by Ben Rehder
But Armbruster had been trying to cross to the west side of Exposition, and the only thing over there was Lions Municipal Golf Course. Why would he have been going to the golf course well after sundown? His car had been parked at the Randall’s.
If he hadn’t been going to the golf course, then where? The golf course occupied the northwest corner of the intersection, and there was literally nothing to the south of the T intersection that looked like a likely destination. Just a handful of offices, and not even the type of offices a person might routinely visit. For instance, the closest building south of the intersection housed the Brackenridge Field Laboratory, which was part of the University of Texas’s Biodiversity Center. I had no idea what they did there, and I doubted Lennox Armbruster did, either. Besides, the place had parking. Why would he park at Randall’s? I could understand why the police might not ask him where he had been headed, but I was damn sure curious.
I froze for a moment as a young guy with longish hair got into the car next to my van. Ten seconds later, he pulled away without having noticed me inside the van.
I went back to the file.
Was Armbruster a golfer? Did he have friends who golfed? Was he joining some friends for a beer at the clubhouse that long after dark? I jumped online and saw that the snack bar served burgers and sandwiches, but it didn’t mention beer, and it didn’t give the hours.
Why was I bothering with this? The perimeter of the golf course was fenced, and even if Armbruster hopped over a low point, it was still a good half-mile walk or further to the clubhouse, following a straight line across greens and fairways. It made no sense that he had been going there.
But there was one answer that made sense—or at least it made sense to me.
I texted Jonathan. Any idea where Armbruster was going that night?
What with Jonathan being a millennial, he almost always had his phone on him. He texted back in less than fifteen seconds: hang on, i’ll check.
I had now been staked out in the van for more than two hours and there had been no sign of Armbruster. Not surprising. He might not leave today. Or tomorrow. Or in the next week. That’s when the gung-ho attitude created by a new case starts to fade a bit.
Jonathan sent another text: thats weird. i see what you mean. it doesnt say.
Millennials and their indifference to proper punctuation. Nutty kids.
Then he said: looking at a map now and all i see is the golf course. thats probably your point huh?
I said: Yep.
He said: on the other hand, if his intent was simply to step in front of a car and he wasn’t really crossing the street to go anywhere…
That’s the answer that made sense. I said: You have a mind like a well-oiled sundial.
He sent back one of those smiley faces.
I added: If he did step in front of the car on purpose, the question is, was it random or did he pick Jankowski?
A minute passed.
Then he said: i have full confidence in your ability to answer that question.
I set the phone aside and waited for another two hours. I was tempted to call Mia and tell her about the case, but she was on vacation. I should let her have some peace and quiet, without having to think about work.
My next step would be a tactic Mia and I used regularly, even though it wasn’t, strictly speaking, legal. I would attach a GPS tracking unit to Armbruster’s car. That way, I wouldn’t have to sit here—perhaps for days or weeks—and wait for him to go somewhere. I could go about other business and wait for an alert telling me that his Honda Prelude was on the move. In the hour or so it would take me to catch up to him, there was a chance I might miss an opportunity to record him moving or lifting something, but it sure beat the tedium of waiting.
But I waited some more, for now, and the most interesting part of my day came when a young man and woman—college-aged kids—stopped near the van while having an argument.
Him: “…don’t even know her that well, but you think I’m sleeping with her? Why would I do that?”
Her: “Why wouldn’t you do that?”
Him: “I’ve only met her one time and we talked for like five minutes!”
Her: “Then why is she sending you pics with her tits hanging halfway out?”
Him: “I’m just lucky, I guess. Hey, that was a joke!”
Her: “Not funny, Michael.”
Him: “I’m sorry. Here, look, I’ll talk to her about it.” He raised his phone and began to recite what he was typing. “Britney, please stop sending me photos. I told you before that I have a girlfriend and she is getting pissed off.”
Her: “Wait. You said you talked to her for five minutes, but she knows you have a girlfriend?”
Him: “What?”
Her: “She seriously asked you about your dating status in like five minutes?”
Him: “Well, it was maybe fifteen minutes and I’ll admit she was hitting on me, but is that my fault? I didn’t do anything.”
Her: “Tell her I said she’s a bitch.”
Him: “Come on, we don’t need to say that.”
They began to wander away from the van.
Her: “She’s trash and I want her to…”
That was the last remark I could make out. I bet that couple was fun at parties.
I was still grinning about it when Lennox Armbruster made an appearance. I wasn’t really expecting him at this point, but there he was, emerging from a breezeway that cut through the center of his building.
Over the years, I’d watched dozens of hours of footage of genuine accident victims to study the way they moved, and Armbruster would’ve fit right in. He carried himself like a man in pain. Like a man with physical limitations. The intuition I’d developed was telling me he wasn’t faking it. People committing fraud simply didn’t know how to move the way Armbruster was moving. They tended to overact—to grimace and make exaggerated expressions of discomfort.
