The Tracker Read online

  Boerne, Texas

  3 days, 28 minutes to Election Day

  The text arrived halfway through my second bottle of beer.

  I’d been watching college football highlights on a boxy old-school TV perched behind the bar. I glanced at an oil painting of Willie Nelson, looking only slightly like the country singer and a lot more like Jesus, which I thought was maybe how he was viewed in these parts.

  I’d driven around town for over twenty minutes looking for any place that stayed open past ten to grab a few beers and watch some sports. I only noticed Reggie’s — according to a faded sign above the battered front door — when I pulled into the dirt parking lot to gas up the Explorer. It was connected to the back of an old Shell gas station in a crumbling white building. I doubted the joint made the local Chamber of Commerce list. It was a dump. But this wasn’t Austin, so I couldn’t complain too much.

  There were two dusty pool tables, an old jukebox that was playing Johnny Cash, some pinball machines in the corner, and enough cigarette smoke from a half-dozen rednecks to give me a full case of lung cancer by morning. I sat at the end of the bar, the only place I’d spotted a semi-safe air bubble amid the smoky haze. Just me and Willie watching ESPN. Not a bad way to end the night. I was sick and tired of being on the road.

  It was an unknown phone number. The 212 area code indicated New York City.

  Sam Callahan?

  I stared at my phone for a moment. New York City? I mentally scrolled through the short list of folks I knew in the Big Apple, but these were all numbers I already had stored in my phone. It was unlikely a friend. I responded. Who is this?

  A new message came thirty seconds later.

  Be at this address in fifteen minutes. 35150 IH 10 West, Room 113. Stay hidden but be ready.

  I squinted at my phone. What? I quickly checked on the address. Sure enough, it was legit. My phone pulled up an America’s Best Value Inn right there in Boerne. The map showed it as only 4.2 miles from my bar stool. Stay hidden but be ready. I responded again.

  Ready for what?

  I waited a full two minutes. Nothing. I typed again. No really, who is this? I sat there and waited for another minute or two, studying my phone. No reply. They clearly weren’t interested in explaining themselves. But did they really expect me to head there with no explanation? The crew from NFL Live was about to do an inside look at my beloved Broncos’ matchup versus the Saints next Sunday. I looked up at my famous pot-smoking, pony-tailed friend, shook my head.

  Downing the rest of my beer, I threw a wrinkled ten dollar bill on the bar, grabbed my keys, held my breath as I crossed through the cancer ward, and headed for the front door.

  On the road again, Willie.

  Room 113 was in the very back corner of the motel property, completely hidden from the highway, on the first floor of a two-story building. It was actually the very last motel room in the building. I wondered if that was intentional. The edge of the America’s Best Value Inn hugged several wooded acres behind it. I parked near the front of the parking lot, walked toward the back, hands in pockets, casual and cool, scanning the motel room numbers. The parking lot was only a third full. It was definitely a more popular overnight stay than my cheap digs. There were no cars parked in the spots directly outside Room 113. The nearest was a black Camry, four spots over. The lights were off in the room, as they were for most of the other rooms. It was a few minutes past midnight on a cool late October evening. The town was asleep. Except for my new friends over at Reggie's.

  Without trying to be too creepy or conspicuous, I walked up close to the door, paused, listened, but heard nothing. Then I crossed by the window with a quick glance, unable to see much inside the darkened room through the tiny crack in the curtains. I doubted anyone was inside. Should I knock? The message said to be ready and stay hidden. I sighed, annoyed with the text. I checked my phone again. It had already been 17 minutes since the first message had arrived.

  Okay, now what? This was ridiculous.

  I started to wonder if my new pal, Derek, was playing a joke on me. Derek was another young tracker on my campaign trail, only he was working for the opposition. Our paths had intersected early and often as we crisscrossed the 21st district following the candidates. He was a good guy. A first year at Duke Law. He’d played a little shortstop at Virginia Tech. Most of the other trackers I’d met took themselves way too seriously, like they were political superheroes donning capes, trying to save this great country, and they were nearly aghast when they found out that I had no true party affection.

