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Chapter 51
Luckily, I wason the road and out of the city early enough to reach DC by lunchtime. It wasn’t that I was hungry or planned my meals that carefully. I knew exactly where I was going and what I wanted to accomplish.
I was running out of time in DC. Something had to crack and had to crack fast.
In a way, surveillance was my only available tool. Cops have a love-hate relationship with surveillance. You can accomplish a lot by seeing someone do something illegal. You can make a case, you can make an arrest, or you can follow that person back to the boss. That’s all theoretical. In most cases, surveillance is messy, long, and not as productive as cops would like.
I drove right into the Capitol Hill area of DC and parked across the street from Gold’s Gym. The security guard at the Supreme Court had let it slip that Beth Banks worked out there every day around lunchtime. I had already deduced that Beth Banks looked at things differently than most people. But I sensed she was nothing if not consistent. She had the kind of orderly life that many of us aspire to but none of us really want. Same schedule every day. Same problems to deal with. Same time to work out. I knew to be here by 1:30 or else I’d miss her.
Now, from my vantage point across the street, I could see through the only unobstructed window of the gym. I didn’t have any surveillance equipment with me. No binoculars, nothing like that. But I had learned a few tricks over the years. I zoomed my iPhone all the way and looked through the camera. It gave me a good view of some of the people inside the gym. And after only a couple of minutes I saw Beth Banks.
She was in a black unitard. Now that I could see her arms, I wouldn’t describe her as a swimmer. She had better biceps than most men I know. She wasn’t fooling around either.
I now understood why the security guard at the Supreme Court Building had said a government gym wasn’t good enough for Beth Banks. She needed a challenge. It looked like she was getting it. I first spotted her on a treadmill, running at a frightening pace. My lungs hurt just watching her. Then she moved to a set of dumbbells beside the treadmill and did ten reps of shoulder presses. After that, she balanced as she lifted a knee and the opposite arm while still holding the dumbbells. Then she jumped back on the treadmill. I didn’t ever want to have to tangle with her.
I made a few notes, then wondered if I would see her meet with anyone from the case. That really had to be my goal. She was hardly going to buy cocaine from a known dealer on the street. I had to see something that would let me draw some conclusions or at least create a theory about how she could be involved in Emily’s death.
I really was reaching for straws at this point. All I could tell from this quick surveillance was that Beth Banks was capable of overpowering Emily Parker. Even with Emily’s FBI defensive tactics training, I’d have to give the edge to Beth Banks.
As I watched her, I started to realize why she could be a good suspect. If she had felt Emily might jeopardize her brother’s reputation, maybe she would have done something drastic.
The only way to figure out if she had committed a homicide was more investigation. More questions. And more time spent in DC. The math didn’t seem to be working out in my favor.
