Corrector (17 page)

Five miles up the road Jake came to an intersection he’d scouted when he’d been in the area before driving back to South Dakota and back-tracking.  He turned onto it.  He followed the new road as it twisted and turned through the trees and was soon back on Highway 70 headed west toward Rifle, Colorado.  As he drove he stripped the slide from the frame of the Glock, then separated the barrel.  These he dumped in the river at two separate locations along with the magazine and the spent brass he had on hand.  The frame was safe enough to keep. Back home in Sparks he had the factory original barrel and slide as well as the threaded Wolfe barrel and what he thought of as the silencer slide.  That was a specially built slide with extremely high sights that one could use to see over the tube of the installed silencer.

The thirty-mile drive to Rifle went smoothly enough.  Jake drove at a moderate pace, all the while keeping his eyes on the mirror for any sign of headlights coming up behind him.  He was a little tense, but given the reaction Granger had shown to the situation, he was confident the man wasn’t going to turn him in.  He didn’t see another vehicle during the entire drive.  The moonlit highway stretched out from him in both directions.  The town of Rifle was quiet and dark as he passed by.  Two-thirds of the way through town he turned north on the much smaller Highway 13, and drove the four miles to the entrance to the small group of cottages where he had made reservations.  Like the town itself, the campground was dark and quiet.  He saw no other cars as he drove slowly past the owner’s home and made his way to the most remote of the six cottages.  Once there, he stepped out and checked the door.  It was unlocked as promised. 

Quickly Jake unloaded the few items he would need immediately, then went inside and locked the door behind him.  Everything he was wearing went into a large black plastic bag, with the gloves he was still wearing the last to go.  Then he wrapped it closed and sealed it with a twist tie provided for that purpose and then headed for the bathroom. 

The beard went next, all of the hair going into another bag that Jake had spread over the sink to capture it as he cut it away.  Once he had removed the majority of the beard, he closed up the bag and stepped into the shower where he washed the removable coloring from his head and shaved to complete the removal of all facial hair.  After weeks with the beard, his face felt unnaturally sensitive, and the slightly breeze felt like a caress.  When he stepped out of the shower, he looked like the Jake of old.  The most important thing was the owner of the cottages would see a very different person than the one who had visited Bret Granger the night before. 

Hopefully there would be nothing to connect the two people.  The only thing to link Jake with the person he’d been pretending to be was the name and the license plates on the Chevy.  He was using the name he’d used in Edwards, and still had the bogus plates on the car.  He would change the plates after leaving here.  No one had seen them thus far, and the only record was the poorly written number that Jake had put on the hotel form in Edwards. 

Ten o’clock the next morning, Jake walked over to the house and paid a visit to the owner.  The man looked the same as Jake recalled, and was in a bit of a hurry to get somewhere, which suited Jake just fine.  After going over the rules, the man accepted cash from Jake for the bill.  That would almost certainly mean no filed record of the credit card that Jake had used to make the reservation.  Worrying about it was probably overkill, but Jake reminded himself it was time to set up the new identity.  He’d over used this one.

Over the next three days, Jake scanned the Internet for any indication that a search was underway for someone who had accosted the actor.  He found nothing along those lines.  There were several stories about how Granger had been out late and returned home to discover the slide that had taken his home.  The articles pointed out how fortunate he’d been to be out when it happened.  It appeared that Granger had been truthful when he’d said he would keep Jake out of events.

Three days after arriving at the cottages, Jake set off for home.  He’d seen the owner leave earlier, and took a few moments to switch out the plates before leaving.  Then he drove away leaving the keys on the table indicating he’d found it necessary to depart early. 

Jake continued north on Highway 13, passing through Craig, Colorado that was famous for elk hunting later in the day, where he grabbed lunch at a drive through.  He’d dumped the bags of clothes and everything else out in the country.  After lunch, he continued on the smaller roads northward until he intersected Highway 80.  That night he stayed in Salt Lake City as himself, back on the route he’d been traveling when he learned of Granger’s death.  He treated himself to a decent meal for a change, and slept in late the next morning.  Late the following day he pulled into his own driveway.

He called Nate and Zack to let them know he was back.  They promised to get together over the weekend.  Jake called Karin on her house phone.  He felt that calling her on her cellular was inappropriate somehow, as if he might catch her at an inopportune time.  The message he heard had been modified and indicated she was out of town for a couple of weeks.  He could have tried to reach her, but decided he would wait.  He’d had his time away.  He’d let her have her own.  Perhaps when she returned they would see if the relationship were really over.

Just over a week later he received a call from Karin’s brother with the tragic news.

Special Agent Susan Carlson made a come in motion to Shaun Hansen with her left hand as he finished up the telephone call she had been tied up with for more than twenty minutes.

“Let me know if you find anything,” she said, then placed the handset on the base with a sigh of relief completing the exchange.

Hansen was smiling.

“You have something?” Carlson asked hopefully.  There had been nothing new for a number of weeks.

“Our suspect used his credit card a few days ago.”

Carlson perked up.  “Finally.  A few days ago?  How come it has taken so long to come to our attention?”

“A quirk of the place where he used it,” Hansen explained.  “He stayed one night at a swanky hotel resort in Colorado.  The people who tend to stay there have money, and the hotel apparently doesn’t turn in the receipts every day.  Apparently they don’t get stiffed very often.”

“Where is this place?” Carlson asked.