I had a super-zoom camera mounted on a tripod, just waiting for some action, and now I started recording as Armbruster stepped down from the sidewalk and began walking across the parking lot, toward his car.
He showed a mild limp, but not as much as I was expecting. His posture was slightly hunched. He seemed to have a bit of trouble walking a straight line. Perhaps it was the pain meds, or the effects of the accident.
He cut through one row of cars and headed for his Honda Prelude in the next row.
Imagine my surprise when he passed the Prelude and approached an Alfa Romeo Stelvio instead. Nice car. Expensive car. A recently purchased car, based on the temporary dealer plate on the back. I don’t meant to sound like a snob, but it wasn’t the kind of car you normally saw parked in a mid-level apartment complex.
Armbruster raised the key fob and unlocked the doors. Climbed inside slowly—and a little unsteadily, I might add—then backed up and drove away.
It doesn’t take a brilliant investigative mind to conclude that something was peculiar about this scenario. I could picture a guy like Lennox Armbruster driving an Alfa—after he’d received a big settlement for being struck by a car. But before?
I followed him, of course, but he simply went to the grocery store and then returned to the complex. By then it was nearly nine in the evening.
I did some more waiting, but it appeared he was in for the night.
So I went ahead and stealthily placed a GPS tracker on the underside of the Alfa Romeo, plus one on the Honda Prelude, too, just in case.
I thought I would head home and get a full night of sleep. I was wrong.
5
Tarrytown is a quaint, historic neighborhood in west Austin—a highly sought-after area—but it is not immune to crime.
I arrived back at Mia’s house—now my house—at five minutes before ten o’clock. I pulled
into the driveway and killed the engine. Everything appeared to be fine. The porch light was on, because I’d turned it on when I’d left, knowing it would likely be a late night.
I stepped out of the van, locked it up, and began the thirty-foot walk to the front door. I was vaguely aware of headlights splashing through the trees and shrubs from down the street somewhere. Someone parking along the curb a few houses down?
Here’s a cruel fact of life: Criminals often have the upper hand. Even if you go to great lengths to make yourself less of a target, they can prey on you during an unsuspecting moment, when you are vulnerable, because you can’t keep your guard up all the time. It’s simply not realistic. You can be alert, sure, but you can’t be prepared to fend off an attack every minute of every day, especially when you have no reason to think you are in immediate danger.
Like now.
What was I supposed to do? Walk to the door with a gun in my hand? Truth is, even that wouldn’t have worked.
I had the key in the front door when I heard someone behind me—a slight scrape of a shoe on the concrete—and then something cold pressed hard against my neck, behind my right ear.
“Don’t turn around,” a rough voice said. Sounded like he’d been swabbing his throat with a toilet brush. Gritty. That was the best way to describe it.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” I said. “You after my wallet?”
“Shut up.”
“I can do that.”
“I said shut up.”
“Shutting up.”
“You wanna get shot, just say something else.”
We were standing in the glow of the porch light, but the porch wasn’t visible to our neighbors on either side, and the neighbors across the street probably wouldn’t be able to tell what was going on, even if they happened to be looking at us right now, which was doubtful.
The man had his left hand pressed against the small of my back, and he quickly felt around my waistband and under my armpits for a gun. I wasn’t carrying one.
“What’s your name?”
What? That wasn’t a question I wanted to hear in this situation, because it indicated that this wasn’t a random robbery or a carjacking. This man was looking for someone in particular, and that person was almost certainly me.
“Ernie,” I said.
“Ernie what?”
I could smell cigarette smoke and a day’s worth of sweat clinging to him. Pretty gross.
“Hungwell. Ernie Hungwell.”
“Bullshit. You’re Roy Ballard.”
“Then why’d you ask?”
“Hands behind your back.”
I did not comply. I simply remained silent. Never let an armed man—or even an unarmed man—restrain you if you can help it, because then he will take you somewhere, and wherever that destination happens to be, it’s a given that nothing good will happen there. It’s better to resist.
He pushed the barrel of the gun harder into the spot behind my ear.
“Put your fucking hands behind your back, smart guy.”
“Not gonna happen,” I said.
He shoved me roughly against the front door.
“Then I’ll just kill you here instead,” he said.
“See, that means you’re planning to kill me somewhere else, so why would I go along willingly? You need to think these things through before you speak. There are three cameras aimed at you right now. Are you wearing a mask?”
“Liar.”
I was running out of time. And options. I doubted he would actually shoot me here on my porch, with neighbors nearby, but I could be wrong.
“You’re right,” I said. “There are only two cameras. Ever heard of Krav Maga? My partner practices it.”
