Anonymous Page 14

  Josie was silent. The two kids were getting their photos taken. Both parents had their cell phones out, because what if one phone didn’t save? The first photos were of the two kids, then the dad with the daughter, then the mom and dad with the daughter. Then the dad shaking the boy’s hand. Madison had never gone to prom. Watching moments like this in people’s lives, moments when they didn’t know they were being observed, was half the enjoyment Madison got out of surveillance. It had been what made her realize that most people in the world were good: people often hide their humanity. They only let it out when they think no one is looking. Madison investigated crimes, but she found the basic goodness of human beings to be the most compelling study.

  Josie found her voice finally. “I want to know if you have a thing for Felicity. All she could do was talk about how great you were.”

  Ohhhhhh, Madison thought. I get it now. “No, I do not have a thing for Felicity. I’m straight. This is purely professional.” But Madison thought that was nice: she hoped Felicity would find love out of all the misery she’d been through.

  “Okay, so then sorry, I guess.”

  “No problem.”

  The kids were now in front of the limo, so more photos were necessary—posing in front and then sitting with one leg out and then with the door shut waving out the open window. This was a moment these people would remember for the rest of their lives, and Madison got to be a part of it.

  “Okay, so I do have stuff I’d like to talk about. Not sure if it’s good stuff, but some of it might help. Can we meet, though? I don’t trust the phone.”

  Madison thought that was a bit dramatic: a holdover from the mid-twentieth century when an operator connected phone calls and could stay on the line through the call, listening. Nowadays, unless there was a reason a government agency had probable cause to tap your phone, you didn’t really have to worry about it. Then again, Madison guessed only Josie would know if that was a concern for her.

  “Sure. Can you come to La Jolla tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, I have the day off. Where do you want to meet?”

  “Why don’t you meet me at Bernini’s at eleven AM?”

  “Great. I will. And … yeah. Sorry. Felicity is just … I haven’t met someone like her in a long time,” Josie said.

  “No problem. See you tomorrow.”

  The limo was pulling away. The parents were standing watching it with their arms around each other. They walked back up the path into the house and closed the door.

  Great, now what am I going to watch? Madison thought. Sometimes on surveillance she felt like the world was a big TV screen and she wished she could flip the channel when something boring came on. Now there was nothing except an empty street and a red Mitsubishi that wasn’t moving.

  She remembered she wanted to look up where Samantha had lived at the time she went missing. She was sure the police had this information, but she hadn’t seen it anywhere. She grabbed her laptop out of her surveillance bag and balanced it on her lap, then set her cell phone to Hot Spot for the internet connection. She was able to see the red Mitsubishi over the top of the laptop screen.

  She put the name Samantha Erickson into her private investigator’s database. There was only one Samantha in the correct age range in San Diego County. She selected this name, and the database generated a comprehensive report. Madison knew that the average citizen would be alarmed at how much information she could get about them in less than thirty seconds. This report gave her every address that Samantha had used to apply for credit, and it also made the connection between Samantha and other people who were likely relatives or associates.

  Samantha had been twenty-five years old at the time of her disappearance four years before, and according to the database report, her most recent address was in Ocean Beach, which was a couple of towns south of La Jolla. It was a laid-back beach town with lots of yoga and acai bowls, but in recent years it had experienced an explosion of trendy restaurants and bars. Samantha had lived there for the two years prior to her disappearance. Madison couldn’t think of any other part of this case that involved Ocean Beach, other than Samantha’s friend Simone lived there, which now made sense.

  Out of curiosity, Madison viewed Samantha’s prior address. It was listed just below her most recent address in the report. What she saw meant nothing at first; it was just a house on a numbered street in San Diego. The realization came to her in waves: first, numbered streets were generally located only in Chula Vista and downtown San Diego; then, Madison was sitting on a numbered street right now, and Chula Vista was really far away from Samantha and the school she was going to, so it must be downtown San Diego where Samantha had lived on a numbered street; and finally, the dawning realization that Madison was sitting on the very street listed in the database. Her head flipped up as she searched the numbers on the houses next to her. And she found it. Two years before she went missing, Samantha Erickson had lived next door to Frank Bronson.

