The First Victim

CHAPTER 20

Stevie viewed the tapes she had taken from Melissa’s apartment, the ordeal painful, even excruciating at times. Her fourth time all the way through. Melissa’s narration rose with her enthusiasm and sank into cautious whispers despite her seclusion inside the van. The early surveillance footage documented the LSO and its location. Melissa had driven the entire block and had shot the building from all four sides, where in the back parking lot and for the first time, the camera recorded Gwen Klein leaving work-a short, stocky woman of average looks.

Klein walked stiffly and without a hint of grace. Melissa and her camera followed her to the supermarket, and to Shoreside School, a day-care center where she picked up a young boy and slightly older girl. With Melissa’s van following, they drove to a clapboard home with a postage-stamp front lawn and a Direct TV satellite installed on the recently shingled roof.

On the video, the time stamp changed hours-18:37- approaching the hour of seven o’clock, providing the tape’s clock was correct. It suggested Melissa had killed nearly two hours sitting parked waiting for activity. A pickup truck arrived and parked-the same pickup truck that Stevie already knew belonged to the husband and had been bought with cash. At 20:21, nearing eighty-thirty on the tape, the minivan left with Gwen Klein behind the wheel. With each start and stop of the video Stevie felt a little more uncomfortable, a voyeur, a spy. The subsequent sequence showed a run-down car wash, but no shot of any sign out front, any name. The van’s taillights shined at her like a pair of squinting red eyes, Klein’s foot on the brakes. The vehicle remained inside the automatic wash for the full cycle and then drove off, returning home. Melissa followed and captured the van parked at 21:07. The tape changed to gray fuzz. Stevie fast-forwarded through to the end, once again making sure she hadn’t missed anything.

She poured herself a glass of juice, loaded the second tape, rewound and started it running. Eavesdropping on Melissa’s monologue with the camera, Stevie felt as if she were reading from someone’s private diary. Melissa would have edited the tapes down to a few brief shots, writing copy to accompany it-copy that Stevie wished she had, copy that might explain the significance or give continuity to the various shots. As a journalist, Melissa had recorded the footage in hopes of editing together a story sometime in the future. Stevie wanted that story now, but instead took away only the occasional grunt or groan from the camerawoman, the rare comment: ‘‘That’s the husband’s truck.’’ ‘‘She wasn’t in the grocery store long. But I suppose she could have passed someone the counterfeit licenses in there.’’

The second videotape showed Klein arriving by morning to the LSO. She carried a coffee in hand as she crossed the parking lot. There were shots of the public coming and going, first taken from a considerable distance, and then more footage with the camera zoomed and concentrating on faces. Melissa had either been bored and burning footage or had focused on the people coming and going out of a significance Stevie did not yet understand. Tempted to fast-forward, she nonetheless stuck it out as she had before, not knowing if one of the faces might be recognizable-the auditor who had contacted them? a politician or public official? She wasn’t sure who or what she was looking for; she only knew that these were the tapes Melissa had shot prior to her borrowing the smaller digital camera, that these same images had more than likely led Melissa to take one step too many.

Convinced that time was working against her, Stevie needed that connection to her little sister. She fast-forwarded to the end of tape two and inserted the third and final tape she had liberated from the apartment.

Tape three began with familiar footage: again Klein left the LSO, this time amid a late afternoon drizzle strong enough to percussively pelt the top of the van and be picked up on the tape; the errands were different only in location-off to the vet’s for a large bag of pet food, a drugstore stop tied to a dry cleaner next door, the same day-care center and retrieval of the kids. Melissa remained silent throughout all the recording, her enthusiasm of a day earlier muted, the sound of her breathing strangely present on the tape as background noise, like hearing a lover softly snoring. She returned to the same small house, the pickup truck having beaten her home on this day. The screen jerked as Melissa moved inside the van to shut the camera off.

This cut on the tape led into darkness, rain falling hard. The camera had been switched off and back on again. A darkened figure clad in rain gear, Klein’s height, hurried to the van and climbed inside. Melissa’s voice spoke softly and intimately, and Stevie could picture her peering into the camera’s viewfinder while wrapped around its bulk. ‘‘I thought that might shake you up,’’ she said, delivering the non sequitur. The van started up. ‘‘Show time,’’ she said. The van backed up. The screen flickered and went black.

This scene immediately fed into a location with a view of the same car wash Stevie had witnessed on the earlier tape. Shot from a different angle, the tape showed the near side of the automatic wash’s cement bunker, only a single taillight showing. Overheard through the van’s one-way window and the constant scratching of the rain on its roof, came the angry honking of a car horn. Stevie associated the honking with the van, though reminding herself there was no way to be sure of that.

