Mounted

by E. H. Reinhard

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “Still not the most interesting part,” Duffield said. “DL lists her as twenty-seven, five foot nine, one hundred seventeen pounds, with blond hair and green eyes.”

  “So she might be who these are modeled after,” I said.

  “Could be,” Duffield said.

  “So how the hell does this woman’s print get on our film out here?” I asked.

  “That’s the million-dollar question.”

  “So if her husband killed her then himself, our guy has to be connected with them in some way or another. Especially if he’s modeling these after her. Anything odd about the suicide?”

  “I need to get in contact with whoever was in charge of the scene to find out,” Duffield said. “So, yeah, you could say that I have my hands full at the moment, weeding through this. You said you guys got something?”

  “We’re driving right now. We know where she stopped,” Beth said.

  “Where?” Duffield asked.

  “A fast-food chain between her mother’s and her apartment. They should have video,” I said.

  “Call me as soon as you view it. If I have anything for you guys prior to that, I’ll give you a ring.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Anything from Tolman and Collette?”

  “I just talked to Collette a second ago. They’re still out knocking on doors. Nothing of any interest so far. He said that they had a couple of homes with no answer that they were going to check back in with. I guess that’s about it out there.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you as soon as were done here, but we’ll probably be heading back right after.”

  “All right. Talk to you guys soon.” Duffield clicked off.

  I lifted my phone from the cup holder, ended the call, and dropped my phone back into my pocket.

  “What do you think is up with the mystery woman?” Beth asked.

  “I don’t know. Missing from California, possibility that these mounts were made to look like her, and then her print showing up here. There’s obviously a connection somehow.” I shrugged. “We’ll see. Sounds like Duffield has wheels turning for getting everything we can on her. Where is this place?”

  Beth pointed out the windshield. “Another mile or two. Navigation says it will be on our right.”

  “Do you have the receipt?” I asked.

  “It’s in my shoulder bag inside of the little evidence envelope the chief deputy gave us. The time on it says eleven minutes after nine o’clock.”

  “Okay.”

  Beth continued to drive. A couple of stoplights later, I saw the restaurant at the far end of the next intersection on the right. Beth passed through the green light and turned in. We parked in the lot and stepped from the car. As we approached the side entrance of the building, I glanced at the giant painted cement chicken mascot, complete with a championship belt around his waist, standing to the side of the order board for the drive-through. Above the outdoor menu, a camera was attached to the corner of the building behind it. I held the door for Beth, and she led the way toward the front counter. A couple of people stood off to the sides, waiting for their orders, I assumed. We waited as a mother and three small children in front of us placed their order—more customers entered and stepped into line behind Beth and me. I looked at the wall to my left, which contained plaques, awards, and some kind of rating from a restaurant agency, which said A+. The largest plaque had a photo of a man, a woman, and a couple teenagers—one boy, one girl. The words This franchise proudly owned by The Jacobson Family, Inc. were engraved on a brass plate below the photo. On the plaque above it, another photo, titled Employee of the Month, pictured the kid standing at the cash register.

  The kid, who looked about sixteen or seventeen, wore a brown-and-white uniform and a plaid brown-and-orange paper busboy hat, just as he did in his employee-of-the-month photo. He flashed Beth and me a smile as the mother and children in front of us moved.

  “Welcome to The Chicken Champ. Would you like to go a few rounds with one of our Ultimate Chicken Combos today?”

  “No thanks,” I said.

  “Sure. What would you like to order?” he asked.

  “Agents Harper and Rawlings, FBI. We actually need to speak with a manager,” Beth said.

  He tapped his name badge, which read Kyle Jacobson with the title Assistant Manager below it. “That would be me. How can I assist you today?”

  “You’re the manager on duty?” Beth asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We’d like to talk with you about the video security here,” I said.

  “Absolutely, sir,” he said. “Can you give me one second?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  The kid looked over his shoulder and requested someone named Kevin to take the counter. A moment later, a man, looking in his late twenties approached the front. The assistant manager waved Beth and me to one side and let his employee take over the register.

  He walked from behind the counter and motioned toward the nearest table, where Beth and I took a seat.

  The assistant manager slid out a chair, sat, and clasped his hands on the table. “Now, what can I help you with?”

  “We’d like to view some security video if possible. We believe you may have captured something that led to a crime on your footage,” I said.

  “Oh, geez,” he said. “When did this happen?”

  “Last Saturday evening,” Beth said.

  He turned his head and looked up as though in thought. “I closed last Saturday. I can’t say that I remember a thing out of the ordinary.”

  “This wouldn’t be a crime happening on your property here,” I said. “A victim came here and ate prior to a crime happening. We just want to see some footage of that. We believe she used your drive-through.”