  Madison felt a rush of heat start near her chest and go up to the top of her head. What did this mean? It was unlikely that the police had this information. They might have looked at a report such as this, but only in the form of a credit report obtained with a warrant at the time she went missing in order to see if Samantha had used any of her credit cards. They wouldn’t have been interested at that time in where she had previously lived; it would have been irrelevant to finding her. And they were less likely to find a prior address if it wasn’t an address used for a driver’s license. If Samantha had still been using a childhood address for her driver’s license and just staying next to Frank, the police might not have access to that information.

  And now Madison knew something that the police probably didn’t know: there was a connection between Samantha Erickson and Elissa Alvarez’s boyfriend.

  It was almost completely dark outside her car now. She was glad the Mitsubishi was so shiny, because it reflected every light that came in contact with its red paint. There weren’t a lot of streetlights on this particular street, but even the ambient light reflected off the car. She didn’t know what she was going to do with this new information or what the ramifications of it were. But she was really glad she’d been doing surveillance on Frank when she’d discovered it. This was the best place she could be: watching the guy who had a connection to the two missing girls.

  She turned on the satellite radio to the Billy Joel channel. Some of his older songs, like “Summer at Highland Falls,” infused a mood into the scene outside her windshield. It was hot; she wished she had worn shorts instead of black yoga pants. She could see there was no one on the street around her, so she started the car and ran the car air conditioning for a bit. The cold air coming out of the vents felt delicious. She turned the car off after five minutes so as not to attract attention.

  She preferred to keep all of her windows up and the doors locked when she was doing surveillance. She had learned this the hard way. When she had first started out, she had done surveillance in an older car. She was sitting in the back seat one time, as she had been taught. She had the doors locked, but the front windows were down about four inches because it was summer. It was early in the morning but still baking hot. She’d been parked in a not-very-nice area in a rural part of San Diego County. All of the houses were set far back from the sidewalk. As she hid in the back seat, she saw a man walking along the sidewalk toward her car. Madison’s attention was drawn to him immediately, and her pulse quickened. As he got closer to her car his pace slowed, and he started glancing at the houses, which were set so far back from the street that no one would hear if Madison yelled. He couldn’t possibly see her in the car; his interest seemed to be simply in a car parked on a lonely street with the windows partly down. He was over six feet tall, with a massive head and huge hands. Madison had no weapon in the car.

  As he got closer to the car, he casually walked off the sidewalk and onto the gravel next to the road. He didn’t know there was a young woman in the back seat; Madis
on felt certain that if he’d known, it would have added to the attraction. Madison was strong and tall, but no woman had the upper-body strength of a man. It was one of the most terrifying moments of Madison’s life.

  With no warning, his demeanor went from casual to violent and determined: after strolling around the car, he suddenly grabbed the open window of the driver’s door and started shoving it down into the doorframe with all of his strength. He made grunting noises with each shove. His intention was clear: he was going to get the window open far enough that he could reach his hand in and unlock the door. He didn’t have far to go. Madison had to think quickly.

  As the man was moments from getting into her car where she was hiding, Madison lowered her voice to the deepest register she could find and said just one sentence in a booming voice: “Get the fuck away from the car, motherfucker.”

  Confirming Madison’s suspicion that this was an experienced criminal, the man did something that left Madison haunted by what could have occurred had she not acted so quickly: he casually lowered his arms and strolled away from the car. A young man looking for a joy ride in a car, who hadn’t really meant much harm, would have run like the wind away from that authoritative voice; any lesser criminal would have jumped in fear. This man was so used to his violent way of life that he knew that if he ran, he would draw attention to himself. So he casually strolled away, not a care in the world.