Only as Klein-or whoever was wearing that hooded rain gear- emerged from the cement bunker, that taillight still glowing, only as that person marched through the rain and the camera followed to focus on a dilapidated construction trailer on the back half of the lot, did it occur to Stevie that Klein had driven to a car wash in the rain. Hadn’t Melissa mentioned something about a car wash? The figure approached the trailer and beat on the door relentlessly, finally raising her voice loud enough to be picked up by the camera inside the van.

Melissa whispered faintly, ‘‘That a girl. . Come on home to Mama.’’

After battling the rain and the trailer’s door, the figure retreated back to the van and drove away, aiming toward and passing immediately in front of the van and the camera. Stevie stopped the tape and rewound it several times, reaching out for her glass of juice only to find she had drained it. She finally resorted to advancing the footage frame by frame: the approaching van, its windshield glinting a reflection of an overhead street light, a face behind the wheel, just barely glimpsed: Gwen Klein. She zeroed the footage counter-she wanted to be able to return to that image. Then she let the tape run.

Melissa had stayed with the trailer in an act of investigative journalism that confirmed her nose for a story. According to the video’s time stamp, twenty minutes passed before that trailer door came open. A large figure of a man, too dark to see clearly, ran through the rain. The camera panned down the block, passing darkened stores too obscured by the weather and the darkness to identify. And there in the corner of the frame appeared Melissa’s profile as she rushed to the window to peer outside and follow the man. Stevie gasped at the sight.

‘‘A bar,’’ Melissa said for the benefit of the camera. She passed in front of the lens, this time moving to the rear of the van, the camera still running. A moment later another break in the recording was signaled by gray fuzz and waving colorful squiggles.

A brief shot of that same man running through the rain, back to the trailer, the time stamp indicating a passage of five minutes. Another cut. The van was moving now, the camera aimed out the windshield. ‘‘He boarded a bus,’’ Melissa said for the benefit of her tape. The van swung a full U-turn, blurring the identifying lights and buildings and annoying Stevie as it bounced so violently as to be nothing but blurred and jerky imagery. Then she identified a city bus up ahead and realized moments later that Melissa was in pursuit. The chase led out and down a street still too jerky to recognize, past an I-5 on-ramp that Stevie felt certain she could find. The bus took a series of turns, made stops and continued on, the camera running tape all the while. Twenty minutes of this pursuit passed until the city’s downtown landmarks were easily identified. The bus traveled north on Third Avenue, the van immediately behind, Melissa jerking the vehicle to the curb at every stop in search of that same figure disembarking from the bus.

‘‘No. .’’ she said, ‘‘I don’t see him.’’

The bus started back up. The van followed.

One block passed, then another. Stevie felt the tension in her chest and a bubble stuck in her throat, Melissa’s determination palpable even across the videotape. At last the bus veered and sank into the bus tunnel, with the van following until Melissa realized she could not enter. She swore aloud and the picture went dark.

This was the last image on the tape: that city bus dropping down into a tunnel reserved for buses only, and the camera falling as it briefly caught a shot of a frustrated Melissa behind the wheel. ‘‘Damn camera’s too big. .’’ she mumbled to herself, her last words recorded on tape.

Her request for the digital camera made sense then-something light and portable, easily carried. That request had been met on Monday. Perhaps she had intended to follow this same man again. Perhaps she had even boarded a bus or entered the bus tunnel as a pedestrian.

Perhaps. . perhaps. . perhaps. . Stevie caught herself tempted to toss the juice glass across the room, but placed it back down and poured a refill. As with any good lead, the tapes presented as many questions as they offered answers. She could look up the locations of car washes in the Yellow Pages and drive to them one by one. She hoped that particular car wash was listed, but there was no saying it was. She could try any number of wild attempts like that, or she could act like a journalist and get down to business. Suffering under a headache and the pressure of time passing much too quickly, aching over Melissa’s disappearance and the tape’s implication that she had aggressively gone after the story, Stevie resorted to what she knew best: journalism. The story started with Gwen Klein. It was as simple as that.

The LSO was crowded, its fiberglass seats filled with a cross section of the city’s diverse population. She wore a baseball cap and kept her head down, not wanting to be recognized as she wandered the enormous room. Of the seven teller windows, four were in use. Stevie drew glares as she avoided the lines and headed straight to the front where small name plaques identified the tellers. In front of the third teller the sign read: Hello! I’m: GWEN. Stevie memorized that face, the Irish nose, the square-cut bangs that cantilevered out in a frosted blonde cascade. She went heavy on both the brown lipstick and the pale purple eye shadow. Klein delivered a self-important attitude via a demeaning, intolerant impatience. She was of average height with slouched shoulders. Stevie remained in line just long enough to take all this in, then feigned discouragement and walked back outside.

