Читать книгу Every Move You Make - M. William Phelps - Страница 20

A search warrant for the two self-storage units at the Spare Room II that Evans and Tim had rented was issued on October 18, 1997. The goal was to obtain an arrest warrant for Evans, but the Bureau had to first find evidence of any burglaries he—and, possibly, Tim—had been involved in.

Inside the two small storage units Evans and Tim owned was nothing of any particular interest to Horton as members of the Bureau began to search them. There were some old books, a few collectors-edition Beatles records, several ceramic knickknacks and a few pieces of worthless jewelry. Essentially, the last person inside the storage units had, it looked like, taken what he wanted in a frenzy and left everything else scattered about.

Interestingly enough, though, Horton noticed, the unit reeked of stale bleach—and someone had recently cleaned a large patch of cement by the garage door.

Horton ordered everything in the unit bagged and tagged. “Get this stuff out of here,” he told several troopers, “and log it.”

The storage facility had video cameras set up near the entrance. It was an eight-second-delay device, so the quality wouldn’t be that good, but anyone who had entered or exited would be on videotape.

Horton ordered copies of the videotapes from October 3 through October 5.

A day later, after painstakingly watching hours of videotape, there he was, the man of the hour, entering the Spare Room II in his pickup truck. The video was cloudy and grainy, but Horton could see that the bed of Evans’s truck was full of items.

How did Horton know for sure it was Evans? For one, the license plate number matched. Second, Evans had a distinctive profile: the crown of his bald head was perfectly round, and he had distinguishable strands of frizzy hair protruding out from the sides of his head, much like Bozo the Clown. Additionally, Evans had shoulder and neck muscles so large they looked deformed. Most important, he had always told Horton he never allowed anyone to drive his truck.

When the Bureau matched up the codes Tim and Evans had been issued by Spare Room II for gaining entrance through the main gate, they found both code numbers had been used throughout the day and night of October 4. But the following Sunday morning, at some point after 2:00 A.M., Tim’s code number had stopped being used. Only Evans’s number had been accessed after that.

As the reports filed in, it was clear that Tim and Evans had been partners in crime for at least the past seven or eight months and had pulled off several major jobs together. A Bureau investigator in Dutchess County, New York, reported that his team had been looking at Tim and Evans for some time regarding a heist in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The stolen property had turned up in an antique shop in Cold Spring, New York, and the person who purchased it picked out both Tim and Evans from a photo lineup as being the sellers. A bank video had placed both Evans and Tim in an Albany bank that same day, cashing three checks written out to Tim Rysedorph from the owner of the same antique shop.

When Evans’s probation officer called the Bureau with the news that Evans had failed to report for his weekly probation visit, a judge believed it was enough, along with all the thefts Evans and Tim were now suspected of, to issue an arrest warrant.

Horton then called Evans’s probation officer. Evans had shown up for his previous appointment on September 30, the probation officer said (which was a week before Tim had gone missing), but looked totally different than he had the week prior.

“How do you mean…different?” Horton asked.

“He was clean shaven.” Evans had usually donned a Fu Manchu mustache and goatee. Horton had even photographed him with it. At times, it was hard to keep up with Evans and his subtle disguises, so Horton would “pop in” on him and ask to take his photo. Evans, an “egomaniac,” always obliged. Horton would comment on how large his muscles were getting. “You working out hard or what, Gar?” he’d say. “Yeah,” Evans would answer, his eyes lighting up.

“He was amazed that someone was paying attention to him,” Horton recalled later. “I fed that ego, and by the time I was breaking out the camera, he was happy to strike a pose.”

For obvious reasons, Evans hated his probation officer. Whenever he talked to Lisa about him, he always referred to him as “the prick.” He also said he was nervous the last few times he had seen him. He talked about a “job” he and Tim had done down in Wappingers Falls, New York, and said he was scared they’d get caught. Being a habitual offender, convicted of several felonies already, he knew the next time he got caught he was facing possibly twenty-five years to life behind bars—which, he said, there was no way he would do.

A wanted man, there was a bull’s-eye now on Evans’s back. Multiple photos of him, along with his rap sheet, were sent over the wires to every police department and law enforcement agency in the country. He was considered armed, dangerous and capable of doing anything to avoid capture. Horton had written the Teletype himself:

Gary C. Evans, 5' 6"—180 pounds, bald, piercing blue eyes, goes by numerous disguises and aliases, likes to hide handcuff keys all over his body, will try to escape by any means necessary, could be armed and very dangerous.

It was the beginning of a manhunt for a notorious burglar Horton believed—but didn’t tell anyone—was going to be impossible to catch. Additionally, for the first time in the thirteen years since Horton and Evans had begun their game of cat and mouse, Horton believed firmly that Evans was also a serial murderer, which changed everything.