Guilty Minds

75

The night before, Tom Vogel had gotten a call from Ellen Wiley.

Her stalker problem was worse. Now her stalker had tried to break into her Georgetown house. She wanted to hire the Centurions to start immediately. Not in a week. Tomorrow.

He e-mailed her a contract, which she promised to sign and express mail back to him, along with a check. He’d given her a PO box. He was expecting the package.

He was not expecting what was inside.

Not a signed contract and a check, but a gift. A book Ellen thought he’d enjoy.

A hardcover whose spine was about an inch and a half thick. A book that might raise eyebrows but not provoke suspicion.

Because glued into its spine, and therefore hidden, was a small round flat disc no bigger than a silver dollar. A battery-operated GPS tracking device. Whose movements Dorothy could follow on her iPad.

I’d considered staking out the post office instead, waiting for someone to unlock his PO box, and then follow him. Simpler, maybe. But these people were hyper-vigilant. Tailing people like this would be like putting a leash on a snake. It’s just going to slip you.

No, this way was more sophisticated. I figured that Vogel wouldn’t go to the post office himself. He’d send an underling. And the underling wouldn’t open the package. He’d bring it right to Vogel.

But then Vogel, expecting a signed contract and a check, would pull out the book. A gift from Ellen Wiley. He’d consider it strange: idiosyncratic, but not alarming.

And if my intelligence was right, Vogel didn’t keep a regular office. He lived in a compound. The express mail package would be brought right to his home. The tracker would tell us precisely where it was.

And then I was going to pay him a visit.

Dorothy called back about ten minutes later. “The package is leaving the town of Thurmont and heading to Gorham, the next town over.” I hadn’t even heard of these Maryland towns.

“Okay,” I said. “Merlin and I have to go make a pickup. Keep updating me.”

“On it.”

She called back a few minutes later, when Merlin and I were driving in the Chrysler. “It’s stopped moving.”

“Where?”

“I have the location on Google Earth. It’s pretty much what you expected — a large house surrounded by woods, fenced in.”

“How many buildings?”

“Two. One small one that looks like a garage. Then the main compound.”

“What about the entry?”

“As far as I can tell, just a gate.”

“No booth?”

“Nothing that elaborate.”

“Okay. Long driveway?”

“More than a driveway. A long road that winds through the woods and then broadens out to a clearing, where the house is.”

“You have the street address. Can you get any info on the house from the county, or the town? Maybe even blueprints?”

“Give me five minutes. I’ll call you back.”

Merlin drummed his fingers on the dashboard as I drove. He was wracked with nervous energy. I could tell he wanted another smoke.

I said to him, “You know where we’re going?”

“Yup. You got the cash, right?”

“Got it.”

“You have the address now?”

“We do.”

“So it worked, the tracker.”

“Apparently.”

“What if he discovers it?”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen. He’ll see it’s a book, open it, see the inscription, probably be a little baffled and a little annoyed.”

“And suspicious?”

“Not likely.”

“If he does? If he rips open the binding and finds where you glued the tracker?”

I shrugged, said nothing.

“Then he’ll be waiting for you. For us.”

“Let’s just hope that doesn’t happen.”

A long silence followed. Then my phone rang: Dorothy.

“No blueprints online with the city or the county,” she said. “But I found something interesting. A couple of building permits issued by the building inspector in Gorham. One was to build an outbuilding, a shed of some kind. The other was for the construction of a safe room.”

“In Vogel’s compound?”

“Right. On the ground floor. The walls are made of steel panels and ballistic-proof composite. It’s got its own generator.”

“Okay. Anything on the security system?”

“Nothing.”

“Can you send me a screenshot of the house?”

“Sure thing.”

I hung up. “All right,” I said to Merlin. “Change of plans.”