Norman took the few steps back to the Shoney’s in a run, his silk tie fluttering up over his shoulder, leaving Wallis by herself in the parking lot.
Wallis looked around at the parked cars trying to see if anyone was huddled down inside one of them. She took a few steps out further into the lot, trying to shake the feeling of being watched.
“Not there,” said Norman, running up next to her, a little out of breath.
“I put it in my purse, I know I did. I couldn’t have lost it in the past five minutes.”
“Maybe we should call the police,” said Norman.
“What are we reporting? Stolen paperwork? Rude strangers?” Wallis was getting angry, something she rarely did. She knew she had no control over what was happening, no way to get control.
“Try to take a deep breath, Wallis. You still have the drive?”
“Yes, I think so, it’s here,” she said, pulling the small race car out of her purse. “But that damn file.”
“There must be something,” said Norman, rubbing the back of his head, looking out toward West Broad Street.
“I know one damn thing I’m going to start with,” said Wallis. “I’m going to stop playing by their rules and make up some of my own.”
“What does that mean?”
Wallis’ cell phone started ringing. She dug it out of her purse and looked at the caller I.D. It was Stanley Woermer. Before she could answer the ringing stopped.
“It was Stanley,” she said to Norman, calling the number back. “No one’s answering. He made a point of saying he was never going to call me. Something must be wrong.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“No, but I think I can come up with the address,” said Wallis.
“Call Alan, let him check it out first,” said Norman. Alan Vitek was a former Navy Seal with his own investigative firm and was a regular consultant for the more complicated cases at Weiskopf, Jones and Bremmer.
“Okay, okay.”
“You want me to follow you to the office?”
“Have we ever done that before?” asked Wallis. “No, no, I’ll be okay. They were just trying to scare me.”
“I’m afraid it’s working,” said Norman.
Wallis looked at Norman and realized he was still breathing hard. “You’re really worried, aren’t you? That can’t be good if a Weiskopf is sweating. They’re very good, Norman, whoever they are. If I didn’t have you, I’m not sure I’d be able to find anyone else who would believe any of this. It’s like someone is trying to chip away at me.”
Norman walked Wallis to her car and hugged her tight, waiting by the car as she drove off, turning back out onto Broad Street. She gave him a wave and watched him get smaller in the rear view mirror. It wasn’t until she got back to the office and went to take her brief case out of the back seat that she saw it. Carefully scratched into the paint on the other side of the car was a small spider inside of a tight circle of stars with a line cut diagonally through the middle.
Chapter Seventeen
Tom Weiskopf sat outside of the local coffee shop in downtown New Berlin, nestled in Waukesha County, Wisconsin taking quickly glances down at his iPhone waiting for the transmission that came every day at this time. Top of the hour every afternoon at four o’clock central time.
New Berlin was former farm country that had reluctantly become a suburb back in the 1970’s to accommodate a white flight while still managing to hold on to some of its old rural identity.
Everyone knew who you were, what you did and what you had done to someone else. That kind of broad-based knowledge made it harder to hold a grudge and easier to forgive most transgressions. It also meant that after enough years had passed and Tom had ingratiated himself into the community he could ask for help, no questions asked, and there would be plenty of people at the ready.
There were very few lapel pins in this territory from either side of the dangerous game. Here, everyone was still related to everyone else unlike down South where a steady stream of outsiders were moving in. The new faces had made it easier all across the Bible Belt for Management to move in and start scouting out new recruits at the elementary school and warm up to parents at local civic groups.
Tom saw the potential in New Berlin when he first arrived back in 1987. He drove up West Main Street in a beaten up blue Ford E-150 van and saw the subtle glances from everyone in town. He knew they’d pass the word quickly that a suspicious looking character had arrived. That made it a perfect staging area. The next few years were spent joining the biggest local church, Church of the Redeemer, swinging a hammer on the annual volunteer repair crew for elderly folks around town and hanging out at the spring fish fries until he was accepted as one of their own.
He knew he was on the inside the afternoon someone arrived in town and the local gossip quickly reached him at the coffee shop.
It was a perfect system.