Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) (25 page)

“Yeah,” Ron
said. “We’re done here. Come and take him away
.”

C
hapter 14

TO SAY THAT THE MOOD ON
the drive
home was a little subdued would have been an understatement
. Disappointment was part of this job—not every good idea
panned out. Still, it sucked. We needed to get over
it and get back to work. “No sweat, guys,” I
said, trying to pump us back up. “This was a
long shot, anyway. Forget about it. We’ll just do
it the old-fashioned way. Solid investigation techniques. Old school
. Works every time.”

Ron sighed. “That’s right.” He may
have agreed, but he still sounded disappointed. “Solid investigation techniques
.” He turned to me and shook his head. “In other
words, we’re right back to square one.”

“We’re
way past square one, man. So let’s suck it
up and start coming up with some ideas. Like here
’s one: we can start by interviewing the people Bannister
works with at the Four Seasons. Maybe one of them
knows something about where he’s hiding out.”

“Great idea
. So good, in fact, that Yoshi organized it before we
left this morning. Our people should be wrapping up at
the hotel as we speak.”

I smiled. “Good. Next, how
about relatives? Are there any others? Where are his parents
?”

“Parents are deceased,” Yoshi said. “Only one sibling, and that
would be the oh-so-helpful brother Gabriel. There
is
an aunt in Pennsylvania. We haven’t talked to her
yet. But she’s next on my to-do list
.”

“Good.” I paused, thinking, before I came up with anything
. “Okay. Here’s another idea. How about we sit on
his apartment? Maybe he’ll come back for something.”

“Why
the hell would he do that?” Ron said, swerving to
miss a box in the road. “If Bannister’s on
the lam and laying low, his apartment will be the
last place he’ll visit.”

If he’s a pro
, I thought. Pros might not make a simple mistake like
going back home when people are hunting you, but Bannister
was no pro, and laymen—ordinary people? They make mistakes
all the time. “Not even worth a try?” I asked
. After all, the way I see it, when you’ve
got nothing,
anything
is worth a try.

“Didn’t say
I wouldn’t try,” Ron said. “I’ll have to
get the captain’s approval first. He’s catching a
lot of shit for no results, and he’s starting
to get pretty sensitive about requests. Besides, it’s what
, just after noon now? It’s getting a little late
in the day for us to organize an impromptu stakeout
mission today. Even if I get approval, I’m not
sure I could get things organized until tomorrow. We’ll
have to shift a lot of schedules around.” He thought
for a second. “Maybe tonight late. But probably tomorrow.”

I
shrugged. “Better than nothing, right? But ultimately, you think the
captain will go along?”

He nodded. “Yeah, probably. It makes
sense and besides, ’less he’s been holding out on
me, he doesn’t have any better ideas. We can
’t just give up.” He paused for a minute, thinking
. “Unfortunately, the rest of the bad guys in the city
aren’t sitting on their asses waiting for us to
solve this case before they get back to work. If
we don’t start producing some pretty compelling leads, I
think I’ve got about a week before the captain
reassigns probably most of my task force back to their
original positions. I’m going to be down to a
half-dozen people, counting me and Yoshi here. Fuckin’ bean
counters run the place downtown. Everyone else has to get
in line.”

I considered this for a second. “I understand
. Good to know our constraints. So that means we’ve
got ourselves a deadline then, right? We need to wrap
this thing up in a week?”

“At least come up
with something,” Ron agreed. “Got to have something to give
the captain. Anything.”

It was a beautiful Friday night in
late October in Seattle—a tiny little sliver of a
moon serving as a backlight to partly cloudy skies. It
was cool, but not yet what I’d call cold
. Earlier this afternoon when I’d returned to the office
, Toni and I talked about staking out Bannister’s apartment
. We could cover for SPD while Ron got his approval
.

“Friday night . . .” she said, smiling seductively, “two young people in
love . . . after a hard week at work . . . and your idea
of romance is to go sit on a stakeout.”

“It
was just a thought.”

She smiled again, this time more
of a sly little grin. “Gotcha. I’m up for
a little nighttime surveillance if it helps the cause. What
else did we have to do tonight anyway, right?”

I
could actually think of a few things, yet here we
were, parked across the street from Josh Bannister’s apartment
in our dark green Ford Econoline van with a “Ryan
’s Quality Plumbing Service” sign slapped on the side. We
even had a ladder strapped to a rack on the
roof to add to the effect.

Bannister’s neighborhood was
one that doesn’t seem so bad in the daytime
, but it gets a little sketchier when the sun goes
down. Not a ghetto or a slum by any means
. But not Queen Anne either. The streets are pretty much
wall-to-wall with apartments four, sometimes five stories high
. Toward the corners, most of the ground floors had been
converted to commercial uses with beauty salons, coffee shops, and
sushi restaurants being the most prevalent. Midblock, where we were
parked, the only streetlights were mostly blocked by trees and
largely ineffective. The streets were quite dark.

