AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, he was walking when I saw him,” Cooper said.
“Maybe he lives around here.”
“I don’t know.”
Hess pulled open the door to the gym, took a step back to let a man come out, carrying a gym bag, then disappeared inside.
“That should be it, for three hours or so,” Cooper said. “Let’s go back to the house and get a bite to eat. Back at eight.”
“I feel like one of the PIs on YouTube,” Melton said.
“We’re not there yet, girlfriend,” Cooper said.
—
At the house,they had Trader Joe’s salads and French fries, and handled the baby after watching YouTube recommendations that suggested handling would socialize the child. At eight o’clock, they turned Chelsea over to Fatima again, and rolled back down the hill to West Seventh Street in their separate cars.
When they found parking places, boys were already coming out of the Silver Star, carrying gym bags, to be picked up by their parents. When the last of them had gone, they waited, burner phones locked together, until Hess appeared with his own gym bag. He was walking toward Cooper’s car, so Cooper slid low in her car seat, while Melton got out of her car and tagged along behind him, trying to keep at least one night walker between them.
He walked around a corner and got into a silver Subaru that was facing Melton. She put her head down and the phone to her ear as Hess drove past her and took a left at West Seventh.
“He’ll be going away from you,” Melton told Cooper. “Little silver car. Turning now.”
“I see him. Hurry and catch up,” Cooper said. “I’ll be behind him.”
Melton jogged back up the street to her car, had to wait for traffic, and followed. “I can see you,” she said, “but I’m way back.”
“He’s two cars ahead of me. Can you pass?” Cooper said.
“I’m coming, I’m coming. I’m driving like a maniac.”
A slow maniac, but she eventually pulled up behind Cooper’s car. Cooper said, “I’ll take the next left if he doesn’t.”
“Okay...”
Cooper took the next left when Hess didn’t, and immediately did a U-turn, went back around the corner, and fell in three cars back from Melton’s. The car behind Hess’s slowed and took a right, leaving Melton directly behind him. “I’ll take the next left if he doesn’t,” Melton said.
“Okay...”
They played tag to Davern Street, where Hess took a right and then a left on Field Avenue, eventually parking in front of a small postwar house. Melton followed, went on by, Hess ignoring her. When he was inside, lights on, she went back and made sure she could pick out the house in daylight.
“I got him, he’s inside his house,” she called to Cooper, who waited at the end of the block. “We should go back to your place and look at the computer.”
Cooper: “Lights, camera?”
“Nothing that I saw. He had to go inside to turn them on. And it looked like he went straight in, he didn’t stop, like he was turning off an alarm. He went right to the back, lights coming on. No cameras that I could see.”
“Okay. Meet you back at the house.”
—
At the house,they said good night to Fatima. The baby was already asleep, and they went up to the home office, opened the computer and called up Google Maps, went to Street View on Field Avenue, and walked the images down the street, looking at houses until Melton spotted Hess’s.
They took down the address from the front of the house, went back up in Google’s sky, selected the satellite view, and studied the neighborhood around the house. They couldn’t see everything because of trees, but they could see most of it.
“I see two possibilities,” Cooper said after a while. “Either one, we wait until we see him go inside the Silver Star for a class. The first possibility is, you drop me off outside his house. I walk around to the side and break through the back door.”
“People could see...”
