CHAPTER Ten
Thibaut Le Cocq liked to keep a low profile in every way, including looks. He was six feet tall, medium build, with regular features. Not model handsome. Not unattractive. He wore his hair buzzed, no jewelry, no tattoos. When he was home in the south, he wore jeans, blue work shirts, boots, and baseball caps. When he was in other parts of the country, he wore jeans, boots, and Henleys. If he was traveling internationally, he adjusted accordingly.
Everything about his choice in style was designed to not call attention to himself. The less notice he attracted, the better. His regular looks formed the perfect disguise for a soul that was deformed and, for whatever reason, never fully developed.
Le Cocq was a Cajun bounty hunter out of Bon Aubry in the heart of Lafayette Parish, who worked both sides of the law. There was only one ideal that he was fully committed to. Personal profit accumulated by any means.
So he worked for bail bondsmen when they presented the easiest target with the greatest reward. As an equal opportunity freelancer, he would just as soon accept criminal patronage when it was convenient and a job caught his interest.
Only one policy stood between him and a hunt. He delivered whoever he was asked to run down, without fail. But he delivered them alive.
Thibaut Le Cocq was not a hitman. Not because he had qualms about dispatching people who, more than likely, had it coming, but because there was no point in taking on that jeopardy when he could earn what he wanted without the risk of prison time.
Sometimes Le Cocq’s targets were delivered a little worse for wear. That was covered in his standard contract. But they were always alive.
He kept a home base in Bon Aubry, but was light on his feet. No ties that would hamper his ability to travel anywhere, anytime. Nothing to stand in the way of pursuing whatever job appeared to meet his qualifications. The qualification list was short. Lucrative and easy.
He liked easy.
Over a decade he’d earned a reputation for success and was a recipient of the daily update that arrived in a hushmail account. He’d reached a stature in his profession so that he vetted clients, not the other way around.
He got regular notices from bail bondsmen. He got less regular notices about jobs outside the usual channels. Those were always worth a look because they paid more, required zero paperwork, and he didn’t have to maintain a license in the state where the prey was suspected to have fled.
He’d been home for less than a day after chasing a runner from D.C. to Panama then Ecuador before finally grabbing him in Venezuela. There was a week’s worth of paper before the U.S. embassy decided to have Le Cocq complete extradition instead of using their own resources. He’d collected enough from that job to kick back and watch General Hospital for a couple of years, but after half a day, he was getting restless.
A ‘concerned’ New Jersey family was offering a hundred k for the ‘safe’ return of a missing person named Clover Fields. He sneered because it was obviously either an alias or a stripper name.
Unlike bail bonds notices, the ‘flyer’ didn’t say what she did, but that was okay because he didn’t care. A phone number was listed, which he knew would be a burner. Using his own disposable phone, he called to get the info.
The woman was reputed to be twenty-three. Clover Fields was her real name. Huh. She’d picked up a bag of cash that had been stashed in the wrong gym locker. When the rightful owner asked for the return of the money, she’d fled.
Le Cocq didn’t care about any of that and was moderately bored with the details, but he listened and didn’t interrupt, since the guy hiring him seemed talkative.
“What else?”
“Parents deceased. She has a much older sister who moved to Canada and became a citizen. No current love interest. Friends don’t know where she went. She hasn’t been in touch.”
“I’ll do it on an exclusive basis.”
There was silence on the other end of the call. “I don’t know if we can agree to that.”
“Those are my terms. A hundred k and exclusivity. If I don’t deliver in two weeks, you’re free to open it up.”
“Exclusivity for two weeks. Okay. Call me on this phone when you have her. I’ll give you delivery instructions.”
Le Cocq hung up, sat down at his desk, and opened a new file.
In addition to specialized search techniques, he had a network of plugged in informers all over the world. Each one knew that a good tip would result in an anonymous deposit to their Paypal account.
Within an hour he had the basics. College degree paid for with loans that would give Warren Buffet pause. Landed a nothing job at a barely solvent magazine that barely paid for her crap studio apartment. She was so squeaky clean she had never even been disciplined for smoking in high school.
From what his employer had told him, she’d left her crap car at her crap apartment and disappeared.
That kind of girl would not be able to figure out how to acquire an alternate identity. In the twenty-first century that meant no air travel. No ID. No fly.
That left train travel, bus travel, or hitchhiking. Unless she bought a car for cash. That was a possibility. But if she’d used the money to pay banks, as she’d told the ‘recovery experts’, she probably didn’t have enough left to buy a car that would go very far.
For Le Cocq, every part of bounty hunting was gratifying, even the initial steps of setup. Finding available pieces to begin the puzzle that would eventually form a cohesive picture.
He would personally hit the bus terminals closest to her point of departure from the grid, but meanwhile, he’d get the spider working. That was what he called his extended network of eyes and ears. He’d have hundreds of people, including law enforcement, looking for someone who matched Clover Fields’ description.
No. She hadn’t done anything illegal, but cops needed deposits in their Paypal accounts as much as anybody else. They were good resources because they were out and about as opposed to desk bound or home bound, and looking around. Always looking. The same could be said of bike clubs. So he used them, too.
He spent a few days doing his research, setting his traps, catching up on his cable shows that he’d recorded, and doing laundry. By the time his network was fully activated, he was repacked and ready to go with a flight out of New Orleans.