  Derek wasn’t a hardliner or a patriot like the others. He was more like me, simply trying to pick up some extra cash, get through law school with a little less debt. But he was also a serious prankster who’d gotten me good a few times in the past ten days. Like a couple days before, I’d found the air had been let out of all four tires on my Explorer outside Fredericksburg. Both candidates had stopped at a diner at the same time for a pie eating contest. He also stuck me with the bill at a Denny’s restaurant outside San Antonio by somehow convincing the waitress we were brothers — even though he was black and I was white. He’d slipped out when I went to the restroom. And then there was a prank call at 2am, claiming to be Secret Service.

  But this felt different. Still, I typed a quick text to Derek’s cell number.

  Room 112 or 113?

  He texted right back. Is this a trivia question? I’ll take 112, Johnny. What do I win?

  I texted again. An old Denny’s receipt. What are you doing?

  The usual. Partying with the Saudi prince. You?

  I grinned. Partying with the Saudi princess.

  You need something, Callahan? It takes at least six hours of sleep for me to look as pretty as you.

  Nah, sorry. Just bored.

  Only a few more days of this. Cya.

  So it wasn’t Derek. I would have picked up on something in the exchange. I was about to head back to my car when an SUV pulled into the parking lot. On instinct, I jerked back into the shadows, behind the corner of the building near the stairwell, out of view. A black Cadillac Escalade eased through the parking lot, its thick tires crunching across the pavement, coming toward me. It turned into the parking spot directly in front of Room 113. The door opened. A tall blonde with seriously long legs got out of the driver’s seat. She was probably in her early thirties, very attractive, hair and make-up ready for the runway. Every curve was accentuated in her short black dress and stiletto heels. I did not recognize her. She had not been on the campaign trail, I was certain of that. However, I did recognize the man who stumbled out of the passenger seat.

  Lucas McCallister.

  He was still wearing the sleek dark suit from his event earlier, only the tie was now missing. His dark black hair that was normally plastered perfectly in place was disheveled. He was clearly intoxicated. He bumped into the front of the vehicle, nearly fell down, caught himself with a hand. I was suddenly on hyper alert. Before I could even whip out my phone, McCallister had his hands on the blonde, pulling her in close, wanting to prop her up on the hood of the Escalade. She giggled, pushed his hands away, and said, “Not here. In my room. Come on, cowboy!”

  “Giddy up!” McCallister slurred. He was hammered.

  My fingers were shaking as I pressed the record button, caught one last passionate kiss between them. Then the blonde led McCallister by the hand into her room. He was groping her all along the way, the blonde continuing to playfully fight him off as she unlocked the door. They fell inside onto the carpet together, giggling like teenagers. McCallister managed to kick the door shut behind them. I was stunned. I had just caught the candidate on video kissing a woman who was not his wife. But who was she? And who had sent me the text? I suddenly felt exposed and very uncomfortable. There was another person out there somewhere who knew this was coming. Someone who had wanted me to be here to catch it first-hand. Who? And were they out there watching as well? Watching me? My eyes scanned the other cars. I didn’t see a
nything unusual.

  The light went on in the motel room window. I saw the curtains tugged open slightly, saw the woman at the window. She seemed to be looking around for someone outside. Was it me? McCallister was behind her again, kissing her neck. She turned away, moved back into the room, leaving the curtains a foot apart. I wasn’t sure what to do. I had no desire to watch anything more intimate between them. But I couldn’t pull myself away. The man was four days from winning the election. He was up by nearly four points. What was he doing, risking this? It didn’t make sense. There were rumors in certain circles that Lucas McCallister was a player, always had been with the ladies, in spite of the perfect public portrait of a devoted husband and father, but I had yet to see any signs of a loose zipper on the trail. I figured if it was true, then he was smart enough to do it outside of campaign season. Guess I had given him too much credit.

