See Me(132)

She closed her eyes again, but sleep didn’t come right away. The call with Margolis, as short as it was, had triggered another round of questions. In the end, though, exhaustion eventually won out and she felt herself finally, thankfully, drifting off.





CHAPTER 27





Colin





A

fter hanging up with Maria, Colin grabbed her bags from the car, slid in his earbuds, and got some music going while he brought her computer to the dining room table. There was something he wanted to check, and while he could have mentioned the idea to Maria or Margolis while they’d been having coffee, he’d decided against it. It was a long shot, but now that the 50C was in place, he figured there was no harm in checking it out. And whether or not Atkinson was involved was beside the point; right now, finding Lester was a priority.

It had come to him that morning. He’d kissed Maria good-bye and on the way to his car, he’d tried to make sense of the facts at hand: that the court order would do no good unless they could find Lester; that time was of the essence; that Lester was dangerous; that he’d shown up with a gun and left Maria terrified; and, of course, that he’d taken her phone…

Her phone…

And with that, a memory clicked into place, a memory that took him back to the night he’d first met Maria. When it had been storming and he’d pulled over… she’d been skittish because of the way he’d looked after the fight… and she’d asked to borrow his phone because she’d misplaced hers. She’d been rambling a bit, but what had she said?

He’d paused at his car, trying to remember.

“I didn’t lose lose it… It’s either at the office or I left it at my parents’, but I won’t know for sure until I get to my MacBook… I use that Find My iPhone thing… I can track my phone because it’s synced with the computer.”

Which meant, of course, he could track the phone, too.

It surprised him that Margolis hadn’t thought of it. Or maybe Margolis had and he’d already checked, and it had amounted to nothing because Lester had either discarded the phone or turned it off, or the battery had gone dead. Or maybe that constituted information Margolis wasn’t allowed to share. At the same time, there’d been so much else going on, it wasn’t completely out of the question that the idea had been temporarily overlooked.

Colin didn’t want to get his hopes up – the odds were slim that it would work and he knew it – but a couple of clicks of the cursor later, his heart hammered hard when he understood what he was seeing. The phone was still on and the battery had enough juice to let him know that it was located at a house on Robins Lane in Shallotte, a small town southwest of Wilmington, near Holden Beach. Shallotte was a good forty-five minutes away, and Colin stared at the location, watching to see whether the phone was still on the move.

It wasn’t. The site allowed him to track the phone’s previous movements as well, and a couple of clicks later, he learned that the phone had been carried from the Sanchez home to the house on Robins Lane without any detours.

Interesting. Definitely interesting, but still not proof. Maybe Lester had known the phone could be tracked, and he’d tossed it into someone’s car or into the bed of a pickup as he was fleeing. Or maybe he’d dropped it and someone had happened to find it.

Or maybe Lester was too delusional to even think along those lines.

No way to know for sure, but worth checking out…

He debated whether to call Margolis before thinking that it would probably be better to be certain before he did. Shallotte wasn’t even in the same county, and he didn’t want to waste Margolis’s time if it would amount to nothing…

He felt a tap on his shoulder and flinched automatically. When he turned, Evan was standing behind him. Colin pulled out the earbuds.

“You’re not planning to do what I think you are, are you?” Evan asked.

“What are you doing here? I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I knocked, but you didn’t answer. Peeked in. Saw you with Maria’s computer. Wondered if you were planning to do something stupid. Figured I would ask, just in case you were.”

“It wasn’t stupid. I was tracking Maria’s phone,” he said.

“I know,” Evan said, motioning to the computer. “I can see the screen. When did you figure out to do that?”

“This morning. When I left Maria’s parents’ house.”

“Pretty slick,” Evan said. “Have you called Margolis yet?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you walked in. I haven’t had the chance.”

“So call him now,” Evan said. When Colin didn’t reach for his phone, Evan let out a breath. “That’s what I meant when I wondered if you were planning to do something stupid. Because you weren’t planning to call him, were you? You were going to check it out yourself, before you call him.”

“It might not be Lester.”

“So? Let Margolis check it out. At the very least, Maria’s phone is there and he’d get it back. And do I need to remind you again that this is police business? You need to let Margolis do his job. You need to call him.”

“I will. When I know one way or the other.”