Animal Instinct by Rosenfelt, David (novels for students TXT) 📕

an unregistered burner phone, probably also belonged to Kline. According to GPS data, it was most recently at Ridgewood police headquarters, probably confiscated for their investigation.

“So the last phone is the interesting one, since it may well have been brought there by the killer. That phone is registered to Alvin Szabo, address on Grand Avenue in Englewood. That’s Szabo, S-z-a-b-o. But the name is fake, and the address listed is actually a gas station.”

“So how do we find him?” Laurie asks.

“We don’t have to,” I say. “We find the phone.”

“That’s right, but with a slight correction,” Sam says. “We’ve already found the phone. It lives in a high-rise apartment in Edgewater. But there’s no Alvin Szabo at that address, so we have no way of knowing where in the building the phone is. GPS measures location, but not height. So we have to follow the phone when it moves.”

“You can do that?” I ask.

“Yes. I’ll tell you where the phone goes, and when, and you can do what you’d like with it. But I haven’t told you the better news yet.”

“Sam, I like your style,” Andy says.

“I had a hunch, so I went back to check out the recent history on the phone GPS, and it paid off. That same phone was in the area when Lisa Yates was shot.”

It’s significant news, but not surprising. We’ve thought all along that the same people, if not the same killer, were behind both murders. This is confirmation of that, but more significant is that we might be able to get our hands on the killer.

“Okay, team, what’s your next step?” Andy asks.

“We identify him, then follow him and see where he leads us,” Laurie says.

I shake my head. “We can try that, but he’s not likely to lead us anywhere. We have nowhere close to a guarantee that he meets in person with his employer, and that employment may be over anyway. He’s done what he was hired to do.”

“So what would you do?” Andy asks.

Andy is taking an interesting approach here, different from that in other cases we’ve worked with him. When we’re working on behalf of one of his clients, he solicits and respects opinions, but he calls the moves and he sets the strategy. In this case, with me as the client, he is deferring more. He recognizes that it’s my ass that is on the line; if I’m going to go down, he wants me to have taken my best shot.

“We confront him,” I say. “I’m not saying he’ll confess, or that he’ll reveal his employer, but it might shake things up. And if we have his phone information, maybe he’ll use it and we can track who he calls.”

“Marcus?” Laurie asks.

Marcus doesn’t bother saying anything; he just points to me and nods. I’ll take that as a ringing endorsement.

“Okay,” Laurie says. “Sam, can you monitor the movements? Work with Marcus, so we can identify him, follow him, and figure out the best time to approach. Once we do, Marcus and I can move in.”

“Excuse me?” I ask. “You think I’m not going to be a part of this?”

“That’s exactly what I think,” she says. Then, “Andy, you want to explain this to him?”

Andy picks up the baton. “You can’t be there, Corey. If something goes wrong and violence ensues, your GPS monitor will place you at the scene. You’ll be back in jail for the duration. And I don’t have to tell you that this is the kind of event at which violence can definitely ensue.”

“I’m not happy about this,” I say.

Laurie smiles, but her words are serious. “Get over it.”

FIVE days have gone by since Sam identified the phone.

He and Marcus have been giving us periodic reports, and while I am going insane over the wait, they have actually been making good progress.

It took less than a day to locate the man who went by the name of Alvin Szabo. Sam Willis identified an individual as the man carrying the phone when he left the apartment building, and Marcus took a photograph of him.

Andy sent the photo to Pete Stanton, the captain in charge of Homicide for the Paterson Police Department, who is a close friend of Andy’s. Both Laurie and I also know Pete well, but it seemed best that Andy approach him.

According to Andy, when Pete heard that he could help me by finding out who the man was, Pete was eager to do it. It turned out that it didn’t take much effort; Pete was very familiar with him.

According to Pete, the man’s name is Jake Gardener. Gardener is well-known in homicide circles as an extremely dangerous man who, while no doubt responsible for many deaths, has avoided even being charged, much less convicted. He does his job well, works alone, and does not come cheap.

Once we located Gardener, Marcus became the key player. It has been up to him to decide the best time and place to deal with Gardener, which meant Marcus had to monitor the man’s movements and habits. Marcus has been doing that for three days, going on four.

It feels like two months, going on a year. Though Dani won’t admit it, I’ve got to be driving her nuts. Even Simon doesn’t want to go for a walk with me.

Finally, the call comes from Laurie. “Come on over; time to go over the final plans.”

When I get there, Marcus and Andy are there as well as Laurie. She gets right to the crux of the matter. “Gardener likes baseball. And he appears to be a Mets fan.”

“What’s his favorite color?” I ask obnoxiously.

She ignores me, as she should. “The reason his devotion to the Mets is important is because he goes to the same restaurant every night, which is where he watches the game. There’s a TV over the bar. We don’t know what he does when the Mets aren’t playing, but that doesn’t matter because they’re playing tonight.

“They’re in St. Louis playing the Cardinals so the game