The Old Man(29)
Caldwell searched the Internet to find out anything he could about James Harriman. He found a site that listed ninety-five of them, but none of them seemed to him to be the one who had tried to rob him. Other sites had more.
From that day on, when he went out he always had one of the pistols on him. It was September, so many days were still too warm for a coat. On those days he wore a loose shirt untucked so he could carry a pistol under it.
On the nights when he and Zoe slept in her room, he would usually leave the pistol hidden from her under the neat pile of his clothes he left on the chaise. He made sure that Carol and Dave stayed close enough to the bedroom so he would notice their agitation if someone came near the apartment. After a couple of weeks, he retrained them to sleep on the floor between her bed and the door when he was with her. They were so happy to be readmitted to the room where he slept that they didn’t seem to be disappointed that there was no space for them on the bed.
He began to search the Internet, studying various cities to pick out his next place to live. The cities that looked most promising to him were Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, and Houston, cities with large, diverse populations. But those were also the cities where his pursuers were most likely to look. He knew he had to consider a wider selection, and so he kept at it.
In the meantime, he decided to improve the security of the apartment. Caldwell bought a set of four small security cameras and a monitor and recorder. He used the extension ladder stored in the garage and installed the four cameras on the edge of the flat roof of the building so that all sides of the building were visible on his monitor. He had no interest in knowing the identity of an intruder, only to know if someone was prowling around the building. When he was alone each day he would speed through the previous night’s recordings, looking for a human shape.
He plotted the best ways to drive from the apartment to the nearest interstate highways without getting caught in the Chicago traffic. He tried each of the routes at various times of the day and night.
When he went out now, he was always alert and armed, with an escape route in mind. He was always watching for signs. He returned by various routes, trying to surprise anyone casing the apartment. Weeks passed, but nothing happened. He saw no vehicles parked along his routes that appeared to hold observers or surveillance equipment. There were no hardhat crews who appeared on any of his routes, set out orange traffic cones, and fiddled around without accomplishing much. Nobody betrayed a special interest in him.
In time, he began to feel more optimistic. The young man who had tried to rob him might have been nothing worse than that. Maybe he was a delinquent kid who had fallen into some luck, either an honest job that would save him or a dishonest one that would put him away. Which it was didn’t matter. If James Harriman was anything but an army intelligence operator, Caldwell’s present hiding place was safe. Panicking and abandoning a perfect hiding place to start a new search for shelter was a very bad idea.
Whatever features a new place might have, it probably wouldn’t have a woman like Zoe, whose name was on the lease and all the utility bills, and who provided him with a veneer of respectability and normalcy. Anywhere else, he would be a lone stranger, and he would have to start all over again persuading the locals that he was harmless. He would be presented with a thousand new chances to make a fatal error.
Caldwell didn’t stop looking at the recordings from his security cameras, and he didn’t stop watching for signs that he was attracting interest. He took one more precaution. He bought a car. It was a black BMW 3 Series sedan, a lower-end model that cost him about forty thousand dollars, but it was new, and it had a powerful engine.
He bought it in the name of Henry Dixon with a check from Dixon’s account, because if he ever needed the car, he would no longer be Peter Caldwell. He had the side windows tinted as dark as they would make them, because if he needed the car he would be running. He drove it straight from the lot to the garage he had rented a few blocks away. He visited the car once a week and drove it to keep the battery charged and the engine lubricated. He slowly acquired another twenty thousand dollars in cash and stored it in the well where the spare tire was held.
He did everything he could to get ready, as though being ready for a disaster would keep it from happening. Then he waited and watched.
12
Caldwell was in Zoe’s room, lying beside her. The night was cool, maybe an early taste of fall, and there was a steady wind that made the big trees in the neighborhood rock back and forth and their millions of leaves set up a steady hiss and shudder. There was a new moon, so the sky was mostly dark. Caldwell was a little more on edge than usual. When he was in special ops the trainers had taught him to plan operations for nights like this. The additional darkness made it easier to move unseen, the unusual coolness made people shut their windows and muffled sounds, and the wind covered incidental noises.
Zoe’s breathing was soft, slow, and regular as she slept, still touching him, her bare arm across his bare chest, her long hair swept back behind her neck.
He closed his eyes and let sleep take him too. When he woke in the darkness, the dogs were both on their feet, staring at the closed door of the room. One of them began a low growl, and the other added to it.
Caldwell slid out from under Zoe’s arm, stood, and put a hand on each of the dogs to silence them. He stepped into his pants and shoes, picked up the gun he had hidden under them, then slipped his shirt on over his head. He kept glancing at the dogs. They weren’t agitated, just standing alert and ready, staring at the door as though they were awaiting a person’s approach. But the dogs wouldn’t imagine an intruder. They had heard or smelled something.