this?” Donna asked, pointing to the GPS on the roof.

“For now,” I said, “I’ll just leave it on and keep it in the car.”

“You’re not going to turn it off? Smash it? Do something to it?”

“Not yet. I don’t want whoever put it there to know I’ve found it,” I said. I tucked it under the passenger seat, closed up the car and locked it. “Let’s go see what’s on this baby.”

We went back into the house. On the kitchen counter, by the phone, was my charger. I plugged it into the receptacle at the base of the phone. The screen lit up, showing a battery icon completely drained of power.

“It might take a minute,” I said. “Given that it was totally dead.”

It took half that long. If the phone had any kind of password lock on it to keep others from using it, it hadn’t been engaged.

Given that the phone was tethered to an outlet, I read it leaning over, my elbows on the kitchen counter. A screen full of apps and icons appeared. It immediately showed that Claire had missed countless phone calls and that she had several voice mail messages. I was betting most of those were from her parents, wondering where she was.

I might have some trouble retrieving the voice mails, since I didn’t know Claire’s four-digit password. But I wouldn’t need a password to check her text messages.

I went straight to the green box with the cartoon word bubble on it, and underneath, and tapped the touch screen, which was lightly smeared with makeup from Claire’s cheek.

A specific conversation popped out. Within the banner across the top of the screen, the word. Texts in pale gray boxes on the left side of the screen were messages from him, while those in pale blue on the right were Claire’s. Donna was huddled next to me, as curious as I was about what we might find.

The most recent texts were these:

ROMAN:so hows it feel huh?

ROMAN:come on talk to me

ROMAN:i forgiv u lets just get back togthr

ROMAN:i desrve better than this

CLAIRE:lve me alone

I scrolled back to some earlier conversations.

ROMAN:hes not so smart

ROMAN:whats he got

And then, a texted photo.

Donna said, “If that’s what I think it is, for his sake I hope it’s not actual size.”

I scanned another screen filled with his texts to Claire. She’d responded only twice, both times telling him to leave her alone. I tapped the screen to see who else Claire might have been having chats with.

I tapped on .

The last message from him was: k. luv u

The one immediately before that, from Claire: looking for ride, b there soon i hope.

Donna, leaning on the counter next to me, our shoulders touching, said, “Scroll back up a ways, get it from the beginning.”

I started to do that, and realized their chatter seemed to extend back to the beginning of time. I decided on an arbitrary starting point and started reading.

DENNIS:miss you 2

CLAIRE:really pissed at u. unfriended you on FB

DENNIS:i know. will expln evrytng when i c u

CLAIRE:better

DENNIS:i will. nvr wantd to leve like tht felt like a shit

CLAIRE:u r a shit

DENNIS:told you will expln. just hv to c u

CLAIRE:things shtty here

DENNIS:y

CLAIRE:stupid cops watching me all time mad at my dad trying to scare us dad still in pissing match with cheef

DENNIS:no

CLAIRE:?

DENNIS:maybe not b cause of dad

CLAIRE:wtf

DENNIS:looking 4 me

CLAIRE:cops looking 4 u?

DENNIS:yeah

CLAIRE:y

DENNIS:cant say now y i ran off sudden. couldnt expln