Fearless Fourteen - Janet Evanovich [86]
“You didn’t find anything?”
“No.”
Our eyes held for a moment, and he didn’t ask anything more and I didn’t tell. I trusted Morelli, but he was a cop, after all. And the cops didn’t have a good track record on this operation.
IT WAS FOUR in the morning, and I was wide awake, trying not to thrash around and disturb Morelli. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fourth partner. He was out there, moving through his day as a normal person. This guy who could kill his friends and mutilate a mother. He did his mundane job and talked sports scores while he drank coffee with his friends. And he was watching Morelli’s house and monitoring police action. How was he doing that?
When the bedside clock hit five-thirty, I got dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and sneakers. I went downstairs, made coffee, and dialed Dom. Still no answer. I could hear Morelli moving around upstairs. It was a workday.
I was pacing when he came into the kitchen.
“What’s the special occasion?” he asked. “You’re never up this early.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Loretta will lose her hand today if I don’t figure this out.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I know that. I just don’t want it to happen.”
“Me, either. I’m still on the gang killings, but Spanner’s keeping me in the loop. The Feds are nuts that the op got blown. They’re on everyone’s ass.”
“You went door-to-door, right? You talked to all your neighbors?”
“Everyone on the street. I covered three blocks.” He poured coffee into a travel mug and capped it. “I have an early meeting. I’ll grab a bagel on the way in.” He kissed me on the top of my head. “I have to go. Be careful. This guy is a real crazy. Don’t piss him off. I’ll try to keep in touch.”
I fed Bob and hooked him to his leash. “Time for a walk,” I told him.
I knew we were missing something, and walking Bob would give me a chance to look around. The fourth partner was close. He saw the sign intended for Dom. He saw the scarf. And he was the one who broke into Morelli’s house and got the key. He knew when Morelli and I left the house to take Grandma home.
I walked two blocks in each direction, several times. The guy was so close, I could practically smell him, but I couldn’t put my finger on him.
Zook was eating breakfast when I returned. He looked up expectantly.
“Hang in there,” I told him.
“She’s okay, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” Alive is okay, right? Worse things in life than missing a toe or two. I tried to give him a reassuring smile, but I’m not sure I totally pulled it off.
I drove Zook to school and rode around Morelli’s block. I cruised by his house and looked up at the second-floor windows. They were visible from the street, but I was having a hard time thinking this guy was constantly driving by. He was squirreled away somewhere, and he could see the house.
I kept a gym bag in the back. It held bounty hunter stuff. Cuffs, shackles, stun gun, Cheez Doodles, flashlight, and binoculars. I grabbed the binoculars out of the bag and brought them into the house. I ran up the stairs and trained the glasses on the houses across the street. I looked in all the windows. I looked at the front yards and the cars parked in front of the houses. I looked over the roofs to see if line of sight carried to any houses on the next block.
I put the binoculars down and pressed my fingers to my eyeballs. Think, Stephanie. What are you missing? There has to be something.
I raised the binoculars again and ran them across the housetops. And there it was . . . a camera. It was positioned on the roof, directly across from Morelli. I don’t know how I missed it. I suppose I just wasn’t looking for it before.
I called Ranger on my cell.
“I need some technical information,” I said to him. “Can you mount a camera somewhere, like on a roof, and access it from somewhere else? I mean, do you need wires and things?”
“No. You can transmit wireless. If you’re going a distance, you need relays. Or you can bounce it off a satellite.”
“Suppose you want to run it all day, day after day. You’d need a power source, right?”
“Yes. If it was on a roof, you could tie into the house