At 4:07 P.M., the building’s rear door opened and several employees including Klein walked to their cars and drove off. This event eerily matched what Stevie had seen on Melissa’s tape. Klein collected her kids from day care and led Stevie to 118th Street NW, a congested neighborhood of small clapboard houses. The van pulled in to #1186. Mom and the two kids left the car and headed inside the home.

With News Four at Five rapidly approaching, Stevie had no choice but to drive quickly to the studio and perform her on-camera duties, but her mind remained on #1186 118th NW, to which she returned immediately following the broadcast.

At seven o’clock, running low on patience, she left her car and headed to the front door. Answers could no longer wait.

Stevie hoped that the sharp attack of her knuckles on the front door might telegraph her attitude, her intentions, to the occupants, especially given that both a doorbell and a brass knocker were available.

To her relief it was Gwen Klein herself who answered the door. Klein recognized Stevie immediately, her face lighting up at first-the flush of a glimpse of celebrity-and then tightened in reaction to the association with news media. She stepped back and grabbed the edge of the door.

‘‘Please. . it’s a personal matter,’’ Stevie said.

‘‘I have nothing to say to the press!’’

The door began to swing shut. Stevie unleashed her only weapon. ‘‘You shut that door and I’ll have a camera crew camped on your front lawn for the next two weeks.’’

The door stopped, partially open. A moment later Gwen Klein stepped outside, out of earshot, and pulled the door to within an inch of closing. She crossed her arms at her waist as if fending off a chill.

‘‘Ms. Klein, I’m not here to make accusations, nor can I afford the luxury of wasting time.’’ She did not want to mention Melissa’s disappearance, not to someone like Klein, who if involved with supplying counterfeit licenses probably knew little of the overall operation. But Klein was the place to start, Stevie felt sure; Melissa had started with this woman. So would she.

‘‘I don’t know what you-’’

‘‘And let’s dispense with the protestations of innocence or ignorance. I have no time for it. We both know exactly why I’m here, and if you play this otherwise, I’ll turn and walk away and you’ll have lost your chance.’’

‘‘Chance at what?’’ Blank-faced and suddenly silent, Gwen Klein waited nervously.

‘‘Do you follow the news?’’ Stevie asked, met only by that same blank stare. ‘‘Are you aware of the ship captain who drowned? The ship captain responsible for transporting the container of illegals? The man’s death was not an accident, Ms. Klein.’’ She lowered her voice for effect and said, ‘‘You have to come to grips with the fact that he was murdered. Killed, because someone didn’t want him questioned by the police. . the INS. . whoever. Are you listening?’’ Klein’s eyes went glassy and distant, as if looking right through Stevie.

‘‘How long until whoever is paying you for those driver’s licenses decides you too are a liability?’’

Klein’s mouth sagged open. As her jaw jutted out to speak, Stevie cut her off.

‘‘I want the whole story. The truth, start to finish. Who contacted you, what they offered, how it worked, how long it’s been going on. If,’’ she said strongly, ‘‘you are willing to share this with me openly and honestly, I’m willing to forget all about your sad little life and your bad decisions. You have children.’’ The woman winced. ‘‘I’m not here to expose your behavior to your children, your neighbors, your employer.’’

‘‘But how did you-’’

‘‘Never mind how. What matters is the truth. It’s all that matters. I need the truth. You give me the truth, I go away. I can’t remember your name. Do you understand what I’m offering you? I can use the First Amendment to protect you. What do you think they will offer you? What do you think they offered the ship captain?’’

The woman’s head snapped up. She looked left and right, as if afraid of the neighbors or someone else watching her. She met eyes with Stevie. Hers were hard and cold as she said, ‘‘Not here. Not now. You’ve got to leave.’’ She stepped backward into the house, her hand blindly searching out the door.

‘‘I need answers,’’ Stevie cautioned, ‘‘or I’ll tear your life open on your front lawn.’’ She warned her, ‘‘Don’t underestimate me.’’

‘‘Not here.’’

‘‘We’ll talk.’’

The door closed further.

Stevie rushed her words. ‘‘We have to talk. You have to choose sides. Me or them?’’

The door slammed shut. A full minute later, Gwen Klein pulled back a drape and peered out at Stevie, who remained on the front steps. Klein would want to discuss Stevie’s offer with her husband, Stevie thought, so she would give her the night. One night. In the meantime, Stevie decided to make as if she were leaving. She climbed into her car and drove off. She came around the block, switched off her lights and parked. It was going to be a long night.