Forgive Me(47)

“I got you in sight.”

“Hey, you’re getting better at this.”

“Once I was the pupil, now I am the master.”

Angie hesitated. “You really want me to say ‘only a master of evil,’ don’t you?”

“It would be nice.”

“Not going to happen.”

“Dang.”

Markovich crossed K Street and pulled to the curb in front of a building hidden by scaffolding. The black painted doors to a place called Solyanka opened, releasing a bear of a man in a paisley shirt unbuttoned far enough to reveal what could have been a fur rug glued to his ample chest and enough gold chains to function as armor. He waddled toward Markovich’s car.

“Mike, are you seeing this?”

“Seeing this. I can tell you Solyanka is hipster heaven for the Euro set and very Russian.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Yelp.”

“Good work.”

Mr. Gold Chains climbed into the Escalade and drove it around the block. Markovich went into the club.

Angie didn’t follow. Her guy was inside, so she found a nearby spot designated for fifteen-minute parking. A minute later, Mike drove up and honked.

Angie hung up the phone and rolled down her window. “Wait for me on the next block.”

The wait lasted two hours, but since she stayed with her car, the meter maids didn’t give her any hassle.

A little after seven, the sun was making its final retreat and had dappled the sky with a sundry of glorious colors. There hadn’t been any sign of Markovich, and aside from Mr. Gold Chains who returned on foot, nobody else had entered the club.

Angie’s phone rang. “What’s up, Mike?”

“I have a good parking space if you have to stretch or something.”

“I’m all right for now.”

“I got something else for you about our mystery girl.”

“Yeah, let’s have it.” Angie was watching the door to the club in her rearview in case Markovich came out.

“My gal at NCMEC did an age progression on your mystery girl. She apologized for the delay getting this done. I guess there’s a backlog and since yours wasn’t an active missing persons case it went to the bottom of the pile. Anyway, she just sent me the results. Want to see?”

“Do I? Of course.”

That was a huge development. Facial recognition might help Angie identify the girl, or perhaps social media could get the job done. Either way, knowing what the girl looked like today would satisfy a curiosity and could provide a vital clue in the search.

Angie got as far as opening the e-mail from Mike when Mr. Gold Chains emerged from the club.

Mike texted to make sure she saw Gold Chains leaving. She replied that she did. She couldn’t look at the girl’s picture since her focus had to be on Markovich.

Soon enough, the Escalade came into view. Seconds after that, Markovich exited the club. Gold Chains held the car door for Markovich. No money was exchanged, no tip offered, and Angie suspected Markovich was a person held in high regard. He was on the move once more.

Angie got Mike back on the line. “I’m following.”

“Right behind you.”

She used the same techniques to follow Markovich out of DC that she had used to track him to Solyanka. He drove north, out of the District via the Baltimore-Washington parkway. From there, it was a series of highways until they got off at the Russell Street exit in Baltimore.

It was hard for Angie to focus for the hour and thirty minutes the drive took. She kept battling the urge to look at the image from NCMEC. She didn’t want to give it a cursory glance. It needed to be studied, valued.

What would that little girl look like now? Where was she living? Who was she? But the biggest question loomed largest in Angie’s mind. Why had her mother asked for forgiveness?

Even with Mike following, Angie refused to lose her concentration even for a moment. To do otherwise would be unprofessional and undisciplined . . . and uncharacteristic.

They followed Markovich down Martin Luther King Boulevard and onto Cathedral Street. There were some nice shops there, a little gentrified—not a hood, not that intense—but they were on the outskirts of Middle East, Baltimore, a neighborhood patrolled by the Baltimore Police Department’s eastern district, and the place most responsible for the high per capita murder rate.

The Wire and Homicide had filmed there—which Angie wouldn’t have known if Mike hadn’t told her.

On Markovich’s tail, Angie and Mike drove past a Zumba studio, a flower shop, and an art supply store. The sparse pedestrian traffic showed a blend of races, though white was in the minority.

Markovich pulled into the parking lot of an auto repair place adjacent to a three-story brick apartment building that had no fire escape, but all of windows had bars.

Angie wondered if the top floor tenants worried about a rock climber breaking in. Those bars aren’t for keeping people out, she thought.

She came to a stop in front of a commercial printer over on the next block. It would be too conspicuous to park in front of the auto repair place where Markovich had gotten out. Using her binoculars, she watched Markovich make his way down an alley between the parking lot of the repair place and the apartment building.

She got Mike on the phone and wondered if he shared her gut feeling. “Do you think there’s a rear entrance to that apartment building?”