  “I’d be more than happy to allow that, yet I’ll need to make a call just to verify that it is all right. If you don’t mind, it will only take me a second.”

  Beth gave the kid a nod.

  He rose from his chair, slid it back under the table, and reached down to pick up a straw wrapper from the floor. He walked back toward the counter, tossing the wrapper in the trash on his way.

  “The kid is pretty well spoken, an assistant manager, acts like he actually cares about the place. Yet he looks like he’s fifteen,” Beth said. “I wonder how that came to be.”

  “Parents own the franchise,” I said. “He’s going to go call one of them right now to ask what to do.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “I was a detective. I detect.”

  Beth gave me a blank stare.

  “I was looking at the signs on the wall while we were waiting,” I said. “There’s one that says the place is owned by the Jacobson family. The assistant manager kid’s last name is Jacobson. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s in the process of being groomed to take over when needed.”

  “Sharp eye,” Beth said.

  “Yup.”

  We sat and waited as minutes passed. I watched as customers walked past and took their seats with buckets of chicken. The woman who had been ahead of us in line with the three kids sat just a few booths away. The kids jammed chicken nuggets and tenders into their mouths. My stomach grumbled. I stared past Beth at the menu on the back wall behind the counter—a Smothered Philly Chicken Sandwich caught my eye.

  “Did you want to maybe grab something to eat from here when we’re leaving?” I asked.

  “I don’t do deep-fried greasy chicken,” Beth said.

  “Have them hold the grease,” I said. “I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that they have some kind of chicken-and-rabbit food on the menu for you.”

  “Nah, you go ahead. I’m saving my appetite,” Beth said. “I guess I have dinner plans later this evening.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing really important. I’ll fill you in later.” Beth jerked her head to the right.

  I looked over and saw the kid walking toward us from behind the
counter.

  He walked up to the edge of our booth but didn’t take a seat. “We got the go-ahead. Did you two want to follow me back to the office?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Beth and I followed the kid down a short hallway leading to the restrooms and then through a door marked with an Employees Only sign at the end of the hall. He led us past the kitchen to a small office tucked into the back corner. He motioned to a pair of chairs on one side of the desk in the center of the office and took a seat in front of the computer facing the other. Beth and I took our seats.

  “Do you know what time we’re looking for on Saturday?” he asked.

  “We have a receipt that says nine eleven,” Beth said.

  “Okay, that would be when her order was placed. And you said drive-through?”

  “I guess we don’t know for sure. She could have ordered it from inside to go,” I said.

  “We’ll check both. Maybe I should start a couple minutes before?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  The assistant manager clicked buttons on his computer’s keyboard and wiggled his computer mouse back and forth, clicking on various things—from the position of his monitor, I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing. A moment later, he turned the screen so it faced Beth and me. He slid his keyboard to the side and scooted his desk chair around the edge of his desk so he could man the controls while we watched.

  “This is Saturday night here,” he said.

  On the monitor was a full screen of vehicles in a line at the side of the parking lot with the drive-through. I counted eight cars and trucks bumper-to-bumper, stretching from the sidewalk near the street to the corner of the building where the drive-through lane bent around the back side. Other vehicles sawed back and forth in the parking spots, trying to either park and go in or back out and leave. Random people walked the lot, coming and going. It looked like a mess.

  “Lots of business on Saturday nights, huh?” I asked.

  “Yeah, we give out free ice cream for those twelve and under Saturdays after five. It brings the families in. Usually, things slow down a bit around nine o’clock or so, but it looks like we were still going pretty strong. What kind of vehicle are you looking for?” he asked.

  “Newer dark Hyundai Sonata,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m thinking we can probably pick that out.”

  I kept my eyes on the screen’s time-stamp in the bottom corner. From the number of cars waiting in the drive-through, I figured Katelyn Willard would be in line at any moment. Another thought registered in my head—the amount of time it had taken her to leave her mother’s, stop for food, and get home. We’d been watching for a couple minutes, and the line had only advanced a few car lengths. The time on her receipt was just four minutes later than the time on the monitor.

  “Does this time on your video camera here match up with the same time as your receipts?” I asked.

  He nodded. “It does.”

  “Let’s get a view inside of the building,” I said.

  “Front counter?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He clicked away at his computer, minimizing that screen and then bringing up an alternate view.

  “You don’t think there’s enough time for her to get her order in, either?” Beth asked. “I was just thinking about that.”

  “The cars in the drive-through aren’t moving fast enough.” I pulled out my notepad and found the page where I’d written down what she’d been seen wearing when she left her mother’s house.

  “Here you go,” he said. “Five minutes prior to the time that was on the ticket.”

  “Is this the only view inside the building?” I pointed at the screen, which showed the front counter and five or six people in line.

  “We have one on the indoor dining area as well as the kitchen,” he said.