“Just put your damn hands behind—”
I spun quickly, bringing my right elbow around with as much force as possible, and I caught him squarely in the jaw. In fact, the impact was greater than I could have hoped, and his knees buckled—but he didn’t go down. However, he did drop the gun. I didn’t see it, but I heard it clattering off the porch.
The man was smart enough to abandon his plan and run, and I could see that he was unsteady on his feet as he reached the street and lurched in the direction of the earlier headlights. An accomplice waiting for him? I considered chasing him, but that didn’t seem to be a risk worth taking. I stood behind a brick pillar for safety.
Sure enough, a minute later, I heard a vehicle door slam, then an engine revving, and then tires squealing as reverse lights came on. The driver attempted to back into a nearby driveway but missed, and I could hear his tires hopping the curb and his bumper crashing into the mailbox. Then more squealing as he gunned the engine again and raced into the darkness.
I took a moment to catch my breath. Then I called it in.
“Know anyone who might want to harm you? Let me rephrase that. Have you pissed anyone off more than normal lately?”
The question came from an Austin Police Department patrol cop named Ursula Broward who was currently standing on Mia’s porch. My porch. I had to stop forgetting that. It was my porch, too.
Broward knew me from previous interactions, and whereas some cops didn’t have much patience with me—because my investigations sometimes interfered with theirs—Broward usually seemed more amused than annoyed.
Her question made me think about Lennox Armbruster. Had he spotted me tailing him? He was physically impaired, but had he recruited a friend to try to scare me away? I figured that was a long shot.
So I said, “Well, I did find a horse’s head in my bed last week, but other than that, I’ve been my typical charming self.”
“Meaning you’ve probably created half a dozen enemies just this month.”
Broward was maybe five foot four and one hundred and twenty pounds, but she exuded the kind of confidence necessary to take command of any situation she might encounter. I liked her.
“My charms are sometimes misunderstood,” I said.
She shook her head as she took notes. She was an efficient and detail-oriented officer. She’d arrived in less than five minutes after my call, and right now several other units were patrolling the area, looking for anything unusual. The problem was, I could only give a limited description of the suspect, and as for the vehicle, I said it might have damage to the rear bumper.
“What about the cameras?” Broward said. She’d noticed my security cameras hanging under the eaves at each corner of the house. “Tell me they aren’t dummies.”
“They’re as real as your stunning green eyes,” I said.
“Knock it off.”
“They’re real.”
I hadn’t checked the video footage yet, because I’d been babysitting the forty-caliber semi-automatic Ruger I’d spotted in the grass to the left side of the porch. Hadn’t touched it, of course.
Broward took some photos of the Ruger where it lay, then snapped on a pair of powder-free nitrile gloves and gently picked it up. She ejected the magazine into her free hand, then opened the slide to check the chamber, which contained a live round.
“He wasn’t fooling around,” she said. “You got lucky he didn’t accidentally jerk the trigger when you pulled your Kung Fu move.”
“Krav Maga,” I said. “And I was kind of running out of choices. I have a disarming personality, but it didn’t work on this guy.”
“Been saving that line for the right moment, huh?” she said.
“Maybe. It’s still good, though.”
She studied the Ruger closely, then wrote in her tablet again.
“Got a serial number?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Think it’s stolen?”
“Good bet.”
She slipped the empty gun, with the slide locked open, in one evidence b
ag and the magazine and the loose round in another.
“Think we’ll get any prints?” I asked.
“We?” she said.
“We, meaning all of us who side against evil and corruption in the world.”
“Maybe,” she said, “if he wasn’t wearing gloves.”
She looked at me now, an eyebrow raised quizzically, basically saying, You didn’t even have the guts to take a quick peek at him?
Totally teasing me, though. I think. I shrugged.
She jotted some notes on the outside of the evidence bags. If there were prints on the Ruger or the ammo, then I’d have to hope there would be a match in AFIS to identify the guy.
She stepped down from the porch and shined her flashlight around in the nearby grass. I waited patiently.
“Which way did he run?” she asked.
“Right in that direction,” I said, pointing at an angle toward the street.
She walked slowly, sweeping the flashlight along the ground. Then she stopped. Bent over and studied something closely.
“Dude, you must have hit him hard. You knocked one of his teeth out. A premolar, I think.”
“Is it wrong for me to take pleasure in that?” I asked.
She took some photos of the tooth on the ground, then collected it in an evidence bag.
“DNA,” I said.
“Yeah, if you don’t mind waiting a couple of months,” she said. She looked at me again. “You can’t think of anyone who might’ve done this?”
“Nobody I pissed off recently,” I said.
The problem was, Mia and I exposed people who were committing fraud—that was what we did for a living—and some of those people held grudges, especially if they served time on account of us. So, yeah, there was a long list of people who might’ve wanted to put a gun to my head and take me to an undisclosed location for undisclosed purposes. It’s a risk of the job, and there are times it keeps me awake at night—mostly worrying about Mia.