  Now Madison had a flashlight as well as a metal stick called a nightstick, which was actually illegal in California, so that she could have broken the guy’s wrist when he reached inside the car. And of course today she had a gun with her. Not that she wanted to shoot a gun inside a closed car, because she liked her eardrums.

  The red Mitsubishi backed out of the driveway. Madison had her left foot up on the dashboard and was lost in thought. She got her foot off the dashboard and down on the floor and the car started all in one smooth motion. Her car was an automatic start that did not require a key; she just pushed a button. However, it required that she have her foot on the brake, which lit up her taillights. She’d long ago turned off the automatic headlights on her car. She started the car with her right foot on the brake, but she quickly took her foot off the brake so there were no taillights. Madison didn’t know which way Frank would turn out of the driveway.

  Madison had learned long ago that someone leaving their home was on automatic pilot; they’d done it one million times before, and they usually did it fast. Madison had to stay right behind the car near their home so as not to lose them. Once they’d gotten clear of their neighborhood, she could back off. If he turned up the street toward Broadway, Madison could fall into line right behind him. However, if he came her way on the street, she would have to make a U-turn to follow him, and someone making a U-turn was noticeable in a rearview mirror.

  He went toward Broadway. Madison said “Thank you” out loud. She smoothly pulled into the street to follow. She’d gotten her mind off on a tangent and hadn’t figured out what it meant that Samantha Erickson had at one time lived next door to Frank. Now she had to put her entire mind onto tailing so that she didn’t lose him. She’d have to come back to that new lead later.

  Frank had turned right onto Broadway and was now making another right onto 25th Street. Madison had backed off slightly, but when tailing someone on city streets, it was easy to lose them at a red light. She had to stay close enough that she could make all of the stoplights he made but far enough back that he didn’t notice someone was tailing him. She tried to stay in his blind spot in the right lane next to him rather than behind him. That way she could be almost even with him as they approached intersections in case the light turned red. As they got closer to the freeway entrance, she got directly behind him; she didn’t want to miss seeing which direction he went on the freeway, if in fact he got on it. Madison knew that if she missed his entrance to the freeway, he would be gone in less than a minute.

  Frank had been driving fairly sedately up to this point. As he made the left turn onto G Street, which was the entrance to the 94 freeway east, he picked up speed. It was a somewhat dramatic uptick in speed and made Madison concerned that he had seen her and was trying to get away. She had to make a judgment call: if she let him get on the freeway without being right behind him, she would lose him quickly, but if he knew she was following him, she would never find out where he was going. She chose to leave about six car lengths between them. As he made the left, she stayed at the stop sign for a minute, watching his car get on the freeway. Then she turned left and floored her Ford Explorer’s V-6 engine.

  He had jumped over into the far-left lane and was about three-quarters of a mile ahead. Madison was lucky he had a bright-red car. She gunned her engine up to ninety miles per hour and closed the distance, staying in the far-right lane. Madison loved tailing someone on the freeway: in California, the exits to the freeway were generally on the right-hand side, so her subject would have to travel from the left side of the freeway to the right side to get off of it. Madison could stay on the right so that the person looking in their review mirror saw nothing behind them, but they would have to move in front of Madison to exit the freeway.

  They stayed like this for about ten miles: Frank in the fast lane and Madison in the slow lane. Madison gently passed slower cars. Frank was now keeping his speed just about five miles an hour over the speed limit; unlikely to get pulled over by a cop. Madison stayed at about the speed limit, so she was about a quarter of a mile behind him, but all the way over on the right side. There was no way he would think someone was following him, because there was no one behind him in his lane. Madison got into the familiar rhythm she had when tailing someone. She breathed deeply and enjoyed the sights. She had found that if she put her attention on the person in the car she was following, they would know it and would turn to see if someone was behind them—the same way a person could get someone in a restaurant to turn and look at them if they stared hard enough. So she concentrated on putting her attention away from the car she was tailing. Sometimes she yawned to induce a feeling of boredom in herself and to lower her heart rate and blood pressure.

