“My ride back.”
“Good man. You better be buying his drinks. Sign here.” Michaels held the clipboard up for him to initial. “You know where you’re going?”
“Like I live here.”
“I heard that,” the guard said and took out his phone. “All right, last thing. I gotta take your picture.”
“Really?” That wasn’t standard.
“Damn security keeps crapping out, so I’m keeping a photo log of everyone coming in until they get around to fixing it.”
Damn, damn, damn. Normally you could count on lowest-common-denominator thinking, but leave it to good old Bill Michaels to blow the curve. Gibson had shut off the security, and Michaels had found a sensible, outside-the-box solution. Man deserved another commendation. Unfortunately, Gibson couldn’t see a way around it.
“Yeah, whatever,” he managed through a forced smile.
Michaels stepped back, lined up his camera, and took a photograph. “All right, see you in a few.”
“Few as I can manage.”
The gate swung up, and Gibson pulled forward to wait for Swonger to be checked through. He slipped his gloves back on while watching in the rearview. He wasn’t sold on Swonger’s ability to play any part but his own, but Swonger talked his way through and the gate went up.
They were in.
If everything else went as smoothly, they’d be on their way in twenty minutes. They started toward the intake lot at the back of the garage, but once they passed beyond Bill Michaels’s line of sight, they killed their lights and arced instead toward the impound lot. Based on Deja Noble’s map, the first vehicle would be in spot 562. Gibson breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the 2013 black Mustang that was the identical twin of the one Swonger was driving.
Swonger got out of his car livid. “Guard took my picture.”
“He took mine too. Now’s not the time.”
Swonger started to say something else.
“Not now. Stick to the plan.”
That temporarily stifled Swonger, who moved to the driver’s door and took out a power amplifier that cost all of eighty dollars. Ordinarily a car’s keyless fob needed to be within a few feet to automatically unlock the doors. The amplifier extended that range to a hundred yards. Swonger turned it on, and the impounded Mustang’s fob, locked somewhere inside the depot garage but suddenly in range, opened the Mustang’s doors helpfully. Swonger got in and set to work on the ignition. The Mustang roared to life before Gibson could switch vehicles—Swonger was every bit as good as advertised. He backed it out, and Gibson parked the replacement Mustang in the spot, wiping it down before exiting. The impounded Mustang had been used in the commission of a crime. That much Gibson knew. He also knew that when trial time came and the VIN didn’t match, the car would be rendered inadmissible as evidence, gutting the case. And that would put Deja Noble’s crew in very good standing with someone it paid to be on good terms with. Deja hadn’t shown a lot of interest in divulging much beyond that. For the sake of Gibson’s conscience, it would have been nice if they’d committed only a simple moving violation, but that was wishful thinking.
The line kept receding into the distance.
“How are we looking?” Lea asked in his ear.
He looked back toward the front of the lot. It seemed quiet. Apart from the candid photography, everything was going as well as could be hoped.
“One down, one to go. How’s it looking out there?”
“Oh, you know, just a girl on the side of a road at one in the morning, waiting for Ted Bundy to stop and offer roadside assistance.”
“Get a selfie with him if he does.”
“You’re not funny.”
Gibson got back in his van, and their motley caravan made its way to the second stop on their itinerary. The Mustang was for Deja; they’d come for a van. It was waiting in spot 354, exactly as Deja had promised. It seemed Virginia had quietly purchased a Stingray a few years back and mounted it in a black panel van. All had been peaches and cream until the Richmond Times-Dispatch had written an exposé that forced the governor to explain why the state police had been capturing the public’s cell-phone data without a warrant. A very good question, Gibson thought, and hard to answer. The resulting scandal had seen both the chief of police and the Stingray put out to pasture. The chief had retired to Boca Raton while the Stingray quietly lived here in spot 354, undisturbed for eighteen months now. Swonger and he would trade their van for the van housing the Stingray, and with a little luck it might be years before anyone even noticed. Even when they did, the police might not be in any hurry to admit that they hadn’t disposed of the Stingray as promised.
Police vans didn’t come standard with keyless fobs, so Swonger had to jimmy the door the old-fashioned way. While he worked on the ignition, Gibson swapped the two vans’ plates. They were identical in every other way except for the four antennae on the roof. He would roll the dice that Michaels wouldn’t notice them in the dark. Gibson slid open the side door and climbed in back to make sure everything was there.
A built-in desk ran the length of the driver’s side wall. Gibson sat at the flip-down desk chair and scanned the racks of communications gear until his eyes alighted upon the Stingray module itself. A good start, but fixed to the end of the desk, the docking station for a laptop sat empty. Gibson’s heart nearly stopped. The Stingray module was no more than an expensive doorstop without the laptop that ran its software. Desperate to know he hadn’t crossed the line for nothing, he rifled through the equipment drawers under the desk. He eventually found it and breathed a heavy sigh of relief when the laptop snapped neatly into place. They were in business.
The van’s engine flared to life, and Swonger took that as a signal to start yapping about Bill Michaels and the photographs. Gibson stayed silent, hoping Swonger would talk himself out, but instead Swonger built himself a head of steam.
“We gotta do something,” Swonger said.
“We’re not done yet. Let’s go.”
“I’m serious,” Swonger said but got back into the Mustang.
They pulled around to a door on the far side of the main building, out of sight of the front gate. The last item on Deja’s to-do list. As long as they didn’t dawdle, Michaels shouldn’t be a problem.
The door was locked, but with security off, it was simple work for Swonger. He could open a lot more than cars.
“I need ten minutes,” Gibson told him at the door.
“Need to deal with that guard,” Swonger said.
Gibson didn’t answer him. He didn’t want to get dragged into an argument here. “Stay in the blind spot until I get back.”
“We’re not done talking about this.”
“Fine, but later,” Gibson said and slipped inside; Swonger relocked the door behind him.
Gibson toggled his radio. “Lea, turn everything back on.”