“There’s nothing supposed about this guy. But are you saying it could be related? I thought about this but there’s no way. The guy I am trying to chase down would have no idea that I’m even out here and on to him.”
“Don’t be so sure about that, Jack. It is a classic hunting tactic. Separate and isolate your target and then move in for the kill. In today’s society, separating and isolating someone would entail getting them away from their comfort zone—the environment they know—and then eliminating their ability to connect. Cell phone, Internet, credit cards, money.”
She ticked them off on her fingers.
“But how could this guy know about me? I didn’t even know about him until last night. Look, Rachel, it’s great to see you and I hope you stick around tonight. I want you to be here, but I’m not getting this. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the concern—in fact, how did you get here so damn quick?”
“I took an FBI jet to Nellis and had them jump me up here in a chopper.”
“Jesus! Why didn’t you just call me back?”
“Because I couldn’t. When you called me, it was transferred to the off-site location where I work. There’s no caller ID on those transfers. I didn’t have your number and I knew you were probably on a throw-away line.”
“So what’s the bureau brass going to say when they find out you dropped everything and hopped on a plane to save me? Didn’t you learn anything in South Dakota?”
She waved the concern away. Something about the gesture reminded me of our first meeting. It happened to have also been in a hotel room. She had driven my face down hard into the bed and then handcuffed and arrested me. It wasn’t love at first sight.
“There’s an inmate in Ely that has been on my interview list for four months,” she said. “Officially, I came to interview him.”
“You mean like he’s a terrorist? Is that what your unit does?”
“Jack, I can’t talk to you about that side of my work. But I can tell you how easy it was to find you and why I know I wasn’t the only one tracking you.”
She froze me with that word. Tracking. It conjured bad things in my imagination.
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me.”
“When you called me today you told me you were going to Ely and I knew that had to be to interview a prisoner. So when I got concerned and decided to do something about it, I called Ely and asked if you were there and I was told you just left. I spoke to a Captain Henry there and he said your interview was put off until tomorrow morning. He said he recommended you go into town and stay at the Nevada.”
“Yeah, Captain Henry. I was dealing with him.”
“Yeah, well, I asked him why your interview was postponed and he told me that your guy, Brian Oglevy, was in lockdown because there was a threat against him.”
“What threat?”
“Hold on, I’m getting to it. The warden got an e-mail today with a message that said the AB was planning to hit Oglevy today. So as a precaution they put him in lockdown.”
“Oh, come on, they took that seriously? The Aryan Brotherhood? Don’t they threaten everybody who isn’t a member? Isn’t Oglevy a Jewish name, too?”
“They took it seriously because the e-mail came from the warden’s own secretary. Only she didn’t write it. It was written anonymously by someone who had gained access to her state prison systems account. A hacker. It could have been someone inside or someone from the outside. It didn’t matter. They took it as a legitimate warning because of the way it was delivered. They put Oglevy in lockdown, you didn’t get to see him and you were sent to spend the night here. Alone, in unfamiliar surroundings.”
“Okay, what else? This is still a stretch.”
She was beginning to convince me but I was acting skeptical to get her to tell me more.
“I asked Captain Henry if anybody else had called and asked about you. He said the lawyer you were working for, William Schifino, called to check on you and he was told the same thing, that the interview was delayed and you were probably spending the night at the Nevada.”
“Okay.”
“I called William Schifino. He said he never made that call.”
I stared at her for a long moment as a cold finger went down my spine.
“I asked Schifino if anyone besides me had called about you and he told me he had gotten one call earlier. It was from someone who said he was your editor—used the name Prendergast—and that he was worried about you and wanted to know if you had come to see Schifino. Schifino said you had come by and that you were on your way up to the prison in Ely.”
I knew my editor could not have made that call because when I had called Prendergast, he had not gotten my e-mail and had no idea I had gone to Las Vegas. Rachel was right. Someone had been tracking me and doing a good job of it.
My mind flashed on thoughts of Sideburns and riding up in the elevator with him, then of him following me down the hallway to my room.
What if he hadn’t heard Rachel’s voice? Would he have walked on by or would he have pushed in behind me?
Rachel got up and walked over to the room’s phone. She dialed the operator and asked for the manager. She was on hold for a few moments before her call was taken.
“Yes, it’s Agent Walling. I’m still in room four ten and I’ve located Mr. McEvoy and he’s safe. I am now wondering if you can tell me if there are any guests in the next three rooms going down the hall. I think that would be four eleven, twelve and thirteen.”
She waited and listened and then thanked the manager.
“One last question,” she said. “There is a door marked exit at the end of the hall. I’m assuming those are stairs. Where do they go?”
She listened, thanked him again and then hung up.
“There’s nobody registered in those rooms. The stairs go down to the parking lot.”
“You think that guy with the sideburns was him?”
She sat back down.
“Possibly.”
I thought about his wraparound sunglasses, the driving gloves and the cowboy hat. The bushy sideburns covered most of the rest of his face and drew the eye away from any other distinguishing features. I realized that if I had to describe the man who had followed me, I would only be able to remember the hat, hair, gloves, sunglasses and sideburns—the throwaway or changeable features of a disguise.
“Jesus! I can’t believe how stupid I was. How? How did this guy find out about me and then actually find me? We’re talking about less than twenty-four hours and he’s sitting next to me at the slots.”
“Let’s go down and you show me what machine he was at. We might be able to pull prints.”
I shook my head.
“Forget it. He was wearing driving gloves. In fact, even the ceiling cameras down there won’t help you. He was wearing a cowboy hat, sunglasses—his whole getup was a disguise.”
“We’ll pull the video anyway. Maybe there will be something that will help us.”
“I doubt it.”
I shook my head again, more to myself than to Rachel.
“He got right next to me.”
“That trick with the prison secretary’s e-mail shows he has a certain skill set. I think it would be wise to consider your e-mail accounts to be breached at this point.”