  I was about to text Rick when I heard a sudden scream come from inside the motel room. The woman. I felt panic rip through me. Instinctively, my feet moved quickly toward the window. I had a clear view through the 12-inch part in the curtains, my breath hitting the glass. The lamp was on by the dresser. I could see white powder in neat lines on the small table. They were both at the foot of the bed, half disrobed, but McCallister had the woman by the hair in his right hand. She was slapping at his face, screaming at him. Were they just messing around? No, she looked genuinely pissed. And he seemed startled at her actions. She punched and connected near his crotch. He let go, crouched over, moaned. Then she was on top of him, attacking him, hitting him with her fists on the back of his head. She jumped on his back, hooked her right arm around his neck as if to choke him.

  McCallister spun around, yelled, “Get off of me!”

  He flung her loose with an arm thrust. She let go, stumbled, a high heel catching on the carpet, and her face smashed directly against the corner of the TV cabinet. It was loud and violent. Then she fell limp to the carpet. McCallister cursed, wiped blood from his lips, and examined it for a moment on his fingers. Then he seemed to notice that she wasn’t moving. He bent down, turned her face up. Blood was pouring from her head and covered half her face. He grabbed her cheeks in his thick fingers, shook her face. She did not respond. He grabbed both shoulders and shook more violently. Nothing. She just lay limp, blood now soaking into the carpet.

  McCallister instantly sobered at the sight, stepped back.

  For a second, I couldn’t move. Was she dead? She looked dead. I’d seen a couple of dead people on the streets. One had frozen to death on the cold streets of Denver, another overdosed. This was different. There was blood. Lots of blood.

  I looked down at my phone. It was clutched in my fist three inches from the window and aimed directly into the room. I’d recorded the entire thing. It had never stopped recording. It had become automatic. My hand was shaking. I didn’t know what to do. Should I go into the room? Should I call 911?

  McCallister didn’t seem to know what to do either, as he sat on the end of the bed and turned ghost white, like he might pass out. Instead, he leaned forward suddenly and vomited all over his dress shoes and onto the tan carpet. Seconds later, McCallister heaved again and emptied his stomach. I turned away, so as to not vomit myself.

  When I turned back, McCallister was standing at the window, staring directly at me.

  I jerked back, startled. We were twenty-four inches apart. Separated by only a thin glass window pane.

  This was the closest I’d ever been to the candidate.

  I’d never seen more hollow eyes.

  THREE

  Saturday, 1:39 a.m.

  Boerne, Texas

  2 days, 22 hours, 21 minutes to Election Day

  Rick slowly exhaled, shook his head. It was clear by the look in his eyes behind those thick black glasses that, like me, he was shocked by the video. The footage was more than a campaign game changer. A person was dead. I could hear the drip of the faucet in the bathroom as I waited for Rick to process what he’d just watched.

  “What happened next?” Rick asked.

  “Are you kidding me? I ran my ass off. Got out of there as fast as I could. I’ve been sitting here hiding in my motel room for more than an hour trying not to have a panic attack. Waiting for you so we can figure out what to do next.”

  “Do you think he recognized you? Does McCallister know you?”

  “I don't know. I’ve never dealt with him directly. And it was dark outside the motel room. It was only a split second, man, we locked eyes, then I hauled it out of there. Never looked back, so I’m not sure.”

  Rick kept shaking his head, a slow and rhythmic back and forth swing. A tic to help him somehow absorb the magnitude of it all. He seemed to be getting his feet beneath him. His fingers were already pecking away furiously on his laptop. He began messing with my phone and a cord, plugging things together, typing. I assumed uploading the video somewhere secure. However, I did not recognize the website he currently had open on his laptop. It was not our normal server. He was sending it somewhere else.

  “What should we do, Rick?” I asked him. “Do we call the police or what?”

  “I don’t know yet. Are you sure she was dead?”

  “Well, no. I didn’t check her pulse or anything. But it looked like it to me. There was enough blood to fill up a swimming pool. If I’d have thought there was any chance she was still alive, I would have called 911 right then.”

  “Right, sure. This is incredible.”

  “I think ‘horrible’ is a much better choice of words.”

  “Right.” He typed away. The video was uploaded.

