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“But you’re not sure.”
They stared at each other, the coffee ignored, and then Cooper said, “No. Not one hundred percent.”
“I’m not willing to kill somebody that we’re not absolutely sure about,” Melton said.
After a moment, Cooper said, “Neither am I.”
—
The best wayto deal with Hess, they decided, was to track him, see when he was home, when he wasn’t. What they’d do with the information, they would discuss later.
“Is he full-time at the gym?” Melton asked.
“I’m not sure. I know he’s there every evening, because he’s got all these kids’ groups, he and The Wiz.”
“How long are the classes?”
“An hour or so. The kids start arriving around six-thirty, get changed. They’d box until eight, then they shower if they want to, and change clothes again, that’s another half hour. So, he’s probably there from six to eight-thirty or so.”
“We’ll go to the gym tonight. My car. You can point him out. Can Fatima stay late?”
“She’ll take as many hours as we give her. I’ll check. She’s a lot better than Mary was about that. She’s a sweetheart.”
“So... I’ve never tracked anyone...”
Cooper leaned across the table. “When I was waiting to come here, I looked up surveillance techniques on YouTube. There are lots of videos. Most of them are sort of... bullshitty. Some of them have good ideas, though. When you get back to your office, you should look at them. Do you have binoculars?”
“Sure. They’re not great.”
“Alex had a really good pair, I’ll dig them out. One of the videos I saw suggest that you stay pretty far back from the target. You also have to be careful not to make passersby suspicious of what you’re doing.... Go watch some videos.”
Melton smiled. “I’ll feel like an idiot.”
“Well, yes. Oh, and we need some of those cell phones you pay for. Burners, you pay for so many minutes. I think you can get them at Walmart. I’ve never been to one.”
“I have. I’ll get a couple,” Melton said.
“Pay cash. And don’t sync them to your car.”
—
The Silver Stargym—named after a military medal supposedly won by the founder—was located on St. Paul’s West SeventhStreet, a mixed commercial area not far from Cooper’s house. There were a number of restaurants nearby, and parking was sometimes hard to find in the evening.
Melton met Cooper at the house at five o’clock. Cooper had made arrangements with Fatima to take care of the baby until ten o’clock, explaining that she and Melton would be in and out during the evening. At forty dollars an hour, overtime, Fatima was happy to stay.
Outside, Melton took a burner from her purse and handed it to Cooper. “Not a problem. Pay and walk. But: there are cameras all over the Walmart, so they’ll have picked me up. We can’t let them, the cops, get the phones. They have to be broken up and dumped somewhere nobody can find them. I’ve already programmed the numbers in.”
—
The women wentto the Silver Star in separate cars, found parking spaces, after a while, on both ends of the block with the gym, on opposite sides of the street and several storefronts away. The combination of streetlights and store lights brightly lit the sidewalk in front of the gym; Hess arrived at six o’clock, for the six-thirty boxing class.
He was a tall man with short, neatly cut blond hair, pale eyes and skin. He walked with a long stride, hurrying, not paying much attention to his surroundings; his eyes seemed fixed on the Silver Star sign.
Cooper spotted him, pressed the Favorites selection on her phone. Melton answered: “Is that him? Tall guy, tan jacket?”
“Yes. Can you see his face?”
“Yes. Not bad-looking. But sort of petulant. Did you see him get out of his car?”
