Ivan rang the doorbell, but it didn't work. He knocked on the door. "Sorry about stealing the meals off the porches. I shouldn't have been doing it, but I was bored, and I figured they would see me on their camera and get a kick out of a grizzly eating their meals."
"It's a good way to get shot."
"Well, that's possible. Even though grizzlies aren’t supposed to be hunted."
A young woman wearing lounge pants and a sweatshirt opened the door. "Yeah?" Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun. She smelled of gin.
"Fugitive recovery agents," Ivan said.
"Baldwyn!" she called out. "Come in. He's in the toilet. It takes him forever to take a dump so it might be a while."
Which could be a ruse. They could be waiting for him to leave the bathroom, and he might have left the house in the meantime through the back door.
The woman motioned toward the living room, sat on a couch, poured gin into an ice-filled glass, and began drinking it.
Ivan glanced back down the hallway. "Do you mind if I check on him?"
The woman laughed. "Yeah, sure. I'm serious. He always does this right before we sit down to eat." She pointed to the plates of spaghetti on the kitchen table. "Just like clockwork. Sometimes I tell him it's time to eat, and don't serve anything until after he goes to the bathroom." She got up from the couch, went over to the table, and sat down to eat.
Ivan found the bathroom and knocked on the door. "Baldwyn?"
"Hell, shit, I'm busy. Come back later."
Kendra texted Grayson to let him know Baldwyn was in the house, in the bathroom.
Grayson texted back: I'll check the bathroom window to make sure he doesn't climb out that way.
Kendra texted back: It's on the right side of the house, about midway.
On it.
"So how long has Baldwyn been staying with you?" Kendra asked his girlfriend.
"For a couple of months."
"But it's not his residence."
"So? I'm his girlfriend. He can stay with me anytime he wants."
"He has to stay at the residence listed on the bond paperwork," Kendra said. “It’s part of the rules he has to abide by.” She noted that the girlfriend hadn’t posted bail for Baldwyn. She had her home, so she could have used it as collateral. Did she think Baldwyn was untrustworthy?
Because they had to take Baldwyn to jail, the bond money was forfeited, and his friend Jason would lose his car.
Kendra waited with his girlfriend as she ate her spaghetti. "You didn't put up the bail money for Baldwyn."
"Are you kidding? All I have is my car and house to use as collateral. He has already lost his own car since his last bailout. And now I have to drive him all over."
"What about his job?"
The girlfriend drank some of her gin. "What about it?"
"Where is he working?"
She snorted and forked up some more spaghetti. "I would have to take him to the 'job site' if he had a job, right? He uses me as his Uber transportation. And not one time has that been to go to some job. The grocery store for beer, that I pay for, sure. He doesn't have any money for anything."
"He's supposed to be checking in with us, and he's not doing that."
"He has a phone and laptop that he can use, so that shouldn't be a problem."
