“Is Rachel a responsible person?” Daniels asked.
“She is. She house-sat for me many times, and was very conscientious.”
Daniels looked at Lancaster and frowned. They were thinking the same thought: Baye had been abducted by Dexter Hudson and Devin Highnote while at the mall. Unless her abductors had left telltale clues — which so far, they hadn’t done — their chances of finding her weren’t great. But that didn’t mean they weren’t going to try.
“Which mall would Rachel have gone to?” Daniels asked.
“Tyrone Square,” Ward said. “It’s not far.”
“Any idea where she might have bought her smoothies?”
“She liked the Smoothie King,” Ward said. “It’s on the main level.”
Chapter 31
Retail malls were dying, and Tyrone Square was no exception, the parking lot so empty that it felt like the entrance to a ghost town.
Daniels parked by the main entrance, and they went inside. A directory showed Smoothie King on the other end of the mall, and they started walking. Being inside a mall, looking for clues to a kidnapping, felt like déjà vu all over again.
Dexter Hudson had tailed Elsie Tanner at the Citrus Park Mall before following her home. He’d never figured out how Dexter had tracked Elsie to the mall, or known which stores she’d be shopping in. And now Dexter had done it again, tracking down Rachel Baye, who was trying to keep her whereabouts unknown.
A wall plaque that said PROPERTY SERVICES/SECURITY caught his eye. He stopped walking, and Daniels halted as well. She shot him a questioning look.
“We’re not going to learn anything new in the smoothie store,” he said. “But we might catch a break watching the mall’s surveillance videos.”
“What are you expecting to find?”
“Dexter is hunting his victims in shopping malls. How does he know they’re there? Maybe the mall videos will tell us. It’s worth a quick look.”
“I think we should speak to the manager at Smoothie King. Want to split up?”
“Not really. Mall security won’t do what I ask them. But they will do what you ask them.”
“All right, we’ll do mall security first.”
The security office was a cavern with a wall of ancient video monitors. Daniels introduced herself and asked to see the videos taken outside the Smoothie King earlier that morning. The videos were retrieved and played. A line of at least twenty customers stood outside the Smoothie King, which had yet to open. The time stamp said that the video had been taken at 8:35 that morning.
“The mall doesn’t open until nine, but management started opening the south entrance early because the owner of the Smoothie King was complaining he was losing business,” the security guard in charge said.
“What time does the Smoothie King open?” Daniels asked.
“Eight thirty. A lot of people place their orders online. Is there someone in particular you’re looking for?”
Lancaster retrieved Baye’s Facebook page and showed it to the guard. “Her name’s Rachel, and she works in a yoga studio. She’s blonde and athletic.”
The guard enlarged the images on the screen. They both leaned in.
“I see her. She’s the thirteenth person in line,” Lancaster said.
“How unlucky for her,” Daniels said under her breath.
The minutes slipped by. At 8:40 a.m., a man wearing a black Stetson appeared on the video. The man was not in line, but seemed preoccupied with looking at the customers who were. The man stepped backward and disappeared.
“That looked like Dexter.” To the guard, he said, “Where do you think the guy wearing the cowboy hat went?”
“Probably to the south parking lot,” the guard said. “Should I pull up the videos?”
“Yes,” they both said.
A video of the south parking lot appeared. It was shaded, the vehicles easy to make out. A man wearing a black Stetson hustled out of the mall and made a straight line to a parked car. The car was caked in dirt and missing a hub cap.
The driver’s window came down, and a man stuck his head out.
“Please freeze the frame,” Daniels said.
The guard froze the frame.
“Now, blow it up,” she said.
The guard enlarged the frame so the man’s face became visible. The brutish features were easily identifiable, even sporting a scruffy beard. It was Highnote.
“Okay, start the video again,” she said.
The video resumed playing. Dexter knelt down, and Highnote passed him a pack of smokes and a lighter. He lit up, and the two men began to talk. The conversation became heated, the disagreement almost palpable.
“What’s this about?” Daniels asked.
“It looks like Highnote wanted to bail, only Dexter wouldn’t let him,” Lancaster said.
“Do you think Highnote got cold feet?”
“Uh-huh. He’s fresh out of prison, and doesn’t want to go back.”
The two men came to an agreement, and Highnote rolled up his window. Dexter came around the car and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Looks like Dexter won the argument,” Daniels said.
She asked him to advance the video sixty seconds. The guard did as told, then hit play. They watched Baye exit the mall holding a cardboard tray with four smoothies, which she balanced on one hand, her cell phone and car keys in the other. She hopped into a pink Toyota Prius and drove away. She was talking on her cell phone without a care in the world. Highnote and Dexter followed her out of the lot.
“Those guys look like trouble,” the guard said.
“They are trouble,” Daniels said. “I need a copy of the two videos we just watched. Can you email them to me?”
Daniels gave him a business card, and the guard agreed to send her the videos. Taking out her notepad, she took down the guard’s name, title, and email address.
Lancaster stared into space. Based upon what he’d seen, Highnote had gotten cold feet and tried to bail on Dexter, which meant he still had a conscience. Most criminals didn’t have consciences, but there were exceptions. But Highnote was weak, and had let Dexter talk him into staying.
It made him think of Logan. His brother and Highnote were alike in several ways. Logan had also been weak, and had let some guys talk him into driving the getaway car for a botched heist. Then, in prison, he’d let Dexter talk him into joining his gang. Both were bad decisions that had cost his brother dearly.
But Logan still had a conscience, and had saved his life at the Jayhawk Motel. Logan had been talked into the bad things that he’d done, while the goods things had come from the heart. Logan had been corrupted, the same as Highnote. Neither would have gone down these roads had Dexter not talked them into it. Lancaster told himself that he was going to pay the bastard back if it was the last thing he did.
“Jon? You coming?”
Daniels stood at the door, ready to depart. He followed her out.
Daniels’s car was baking, and she rolled down the windows to let the bubble of hot air escape. She started the engine and said, “Put your seat belt on.”
“Not yet,” he said. “We need to talk about this.”
She threw the car into park and waited.
“Echo told me that Dexter could track anyone by knowing their email address. I’m starting to believe there’s some validity to this,” he said.
“How does it work?”
“It’s somehow connected to the victim’s cell phone. Just about everyone has a smartphone, and can send and receive emails. Dexter is sending his victims an email and then tracking their location from their cell phone.”