  “It was weird, man. It was like McCallister looked right through me. Like I wasn’t even there. Just stared off with such sad eyes.”

  Rick slammed his laptop shut, stood. “We need to call Ted.”

  Ted Bowerson was the CEO of Bridges Over America. Rick grabbed my phone, punched in the number, and began to pace around the room in a tight circle. I fell back on the bed again, rubbed my face, stared at the filthy clouds on the ceiling. I felt better now that Rick was in this with me. He now shared the burden. I was no longer alone. If he was bringing Ted into play, maybe the weight of it all would not be so unbearable. Together, all of us could figure out what to do next. I wanted to grab my backpack, jump into my Explorer, and head back to DC. Return to my simple life as law school student. Screw it. No amount of money was worth this.

  Rick was standing by the front window, leaving a voicemail for Ted, when I heard the odd noise. It was a loud and sudden pop, like when a small rock is kicked up from the road by the car in front of you and smacks your windshield, leaving a tiny indention, and a crack that eventually spreads from east to west. I had three of those jagged cracks in my windshield right now. But it was weird to hear that sound in my motel room. I pushed myself up, looked over to the window. That’s when I noticed that one of the blinds had a hole in it and was dangling. It wasn’t like that before. Another loud pop. Exact same as before. I saw the blinds move again. Rick jerked. Then he spun toward the bed and fell face forward. Rick smashed into the edge of the bed and slid to the carpet, my phone bouncing from his hand. I jumped out of bed, turned Rick over. There was a hole in his forehead, and blood was pouring down his neck. Bullet hole. His eyes were still open, his mouth parted, but he was completely limp. Rick was gone.

  The gray Oldsmobile. The shadow smoker I spotted before Rick arrived.

  Another pop. I felt something whiz right past my ear, like a wasp buzzing within an inch, heard a thump in the wall behind me. I was next. I dove for the lamp on the nightstand, shoved it against the wall, shattered it to pieces. The light went off. Then I crawled quickly to the corner, yanked the tall free-standing lamp over to the carpet, ripping the cord from the wall. The room was now dark. The only light coming in was from the parking lot through the blinds. I crawled over Rick, reached up and grabbed the string to the blinds, yanked them closed. I grabbed my phone off the carpet, stuffed it in my back pocket. What now? I co
uldn’t escape out the front door. There was no back door. I was a sitting duck.

  Then my mind flipped a switch. My focus sharpened. The noise was sucked from the room. I looked down, remembered seeing the small hole in the bottom of the wall right beside the bed. Like some guest had inadvertently put the heel of their boot through the sheetrock in the wall and no one had bothered to repair it. Earlier, I had dismissed it as part of the charm of this dump. But now I was thinking a lot about that hole. I scooted along the carpet and found it. Fear rushed through my veins, but my mind was already two steps ahead. I stuck my hand inside the hole in the sheetrock, felt around. I couldn’t find any wood or steel studs. That was good. I tried to rip away at the sheetrock with my bare hands. I needed something more forceful. I stood, spun around once, then lifted the heel of my shoe and thrust it at the wall. Chunks of sheetrock broke away at the edges. The hole grew bigger. I kicked hard again and my shoe went all the way through to the other side.

  I felt a sudden vibration in my back pocket. My phone.

  I reached around, stared at the screen, thinking it might be Ted Bowerson. It wasn’t. It was her. Calling me back. I was stunned. After all of this time. Five months. She was calling me back at a moment like this? Sweat dripped down my forehead and into my eyes. I wiped it away with a sleeve. I couldn’t answer it. Not now. Not when I could hear the doorknob rattling outside my room. I’d locked the door but it wouldn’t stop them for long. I reared my leg back again, then drove it with all my power at the hole in the wall. Another huge chunk collapsed. There was a smash against the front door. It sounded like someone was putting a shoulder into it. Another kick of my shoe. More sheetrock gave away on both sides of the wall. There was a crawl hole now. I heard the front door splinter at the hinges. I dove headfirst into the hole. As I wiggled my body through, I found another motel room exactly like mine on the other side — empty. I heard the door crash open in the other room.