“If he ever lived here,” I say, “he doesn’t anymore.”
Lorenz heads around one side of the house and I take the other, glancing in windows, testing doors. The house is locked tight, but the garage door isn’t. I push through into the stifling heat of the enclosed space. There are no vehicles inside. A wall of cardboard boxes three deep and five or six high occupies one side of the garage, each one labeled in black marker: OFFICE, CLOTHES, SHOES, CHINA, BEDROOM, TOYS. The list goes on. I run my finger over one of the boxes, leaving a trail in the dust. They’ve been in storage for a while.
Using my lockblade, I open a couple of the boxes to see if the labels and contents match up. They do. There’s a box marked PHOTOS, which contains baby albums, framed wedding portraits, and stacks of loose pictures. I grab some and start sifting. The man in the tux kissing the bride, the man cradling the newborn in the crook of his arm is the same one in the photo Bea Kuykendahl gave me along with the file. This is a lot of trouble to go through to build a cover. Too much.
“What did you find?” Lorenz asks.
“A bunch of photos.”
I’m about to toss them back when one of the images catches my eye. It’s a photo of Brandon Ford flanked by two other men, his arms draped over their shoulders. Behind him, an older woman looks into the camera, her eyes red from the flash. There’s something about the expression on their faces-maybe the confidence of youth, maybe the camaraderie-that speaks to me. Here’s my victim, alive and happy. Seeing him that way helps to humanize him. I tuck the picture inside my jacket and close the box.
“I’m gonna call the ex-wife, since she doesn’t seem to live here.”
“I’ll make the call,” I say. “You drive.”
I dial the number from the front seat of the car, the air-conditioner blasting. She answers after five or six rings, sounding frazzled and breathless. I can hear cartoons in the background, children’s voices. I keep it brief, identifying myself and asking for a location where we can meet face-to-face. She gives me the address of an apartment complex on Westheimer outside Beltway 8, maybe halfway between our present location and downtown if we swing down south a ways. I tell her to expect us within the hour.
“What did she sound like?” Lorenz asks.
“She sounded young. She sounded confused, maybe a little worried. I could hear kids in the background. There were two in the photos.”
While he drives, I kill time going through his research. Brandon Ford has a gun dealer’s license, but he doesn’t seem to have a storefront. Instead, he works out of a rental office on a by-appointment basis, specializing in exotic longarms for collectors, everything from elephant guns to high-powered sniper rifles. According to his website, which Lorenz printed in its entirety, he also travels to a variety of Texas gun shows where he operates a booth.
“I printed out pictures from the site,” he says.
“I see that.”
They are low-resolution images. One depicts a tall curly-haired man in a blue polo shirt standing behind a table laden with imported tactical rifles. Not the AK-47s that Bea mentioned. These appear to be top-dollar European models. In the second photo, the same man wearing the same shirt poses with an old school FN FAL battle rifle mounted with a massive starlight scope, cutting edge in the seventies and eighties and no doubt highly collectable now.
“I’m surprised you can make a living that way,” Lorenz says.
“Was he making a living? His house is on the market.”
“What I mean is, it’s weird people buy and sell this stuff.”
“It’s weird people buy guns in Texas?” I ask.
“This kind of gun, yeah. I mean, I’m on the front lines every day and I don’t have an arsenal like that. I couldn’t afford it, for one thing. Can you imagine knocking on this guy’s door? He’d have the SWAT team outgunned.”
I’m not interested in getting into an argument about guns. That’s something I don’t do anymore. I grew up with them, and to me you either get it or you don’t. And if you don’t, fine. Brandon Ford, if he really existed, would have gone through enough of a background check to put my mind at ease. He wouldn’t worry me any more than the club members at Shooter’s Paradise do. But I wonder what Lorenz would think of my extracurricular activities. All those armed citizens might freak him out.
Then again, maybe not. He surprises me sometimes. But there’s no point in getting into all that. Brandon Ford doesn’t exist. The photos, along with everything else, were staged. That’s what I’m meant to believe, anyway. The question is, for whom? The way Bea made it sound, somebody wanted a big shipment of assault rifles, which suggests the Mexican cartels. The headlines have been full of Federal cases against dealers shipping their wares down south, profiteering from the drug war. The only problem with that theory is that a sting operation making use of a fake gun dealer would be designed to snare the buyer. If the buyer’s a Gulf Cartel drug lord, what’s the point? It’s not like the Policía Federal or the DEA don’t have enough on those thugs already.
“Is there something wrong?” Lorenz asks. “You’ve been funny all morning.”
“Everything’s fine.”
Leaning over, he opens the glove compartment and shakes the ibuprofen bottle in my face. “Are you off your meds, is that it? I thought the leg was doing better.”
“Just keep your eyes on the road,” I say, shifting in the seat. “It’s not my leg, anyway. It’s something in my back. The pain is just a symptom. I must have pinched a nerve.”
“All right.” He tosses the bottle into my lap. “I just wish you’d get your head in the game. I can’t be carrying you on this.”
I flip on the radio, scanning the dial for some music.
“Hey, man. I’m just kidding. I’ll carry you as far as I can.”
He smiles and I smile back just to make him stop.
– -
The woman comes to the door barefoot, wearing cuffed shorts and a white T-shirt. She says her name is Miranda Ford and she has a driver’s license to back it up. She ushers us into a cramped apartment, a real step down from the house we’ve just seen. In the living room, a dark-haired toddler I recognize from the box of pictures scribbles on construction paper while a younger kid in a playpen watches him. She walks us past them to a kitchen table that’s been set up as a home office. Underneath the table, there’s a box like the ones stored in the garage, this one labeled CRAFTING, its flaps gaping. The table itself has been converted into work space. At one end there’s a big flat-screen computer, and at the other a sewing machine lit up by an adjustable work lamp clamped to the table’s edge. Lorenz asks and she explains that she makes purses and other bags and sells them online.
“That way I can stay home with the boys.”
“And that’s your only income?” I ask.
“I get money from my ex,” she says, “and I work part-time for a friend of mine who opened her own shop.”
I keep stealing looks at her, half expecting a wink of the eye or some other acknowledgment that this is all a sham. But if it is, they’ve gone through a lot of trouble. You don’t stick a woman in an apartment with a fake ID and two prop kids on the off chance someone will go digging into a cover story.
She offers us something to drink-the options include water, Diet Coke, and apple juice-then clears some chairs for us to sit. I glance back at the children, not wanting to make a scene in front of them. For her part, Miranda Ford gives no sign of anxiety. As if the police are always dropping by and she’s only mildly curious about our reasons.
“I wonder if we could talk somewhere private?” I ask.
“Of course.” She looks around, then frowns. “Only there’s not really any place besides the bedroom or the boys’ room.”
“Why don’t we go out on the steps?”
She follows us reluctantly, telling the toddler she’ll be just outside. He goes on ignoring our presence, scribbling hard with his crayon. On her way out, she turns up the volume on the cartoons.