She folded the knife back up and then felt around the jacket for any other clues. She found only a book of matches for a Wayfarer Tavern and container of peppermint Tic-Tacs. There has to be more than this, she thought.
She opened the glove compartment, finding the car's owner's manual and a receipt indicating she rented the car on July 16, 1999. That meant she was about forty years old. Only. The face in the mirror looked older than that. What kind of life have I been living? she wondered.
She didn't find anything else in the glove compartment and was ready to give up searching the car when she spotted a wadded up piece of paper in the cup holder. She smoothed out the piece of newspaper, gasping when the wrinkles revealed an article about the death of one Mr. Steven Fitzgerald, 57, of Savannah. '"Mr. Fitzgerald was gunned down last night in his home. Police have no suspects at this time,'" Samantha read. The article went on to mention Mr. Fitzgerald had retired two years ago after thirty years in the FBI and moved to his hometown of Savannah. '"He is survived by a wife and daughter."'
The article included a picture of Fitzgerald taken near the end of his FBI days. He had been a heavyset man balding on top with a walrus mustache. His eyes looked straight ahead, boring into her. "You're sure about this, kid?" she heard him say.
"I'm sure," she says.
"If you're wrong-"
"I'm not wrong. He'll be here." They sit across from an apartment building, Samantha with binoculars trained on the fourth floor. The home of Juanita Suarez, her three young boys, and sometimes one Rolando Gutierrez, the prime suspect in the murder of a family in San Diego.
"You want a donut, coffee, anything?" Fitzgerald asks.
"I'm fine," she says, keeping the binoculars to her eyes. She can't afford to look away for one second or she might miss him. If they missed him, he'll be on the next flight to Mexico or Brazil and they'll never see him again.
"You need to take it easy, kiddo. You're going to hurt your eyes staring so long."
She hates when he calls her 'kiddo' or 'kid' or any of his other pet names. She's twenty-six years old and already been in the field for two years. She doesn't need a babysitter trying to take her under his wing. This is a serious business, she wants to tell him. How can you sit there filling your face when a murderer is on the verge of going free?
Suarez comes into Samantha's vision. She's younger than Samantha with the kind of body men on South Beach would notice. Though she probably doesn't wear bikinis anymore after having three children, Samantha thinks. She resists the urge to get out of the car and run up there to knock some sense into this woman. Three children and she's fucking around with a murderer.