“Edwards, Colorado.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s about a hundred and fifty miles outside of Denver.  It’s on one of the main roads and on the way to Vail, one of the ski resorts.  There are dozens of golf courses and fantastic scenery from the photos of the place.”

“He used the same name and credit card as we’ve seen before?”

“Yeah.  We’ve seen the card a couple of times before.”

“You said the suspect stayed there a couple of nights ago.  That implies he has since disappeared.  Did anything happen in the area.  I haven’t seen anything in the daily summaries relating to that part of the country.”

“Nothing,” Hansen confirmed.  “I even called the local police.  There have been no crimes in the area at all.”

“Odd.  A single night in such an unusual spot, with no activity.”

“Maybe he was simply vacationing.”

“Unlikely.  There had to be some reason for him to have used that credit card; some reason why he didn’t want to use a card with his real name.  What about rental cars?  Has anything shown up in their records?”

“Nothing.  I specifically scanned everything for all of Colorado a second time.  Nothing with the name or any of the cards we have seen before.”  Hansen hesitated.  “I think he might have been using his own vehicle.”

That caused a reaction in Carlson.  “What would make you think that?”

“I called the hotel.  Hotels generally ask guests to record their vehicle make and plate number on the check-in forms.  I thought we might get something.  It turns out they use a standard form that requests such information, although they really don’t care if the guest fills it in and don’t use it for anything.  Our suspect indicated he was driving a Chevy, although nothing on the model, and entered a license.  One of the numbers was hard to decipher, but I ran a check on all possible options.”

“I sense you are not satisfied with the result.”

“Something doesn’t fit.  This hotel is a high class establishment.  The plate number listed is very old.  Either of the two possible numbers were issued in the mid 1980’s.  A vehicle that old would stand out.  Besides, one was an old Ford Mustang, and the other a Dodge pickup.  Neither were Chevys.  Why would he indicate a different model?  That would be asking for unwanted attention.”

“He swapped out his plates,” Carlson said softly.

“That’s what I was thinking as well,” agreed Hansen.

“The only reason for him to do something like that comes to mind would be a desire to hide the real numbers because it is a vehicle that might lead back to him,” Carlson said.  “The situation looks as if something came up unexpectedly that forced him into action and he had to make atypical plans.  I assume there was nothing at the airports?”

“Denver is a hundred and fifty miles away.  There was nothing there that matches our database.  I also checked the Eagle County Regional Airport, a much smaller airport that services the area.  Nothing we’ve seen before there either.”

“That’s not surprising.  The airport link hasn’t been of much help to us in the past and if our guess is correct, our man was in the area for some other reason.  Did anyone at the hotel remember him?”

“The person I talked with wasn’t on the desk at the time he checked in.  I arranged for a call later in the day when she comes in.”

“Better yet we get someone from the Denver office to go out there.  Maybe someone can remember this guy.  Maybe someone saw him and the vehicle.  If we can get that, we can canvas the surrounding area.  I’ll arrange that when we’re done.  Anything else?”

Hansen looked like he was about to shake his head when he suddenly asked.  “Do you think this guy might have his own plane?  I got to thinking about it when I was checking out the local airport. At first I expected the Eagle County Airport to be a tiny place, but they do have commercial service.  The place he stayed is for people with money.  That plus my thoughts about the airport got me to wondering if he could have flown in on a small plane rather than an airliner.”

“I can’t believe we didn’t think of that earlier,” Carlson said.  “If he is coming in that way, I wonder what kind of records would be kept.”

“Even if he is using a different name linked to a private plane, we could check and see which tail numbers were in an area at the time of the crimes we have associated with this guy.  Not all small airports record the tail numbers of planes that overnight, but many do.  If the same plane is in the area, there is a real chance it might be him.  The crimes have spanned a wide portion of the country.  The same plane being there would be an incredible coincidence.”

“That sounds promising.  Get started on that and I’ll get someone out to this hotel to start asking questions.  Are you certain that nothing has happened in the area recently?”

“Nothing like we’ve seen before.  The usual daily crimes in Denver, but they don’t appear to be related.  Around Edwards, nothing.  The only excitement out there was the close escape of that actor?”

Carlson’s look indicated she didn’t follow Hansen.

“The actor Bret Granger.  His house was swept away by a mudslide around that time.  They’ve been having unseasonable rains, and he missed by an hour or so of having been inside when his place up there was buried and destroyed when the hill behind it gave way.  Probably would have killed him if he’d been inside.”

“I can’t see how that would be related,” Carlson said.

“Me either, but that’s the only news events for some time out of the place.”

Carlson thought for a minute.  “I’ll have our agent talk with Granger.”

Jake maneuvered through the heavy traffic with his BMW as he searched for the turn-off that would take him away from metro Sacramento and south toward San Francisco.  This particular section of freeway always baffled him for some reason, and he always ended up in a slightly different location than his mind prepared him for.  He felt he should be south of the capitol after he transitioned freeways, but when the freeway exchanges had been negotiated he found he was several miles north of the city.  He would have to drive a few more miles before the madness of the city traffic would start to fall off.

He was tense and uptight, and more than a little anxious to get to his destination as much as he hated driving in the confusion of San Francisco.  His mind kept replaying the call he had gotten a few hours earlier this morning.

“Jake?” asked a voice that he hadn’t recognized.  There was however, something in the voice that gave him forewarning that it was bad news.