“Setting up his escape plan if he’s about to get caught. I don’t know. It just seems crowded here.”
“Look around. It’s one of the biggest and the cheapest lots. Almost every other light’s burned out, and I haven’t seen a single security patrol since you left. Just a bunch of exhausted people, most of them smelling like cheap airline booze, stumbling off that shuttle bus every time it pulls up and walking to their cars in the dark. This is why he drove clear across SoCal tonight, Luke. It’s why he switched cars, walked half of LAX, changed outfits. Because this is his next abduction site.”
“Maybe. Why go to the terminal at all?”
“Shuttle stop’s got a camera on it. Look.” He follows the direction of her finger; she’s right. “If he pulls in and never boards the shuttle, that looks suspicious. If he hails a taxi close to the airport but not at the airport, that’s also suspicious, and something a cabdriver might remember later. If he goes straight to the taxi line without changing clothes, he’ll stand out when they review the footage. I’m telling you, Luke, tonight we saw firsthand why this guy doesn’t end up on cameras unless he wants to. Everything he’s done is about blending into crowds. Going with the flow. Not popping out later when some cop has to watch thirty-some-odd hours of surveillance footage. And he has to do all this because of his face. It’s distinctive and weird. The nose doesn’t match the rest of it. It’s the kind of thing a lone cabdriver late at night might remember later, especially if the pickup place is odd. But in a crowd, in a cap and glasses, he just blends in.”
“So he ends up on camera. They just don’t notice him when they review the footage.”
“Exactly.”
Neither of them says anything for a while.
“He’s smart. He’s resourceful. He has money and means, which gives him time to plan. And he’s figured out a way to get his message across to the public without escalating his crimes. In other words, he is the worst-case scenario when it comes to a serial killer.”
“And it looks like we’re about to get him,” he says.
Maybe it isn’t the first time he’s seen her smile since they were reunited, but it certainly feels that way.
Their burner phones both buzz at the time.
It’s Bailey.
Finally found something in his computer that might help.
39
He’s on the move.
When Luke’s text message arrives, she starts in the direction of the nearest escalator. Friday night at LAX, just after 9:30 p.m. Traffic oozes through the airport’s U-shaped departures level like a mudflow. The worst of it’s outside Tom Bradley International. There, hordes of passengers are arriving to check in early for their overnight flights to Asia, some pushing carts loaded with enough luggage to provide a family of four with a fresh change of clothes for a month. For the past few minutes she’s been weaving through the crowd outside, taking cues from Pemberton’s stroll through nearby terminals several nights before. Trying not to stand out on security cameras in case she has to make another visit tomorrow night.
Now she moves with more determination.
Even though she hasn’t been anywhere near a plane since they got to the airport hours before, she’s dressed like Luke’s idea of a weary college student: a loose-fitting canvas jacket from a thrift store, a baggy green blouse from T.J. Maxx. The blue jeans she wears are from her own wardrobe, but the Velcro tennis shoes are brand-new, bought for the occasion, easy to take on and off at a security checkpoint she’s never going to pass through. The backpack was new once, but it’s also from a thrift store, handpicked because its straps are tattered and it smells of cigarette smoke. The carry-on she pulls is cheap and plain, bought used from one of those stores near the airport that sells off unclaimed luggage, and she’s divided a passel of her own clothes and toiletries between it and the tobacco-infused backpack.
Once she reaches the arrivals level, she starts for the nearest shuttle stop. She’s memorized the location of each one.
An hour and a half before, at the Westin LAX, Pemberton finished up a talk on how platelet-rich infusions can provide contours during facial surgery. Even though his next conference event isn’t until Sunday at 3:00 p.m.—he’s listed as a “special guest” at the closing night cocktail party—he reserved a room for both nights with a guaranteed late checkout Sunday evening.
Bailey discovered all this in the doctor’s in-box. Initially he’d searched for e-mails from airlines and travel agencies. When he came up short, he moved on to hotel chains; that’s when he found the hotel reservation and registration info for the SoCal Regional Medical Suppliers Conference. As Luke put it, 8:00 p.m. Friday to 2:00 p.m. Sunday is the red zone; the time when the conditions for the doctor to slip off and make his abduction are ideal. Winnow those down to nighttime hours, when arrivals and departures are steady, and they’ve got a nice, tight window to work in.
And now, according to one of the guys Marty’s stationed around the Westin, the doctor’s on the move.
Which exit did he take? Charley types back.
Point A. It was Luke’s code name for the main entrance.
Earlier that day, she and Luke met Marty and two guys he introduced as his best dudes at a gas station fifteen minutes from the hotel: Trev Rucker, a wiry former marine sniper who seemed to have no use for blinking, and whose new and starchy-looking long-sleeved shirt hid ornate tattoos, and Dave Brasher, a towering, bald-headed wall of muscle who’d apparently learned a mix of patience and perceptiveness doing things Marty didn’t want to mention aside from the fact that they’d earned him a stint in Lompoc. Both men had what Marty called long-term sobriety, and both seemed willing to do anything Marty told them to. Charley cared more about the latter.
The departure of Brasher and Rucker from Temecula has left a crew of three at the surveillance point above the vineyard; one of whom rotates down to the RV at Pala Casino for a five-hour nap before returning to relieve the next in line.
Here at the airport, Brasher’s on Point A, the Westin entrance; Rucker’s on Point B, the hotel’s service entrance connecting to a sidewalk that travels most of the way to the long-term parking lot; and Marty’s at Point C, halfway between the hotel and long-term lot.
Luke’s at Ground Zero, casing the lot on foot, keeping eyes on the brown Camry. As soon as the shuttle she’s about to board gets within striking distance, she’ll text him, and he’ll head back to his Jeep, which is parked inside the lot, and monitor the feed from her contact lenses.
But for now the shuttle is taking its sweet time to show up.
Marty says definitely headed for the lot, comes Luke’s text. All three guys tailing.
Tell them not to get too close.
They know.
Tell them anyway.
K.
She waits, bouncing on her heels, running through everything she doesn’t know.