The Never Game

“So. Here’s what we’ve put together,” Standish said. Her eyes were red and her posture slumped. He wondered if she’d gotten any sleep last night. At least he’d had a few hours’ worth. “About an hour ago one of your neighbors saw somebody come through those bushes there.” She pointed to a sloppy hedge separating the camp from a side street. “Look familiar?”

“Where you saw that visitor the other day.”

“Exactly the place. Yeah. The wit — means ‘witness,’ which I guess you know — didn’t see more than dark clothes and a dark hat. Well, look at the lights. Which there aren’t many of. He walked toward your camper. The wit lost sight and when she looked again he was gone. And, frankly, playing stupid, she went up close to the window and saw a flashlight inside. Your car wasn’t here and where your locks used to be was shambles.”

Shaw looked over the remnants.

“Local uniforms from Traffic took the call, but” — she grimaced — “wonderful, they kept their lovely illumination on, all red, white and blue and flashy.” She lowered her voice. “Because what they’re really good at is traffic and only traffic. Anyways, the perp saw the lights and opened up with his weapon. Took out a headlight and let fly another half dozen rounds.

“Our boys and gals hit the deck — did I mention the Traffic detail? — and by the time backup and SWAT got here, he was gone. No description. Even the wit called nine-one-one didn’t see anything useful. We need you to spot if he took anything.”

Shaw said nothing yet about the gender she’d assigned. He’d tell her about Maddie Poole in a moment.

He was looking at the wrecked door.

“Dent puller,” she said.

A tool with a screw at one end and a sliding weight on a shaft. It’s used, yes, for pulling dents out of car bodies, but you can also screw the tip into a lock, nice and tight, then slam the weight back. Pops the whole cylinder out. Shaw had one lock that couldn’t be pulled that way. The intruder had come equipped and used a pry bar to bend the tempered-steel flanges on the body of the camper. Winnebago makes a fine vehicle but titanium doesn’t figure in the construction.

“There’s something else you should know,” Standish said. She was pulling her phone from one of the pockets in her cargo pants. She called up an image. It was the stenciled drawing of the Whispering Man’s face.

“That the one I gave to Dan Wiley?”

“No. It was left for me.” She paused, her face again a grimace. “Actually, left for Karen, on her car. She was going to take Gem for ice cream and found it on the windshield. I sent them to my mother’s. Maybe it was just to spook me. I wasn’t going to take a chance, though.”

Shaw asked, “Any forensics?”

“No. Like everything else.”

The black eyes, the slightly open mouth, the jaunty hat...

The RV park manager came by to see if Shaw was all right. Shaw told the old salt he was fine and asked if he’d be so kind as to get an emergency locksmith to take care of the Winnebago. He gave the manager one of his credit cards and a hundred dollars.

Then he and Standish stepped inside to survey the damage, which, on the surface, didn’t seem too bad. First, of course, pantry and bed. His weapons were where he’d left them: spice cabinet for the Glock, the Colt Python under the bed.

Standish nodded to a small gun safe beside the bed, bolted to the floor. This couldn’t be opened with a dent puller or much else, other than a diamond saw or a two-thousand-degree cutting stick. “Anything in there?”

He explained that it contained only a rattrap. If he was ever forced to open the safe, the intruder would be rewarded with one or, ideally, two broken fingers. Shaw would then have time to reach under the bed and pull out his revolver.

“Hmm.”

For twenty minutes, Shaw conducted a step-by-step examination of the camper. Drawers had been opened and notebooks and clothes and toiletries disturbed. They were mostly about other jobs and some personal materials. All his notes on the kidnappings and on the Gamer were in his computer bag in the rental car, hidden under the passenger seat.

Some coins were on the floor, as were Post-it notes and pens, phone chargers and cables. The detritus from the junk drawer, identical to the one that every household has: batteries, tools, wire, aspirin bottles, hotel key cards, loose nuts and bolts and screws.

Shaw also kept petty cash here. A few hundred dollars, U.S. and Canadian, was gone.

He told Standish this and added, “Tossing the junk drawer was a cover. This wasn’t a random break-in.” He pointed to the front of the vehicle. In the storage sleeve beside the driver’s seat were two GPS units — a TomTom and a Garmin. He’d found that some brands worked better than others in different areas of the country. Any thief would have seen them while rifling the glove compartment.

Standish said, “Wasn’t really thinking a methhead anyway.”

“No. It’s the Gamer. Wanted to take a look at my notes. And anything else on the case.”

“Taking a chance that you’d be out?”