  About thirteen miles after they had gotten on the freeway, he transitioned to the 67 North in El Cajon. This was the city where Elissa had lived and where her mother lived. Was he going to visit someone there? Madison loved the thrill of wondering where her subject was taking her.

  She didn’t have any music on in the car. It required every ounce of her attention not to lose the subject while also not getting spotted. She continued to pass slower cars; she avoided any fast movement that could be seen from Frank’s rearview mirror. He continued in the number-one lane for another twelve miles.

  They were now officially in the boonies. They had left civilization and were traveling in the outskirts of San Diego County. There was nothing around them but rolling hills and chaparral. Madison was starting to get nervous. If he got off the freeway right here, theirs would be the only two cars getting off. It would be difficult for her to follow him, because he would wonder why another car was getting off the freeway in the middle of nowhere at night. There were no houses, there were no gas stations, they were in no-man’s-land. They were traveling on the freeway in an area that wasn’t even an incorporated city; it was just the wilds of San Diego County. Madison started planning how she would follow him off the freeway. She would have to slow way down while still on the freeway so that she didn’t come off the exit right behind him.

  It turned out she was lucky in one respect: he didn’t exit the freeway at a godforsaken empty expanse of land; he continued until the freeway turned into Main Street in Ramona, a town in unincorporated San Diego County. Madison felt like it was as close to the wild, wild West as you could get in modern-day California, though she was somewhat more comfortable now that they had reached a bit of civilization. While it still had the architecture and sentiment of the old West, it also had a Jack in the Box and an Albertsons supermarket. There were people out and about even at nin
e at night, so she wasn’t the only car behind Frank as they rolled through town.

  Her relief was short-lived: it didn’t take long to get through the town of Ramona at this time of night. Just a few stoplights and they were once again surrounded by chaparral; no streetlights, and just one other car to obscure Frank’s view of Madison following him. Once that other car turned off, Madison would have no cover.

  Now that there were no cities between them and the Anza-Borrego Desert, Madison started to get really anxious. While it was true that Frank might have needed a drive to clear his head, his route had not seemed abstract or circuitous; he had driven straight to the outback. People often thought of San Diego as being fun in the sun at the beach, and while that was true, there was probably more natural forest and desert than beach in San Diego County. Frank was currently taking her in the direction of an empty desert or the Cleveland National Forest. In just a few miles they would be deciding which way they turned, but either choice involved no other people.

  He was heading right for the perfect place to hide a body.

  Madison was trying not to jump to conclusions, but there was not a lot of jumping required at this point. He was a suspect in the disappearance of his girlfriend, and as far as Madison was concerned, he was now a suspect in the disappearance of another girl who used to live next door to him. He was leading Madison out into the middle of nowhere on the very day that she had scared him into thinking the police were onto him. Was he going to check to make sure that the body was still hidden? Or bodies? Should she call Tom? He had made fun of her for wanting to do this surveillance. He didn’t deserve a phone call. But she also didn’t want to be out in the desert alone with a murderer checking on his burial site, with no one knowing where she was. My God, Madison thought. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going.

  Frank turned left at a small break in the shrubs and trees that was more a path than a street. Madison couldn’t see a sign indicating if it was a road with a name. She didn’t dare make the turn directly after him, so she kept going straight as he made the left. As soon as he was out of sight, she made a fast U-turn and came back to the spot where he had turned. She crept her car up a few feet and looked down the road. She could see his taillights; they were bouncing because the road wasn’t paved. Madison turned off her headlights so he wouldn’t look in his rearview mirror and see someone stopped there. She kept checking her own rearview mirror, because this would be a perfect time for someone to come around a corner and run into the back of her, since now she had no taillights. Frank’s car continued bouncing, and then the lights slowly disappeared. Had he turned? Had the road veered and there were shrubs blocking her view? There were no lights and she couldn’t see what was up ahead.