The van’s
windows were tinted so no one could see in, but
we could still see out. We sat at a small
built-in desk in the back of the van in
comfortable chairs, a heavy blackout curtain shielding us from view
from the front. A small refrigerator was located beneath the
desk while an enclosed compartment at the back of the
van held, of all things, a port-o-potty. Talk
about your luxury stakeout machine. We actually have two vans
like this—the one we’re in plus a white
one, in addition to an old Winnebago motor home—all
similarly equipped for surveillance. Compared to sitting in the cramped
front seat of a car, they’ve revolutionized stakeouts for
us.

Toni manned the binoculars and the cameras on lookout
while I fiddled with the laptop. I was logged on
to a search program trying to dig something out of
Josh Bannister’s background that might give us a clue
as to his whereabouts.

The task force had done a
pretty thorough background check on Bannister, given that they’d
heard of him just twenty-four hours ago. They’d
sent us copies of his criminal record, his employment and
residence history, even his credit report. His DMV records showed
that he had a valid Washington driver’s license and
that he owned a 2005 dark blue Ford Ranger pickup
with no lienholder. In addition to this, Kenny was able
to grab his cell phone records from the number Nicki
provided.

Suddenly, Toni startled me. “I think you can put
that away.”

“Why’s that?” I looked at her. “You
need a break?” We alternated on the binoculars.

“Nope. I
’m good. But look who’s walking down the sidewalk
.”

“No shit?” I looked where she was pointing, closing the
lid on the laptop as I did. Sure enough, Josh
Bannister was on the other side of the street, maybe
150 feet away, walking purposefully toward the front entrance of
his apartment building plain as day. I glanced at Toni
—she was watching him through a high-quality video camera
with a Morovision gen-3 night vision scope that I
’d bought used on eBay for a song.

“You sure
it’s him?”

“You bet,” she said, without looking away
. “Turn on the monitor.”

I flipped a switch, and a
small flat-screen video monitor mounted to the wall of
the van sprung to life. I watched as the man
continued walking in our direction.

“Zoom in,” I said. “Close
-up.”

Toni rotated the zoom control on the camera and
centered the man’s face in the frame. Even lit
in the eerie green light from the night-vision lens
, Josh Bannister’s features were clear.

I studied the face
. “Damn, that’s him, alright. You’re recording this, right
?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I’ll call Ron.” I looked at
the time: it was 7:45 p.m. as I dialed
Ron’s number.

He picked up, and I said, “Dude
, you’ll never guess who’s walking up to his
apartment right now, as we speak.”

“You got to be
kidding. I’ll be damned—wonders never cease.” He paused
for a couple of seconds, then he said, “Okay. Just
watch him—do
not
move in. I’ll call Yoshi
, and we’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Got it
? Don’t spook him, whatever you do.”

“Got it.”

“Just
wait for us!” he repeated right before he hung up
. I set the phone down and looked back outside.

There
was a set of four or five steps leading from
the sidewalk up to a decorative entryway of the red
-brick apartment building. When he reached the steps, Bannister paused
and looked around nervously. Apparently satisfied that he’d not
been noticed, he turned, bounded up the stairs and went
inside.

“Got all that?” I asked.

“Sure did.”

“Good.” I
leaned back in my chair and watched the monitor. “So
now we hurry up and wait.”

We didn’t get
to wait very long. Five minutes after Bannister entered, the
building’s front door opened, and he walked right back
out. This time, he was carrying a small backpack. He
flipped up the collar on his coat as he walked
down the steps and, without pausing or looking around, he
turned left and started walking away from us back up
the street in the direction from which we’d first
seen him walk.

“Shit,” I said. “Short trip.”

Bannister walked
at a steady pace, continuing up the street away from
us.

“We’re going to have to follow him,” Toni
said. “You ready?”

She was right. So far, we’d
been lucky. Bannister had walked out of nowhere right into
our laps. We hadn’t even had to do anything
but sit there. But in my experience, good luck has
a bad habit of leveling itself out, and I doubted
if we’d be that lucky twice. “Okay.” I hopped
up into the driver’s seat. “You’re right. Call
Ron and let him know what’s going on. Here
—” I handed her my cell phone, “just hit redial.”

Toni
got through to Ron and started briefing him while I
watched Bannister continue walking away. I let him open up
a bit of separation between us—maybe fifty yards or
so—before I started the van and turned my headlights
on. I wanted to be stealthy, but not too stealthy
; the last thing I wanted to happen was for him
to turn around and spot a van following him with
no lights on. That would freak anybody out. If he
saw us, he needed to think we were just any
old normal vehicle. I allowed him to put a little
more distance between us, then I pulled out and slowly
started forward.

Up ahead, Bannister constantly scanned all around himself
as he walked. He definitely must have seen our van
, but he kept walking. “Toni, this guy’s jumpy as
hell.” I paused, considering our next action. “Listen, if he
takes off up one of these alleys, I’m going
to hop out and follow him. You take the van
, swing around and try to catch him on the other
side.”