High Noon

noon. Buy you lunch after if you do a good job.”
    “I’ll be there. You bring those high dollars, boy, ’cause I’m itching to spend them for you.”
    She hung up, literally rubbed her hands together. A glance at the clock told her she had time to spread the word before fixing herself up for a trip to Mark D’s.
     
    The tactical team was already in place and moving in when Phoebe arrived. It was a good location, she thought with a look around. Well off the beach, older house, a little run-down.
    For the second time that day, she drew her weapon as the team broke in the front door with a small battering ram.
    “No car,” Harrison commented. “No bike, no scooter.”
    “No Walken. He’s not here, but now he’s got no place to come back to.” She waited, blood pumping, for the all clear.
    “Lieutenant.” Sykes jogged over. “DMV came through. He’s got an oh-six Escalade. Got the tag number. APB’s going out.”
    “You do good work, Detective.”
    “We’re clear,” Harrison announced.
    He’d likely rented it furnished, Phoebe decided. The furniture was old, cheap but serviceable. He kept it tidy, she noted. No clutter, no fuss. The bed was made with military precision, and on the table beside it stood a framed photo of Angela Brentine and a single pink rose.
    Thought of himself as a soldier and a romantic, she concluded as she took notes.
    “Second bedroom’s locked,” Harrison told her. “Window’s covered. They’re checking for booby traps before they take it down.”
    “Spartan, wouldn’t you say? Military neatness. The bare bones of a field HQ. We should talk to the landlord, anyone in the houses and cottages round about.” She moved to the closet. “His clothes are still here, neatly hung.”
    “Toothbrush, shaving cream, basic toiletries in the bath,” Harrison told her. His face was hard, his eyes somber as they met hers. “He isn’t running.”
    “No.” She heard the crash of the second door going down. “But that doesn’t mean he’s coming back.”
    “Lieutenant?” A member of the tactical team came to the doorway. “I think you’ll want to see this. Found his nest.”
    When she walked across the hall, her blood went cold. Photographs papered an entire wall. Her face, over and over, in every possible expression. Photos of her standing in front of her house, talking with Mrs. Tiffany, walking with Carly in the park, standing with her mother on the veranda.
    The whole family on what had to have been St. Patrick’s Day. One of her moving into Duncan’s arms the night they’d had dinner on his boat. Her sitting on the bench, like Forrest Gump, in Chippewa Park, alone, then with Marvella. Of her shopping, eating, driving.
    A shudder ran through her before she looked away.
    Across the room was a large head-and-shoulders shot of Angela, with candles and bud vases of pink roses crowded on the table below it.
    She studied the workbench, a long table, shelves. On them, meticulously arranged, were a laptop computer, a police scanner, chemicals, wires, what she thought must be timing mechanisms, tape, rope and tools. She spotted the shotgun, the rifle.
    “He took his handguns.”
    “He’s got a couple of wigs, glasses, false beards, makeup, face putty,” Liz said as she crossed over. “No journal. Maybe on that,” she said with a nod toward the laptop.
    “Why didn’t he take it? Why didn’t he take what was important to him?” Because it shook her down to the bone, Phoebe kept her back to the wall of photos. “Switch locations at least. He knows we have his name, his photo, and someone’s going to point us here.”
    “He couldn’t have been sure we’d ID’d him until he talked to you,” Liz pointed out.
    “He stays a step ahead. Why is he suddenly a step behind? Expensive equipment, easily portable, just left here.”
    She picked up a camera, turned it over, saw the painted pink rosebud. Angela’s camera.
    “He planned to come back for it.”
    Carefully, Phoebe set the camera back down. “I don’t think so. I think he’s done here, and that we’re exactly where he wants us to be. But where is he?”
    She stepped to another wall, covered with photos of Savannah. Banks, shops, restaurants, museums, exterior, interior.
    “He doesn’t waste anything. Everything has a purpose, even if it’s thumbing his nose. So why does he take these?”
    “And where are the others?” Liz wondered. “He’s taken some down—you can see where he had other shots