“No. Sorry, man.”
“Just one, or a bunch?”
Nate screwed up his face, thinking. “Not a bunch. One, maybe two.”
Jack returned to the Sonata and climbed in beside Effrem, who asked, “Any luck?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Möller took something — a map or brochure.”
“So?” asked Effrem.
“How long between the time he got gas and he checked into the Best Western in Hartford? Five hours, give or take? But it’s at most an hour drive. What was he doing the rest of the time?”
Jack was missing something. He could feel it nibbling at the back of his brain like a song you can hear but can’t name. He closed his eyes and mentally backtracked…
“Huh,” he muttered.
He got out of the car and went back into the store. “Hey, Nate, you still have that picture on the office TV?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re the man. Be right back.”
Jack walked to the office and sat down at the card table and stared at the image of Möller standing beside his car. Jack leaned in, squinted.
The car was a Ford Fusion Hybrid.
Jack walked out, gave Nate a “Dude” and a thumbs-up, then returned to the car.
“Effrem, Google this: Ford Fusion Hybrid tank size and range.”
It took thirty seconds. “Fourteen gallons, forty-three miles per gallon, highway. So that makes the range… six hundred miles per tank.”
“It’s three hundred miles from D.C. to here, and he put in thirteen bucks’ worth of gas. That’s, what, seven gallons?”
“Yeah, half a tank,” Effrem confirmed.
“Then he drives forty miles up the road to Hartford and checks into the Best Western. Why stop here? Why not push through?”
“Maybe he was hungry.”
“And why use a credit card for such a small purchase? Möller’s too savvy to not be carrying emergency cash.”
“You think he’s leading us? Leaving bread crumbs?”
“It’s very possible.” The idea that Möller would use the credit card Jack had found in the Alexandria motel had been a stretch from the beginning. Wanting to believe in something isn’t the same as it being real, Jack reminded himself.
On the other hand, why would Möller bother playing them at all? Why not disappear? Jack had no answer.
He grabbed his phone and called up the last Enquestor alert on Möller’s credit card: Best Western Hartford Hotel & Suites, 185 Brainard Road, Hartford, CT 06114. Pre-auth room charge. Jack showed Effrem the screen and said, “It’s a pre-authorization, not a charge.”
“Oh, man, sorry.”
“Forget it. I should have caught it. Möller doesn’t have a passport or he would’ve gotten on a plane, and you can’t rent a room without showing identification.”
“What now? Have we lost him?”
“Go back inside and grab brochures for Amtrak, Metro-North, and Greyhound. Nate’s seen my face too much.”
Effrem did as Jack asked and returned a minute later with the schedules. He handed them to Jack. “What’re you thinking, Jack?”
“Greyhound allows prepaid or gift tickets. Someone else buys it and the passenger picks it up at the station with a password. As for trains, it’s not as easy to get a ticket without ID, but it’s doable. Once you’re aboard, if you can bypass the random checks, you’re set. Somebody like Möller would find a way to make it work.”
Jack scanned the schedules. Greyhound, Amtrak, and Shore Line East were hubbed at New Haven’s Union Station, about ten minutes to the north. But the Metro-North Railroad had a station in West Haven itself — about two hundred yards south of Mike’s Mini Mart.
Jack explained his thinking to Effrem, who said, “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say he stopped here because it’s close to the West Haven Station. Where could he go from here?”
“And why not drive another ten minutes to New Haven?” Jack added. “Union Station would give him a lot more travel options.”
Jack could feel his brain spiraling as it tried to plot all the variables. He caught himself and pulled back. He’d learned the hard way that the only way to stop the spiral was to make a choice, to take action, whether right or wrong.
Jack studied the schedules again. On instinct, he dismissed Greyhound. Too confined, he decided. If pressed, it would be easier to maneuver and hide on a train. That left trains: Amtrak, Shore Line East, Metro-North.
Jack said, “Let’s think it through: If Möller’s goal is still the Canadian border, he’d want as straight a shot as possible. Shore Line only goes as far north as New London, so scratch that. If he takes Amtrak up to Boston, he’s got a lot more destination options, but more transfers.”
Effrem added, “More chances for delays and complications.”
“Bigger stations, tighter security.”
“That leaves Metro-North,” Jack said. “And leaves him…” He traced his finger down the schedule grid. “The Waterbury line. Two departures: seven-thirty and ten-fifty.”
Effrem checked his watch. “It left over an hour ago.”
The train had left, but Jack was by no means certain Möller had been on either it or the earlier one. As reasoned as their speculation was, it was still speculation.
But maybe there was a way to confirm it.
In that moment Jack felt the absurdity of the situation crash down on him. One phone call to the Secret Service and Möller’s chances of escape would drop to almost nil. Yet here he was sitting in the parking lot of a gas station posing as a private investigator with a rookie journalist while studying train schedules.
Just hit speed-dial, Jack thought. And it’s finished.
No.
He could sense he was locked into the same course he’d chosen just hours after he’d been attacked. He was being impulsive, undisciplined. Focused on the trees rather than the forest. All the things Gerry Hendley had cited as reason for his exile from The Campus.
Jack didn’t care.
With Effrem navigating, Jack drove south down Saw Mill Road to Railroad Avenue and turned right. The station’s parking lot, divided into north and south areas that sat astride the tracks and the red-brick and glass terminal building, was several acres of blacktop enclosed by a hurricane fence. Under the glow of streetlamps Jack could see that this lot, the northernmost one, was a quarter full of cars, but there were no pedestrians visible. It made sense. The evening’s last train had left.
“You really think he’d park in here?” asked Effrem.
“No, but I would if I were him. As long as you’re paid up, nobody’ll give your car a second glance. If I were on the run, I wouldn’t bother hunting for public parking in the middle of the night.”
“A lot of cars.”
“Don’t kill the mood,” Jack replied.
When Jack reached the lot entrance he turned in, then followed the pavement arrow into the west side of the lot.
“We’re looking for a dark Ford Fusion Hybrid,” Jack said.
“D.C. plates, right? EB something.”
“Right, but don’t key on that. He might have swapped plates.”
Jack started down the first row, eyes fixed on the cars out his window while Effrem did the same on his side, murmuring to himself, “No, wrong color… Uh-huh, that’s an SUV… Oh, close but not quite right…”
Jack had to smile. It was hard not to like the kid.
Kid, Jack thought. He didn’t have that many years on Effrem — not chronologically, at least.
They reached the end of the row, turned, and started down the next one.