Chapter 2
The new material begins here.
In Priceless Pearls, Evelyn had just closed the paperwork on Mr. Anderson's purchase when she heard tires squeal in protest and looked up. A dark van with deeply tinted windows roared past the shop almost sideswiping a small Toyota sedan parked there. It was unusual on this generally quiet street, so she stepped to the door and looked out. The van was disappearing down the road in a cloud of exhaust – too far away to get the license number.
She looked back in the direction it had come. A Priceless Pearls shop bag sat abandoned on the sidewalk. Curious, she walked past the two intervening shops, picked it up and glanced inside. She was shocked to see the package containing the pearl necklace Mr. Anderson had, moments before, purchased for his fiancée, Miss Walker. She looked around hoping to catch some sight of him; perhaps he needed help. In the gutter she saw his white cane. It was splintered almost in half.
Evelyn ran back to the shop and dialed 911. When she reached a police sergeant, she tried to report a kidnapping. Unfortunately, it turned out she had very little information to offer. A black van had sped past her shop. She was unsure of its make and did not have the license number. She claimed her customer, a Mr. August Anderson, had disappeared off the street, dropping a valuable package at the same time. There was no immediate record of Mr. Anderson. He had no driver's license.
"Of course, he doesn't," she was becoming irritated. "He's blind," she told the sergeant.
"What's his address then?" the man asked.
The only address Evelyn had for Auggie turned out to be a box number at a private mail forwarding company. The police investigator would find that it required a subpoena to get them to turn over the forwarding address, and no judge would sign one on the slight information available. The only phone number Evelyn could give him turned out to be an untraceable burner that went unanswered.
Some days later a harried detective did look into her complaint briefly. Anderson had never been arrested or fingerprinted. He did have a military record, but it was sealed. What little he could find out led him to suspect the man was an undercover F.B.I agent, a C.I.A. covert op or perhaps with the super secret N.S.A. In any case, it generally paid the Washington, D.C. police to stay out of the business of security agencies – they took care of their own. He filed the complaint and forgot it.
Evelyn took the additional step of writing a letter to the address she had. She detailed the circumstances and requested that someone pick up the package she was holding for Mr. Anderson. She hoped Miss Walker would be the one to see the letter.
