Page 9 of Rooster

I was trying to get a feel for this guy when Torch asked, “Is this the guy?”

“Certainly looks that way.”

“But he’s a fucking janitor.”

“Something tells me he’s much more than that.”

“You think?”

I grabbed my phone and dialed Wrath’s burner. As soon as he answered, I asked, “You seeing this?”

“I’m seeing it.” Wrath paused for a moment, then said, “There’s no way this guy is who he seems.”

“I was thinking the same damn thing. So, what are we gonna do?”

“We need to get a decent picture of the guy for Bones, and then, we wait and see what he can find on him.”

Bones and Big had already done a full search on the guy, and at first, everything looked legit. He had a job with the city and had lived in this house for the last ten years, but once they tracked back to ’98, the guy disappeared. It was like he never existed, which was a clear indication that he wasn’t who he was pretending to be. Torch and I were parked at a better angle, so I told Wrath, “We’ll get a picture of him as soon as he comes back out.”

“Let me know when you’ve got it, and we’ll figure out things from there.”

“You got it.”

It was a couple of hours before Sawyer came back outside, but I managed to get a clear picture of his face. I sent it to Bones, then waited to hear back from him. One hour rolled into the next, and there was still no word from him. I started to get concerned, so I messaged Prez to find out what the hell was going on.

Me:

Any word on our guy?

Prez:

Nothing yet.

Bones tried his facial recognition software on the image but didn’t come up with anything new.

Me:

Damn.

Prez:

I’m gonna need you boys to keep an eye on this guy.

Take shifts or whatever you need to do, but don’t lose track of him.

Me:

You got it.

Let me know if anything changes.

Prez:

You know I will.

I relayedPrez’s message to the brothers, and for the next day or so, we took turns following the guy around. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to see.

He was either driving around the city—checking the parks and various city buildings for work that needed to be done, or he was at home working on some minuscule task. Unfortunately, Bones wasn’t having much luck with the facial recognition software, so we were stuck watching Gramps until we found something that would help us figure out who this guy really was.

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