  “Okay. Let’s fast forward this a couple of minutes to see if we get her at the counter,” I said.

  He did as I’d asked. I held out my notepad toward Beth so she could get a look at what I’d written down that Katelyn was wearing—a pink hooded sweatshirt with the word love on it and a pair of blue jeans. A minute or two prior to the time on the receipt, the color pink entered the frame.

  “Play it there,” I said.

  “That’s her,” Beth said. “The hood on the sweatshirt hangs down over the letters, but you can still see that it says love.”

  We watched as Katelyn approached the counter, placed her order with the young woman working, and stood off to the side, where she waited on her order to come up. She walked off screen for a couple seconds and came back with a handful of napkins. A moment later, she took a bag from another employee, who was placing the ordered food items on trays on the counter and calling ticket numbers. She left with the bag off the screen, toward the side opposite the drive-through.

  “Do you have coverage of that side?” Beth asked.

  “We do. Our payment and pick-up windows are on that side. One second.” The assistant manager clicked away on his computer and brought up the footage. He fast-forwarded it a bit to catch up to the time.

  “Hold on,” I said.

  He allowed the video to play.

  “That’s her pulling in there,” I said.

  We watched as she pulled into the lot, parked, and walked into the restaurant. A line of cars paid and picked up their orders nearest the building. I took note of where she’d parked. I didn’t see anyone standing outside at that moment and didn’t notice anyone inside any of the vehicles parked near her car.

  “Okay, run it until she exits,” I said.

  “Sure.” The kid continued with the fast-forwarding.

  A few minutes of fast-forwarded footage later, we saw her return to her car with the bag. One vehicle belonging to a customer at the drive-through window pulled away but exited the lot before she did. The vehicles in the area where she’d parked remained, and no new ones had come into the picture. Katelyn backed from her parking spot and pulled to the exit of the lot.

  “Doesn’t really look like anything happened here,” the kid said.

  “Wait,” I said. “We need to see the next couple of vehicles out.”

  We watched in silence. Katelyn made a right from the restaurant’s lot out into the street. Not fifteen seconds later, a car pulled around the building and made a right into the roadway without as much as tapping the brakes.

  “What kind of car was that?” Beth asked.

  “Sedan, dark, but moving too fast,” I said. “May have been a Chevy. Rewind that.”

  The kid rewound the footage and played it again—I still couldn’t make out what kind of car it was or the tag number.

  “Let’s get the video from the other side just before the guy pulled around the building,” I said.

  “Sure. Hang on.” The kid brought it up.

  I glanced at the time-stamp, just under a minute before the footage of him pulling from the lot in a hurry.

  “That looks like the car there,” Beth said. “Can you make out that plate?” she asked.

  I stared at the car on the screen parked toward the end of the lot farthest from the street. “No.”

  We continued to watch the footage. A few seconds later, a man came from the side entrance of the building, gave a wave to a car in the parking lot that allowed him to pass in front of it, and jogged to the car.

  “There he is,” I said.

  The man got in his car, and the brake lights flashed before the whites of reverse clicked on. He backed from the parking spot with the rear of his vehicle coming square to the camera. By the shape of the two round taillights on each side, I put the car as an early two thousands Chevy Impala, which some departments used as law-enforcement vehicles—the car was possibly a match to what we were looking for.

  “Pause it,” I said.

  He did, with the rear of the car and the plate centered in frame. The tag number was legible, 6MHL880—all stru
ng together, no dashes. I pulled out my notepad and jotted down the plate number. I looked at the rear window, trying to spot any kind of light bar—I couldn’t tell.

  “Doesn’t look like a Kentucky plate. Or Indiana,” the kid said.

  “It’s California,” I said.

  “California lines up with the girl that our print came from,” Beth said.

  “Looks like a Chevy that could be used in law enforcement as well,” I said.

  “Do you want to call it in to Duffield?” Beth asked.

  “One second. I want to see if we can find any kind of contact between these two inside the building.” I turned my attention back to the assistant-manager kid. “Can we get some footage of the indoor dining area? I’d like to have a look at this guy inside the restaurant.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “How far back do you want it to go?”

  “I want to see everything you have from the second this guy pulls up until the point he leaves.”

  “Okay. Well, we know where he parked and when he left. It would probably be easiest to get a time if we just rewound this until he pulls in. That way, we can kind of follow him from camera to camera.”

  I nodded.

  The kid rewound the footage at high speed until we saw the car pull out of the lot in reverse—some twenty minutes prior to the time he actually left, according to the time-stamp on the recording. He clicked Play. I looked for any kind of lights mounted to the front of the vehicle as we watched the car pull in—again, I couldn’t make any out. The man parked, walked into the building, ordered from the counter, and took a seat to eat. I took in the man’s height, build, and everything else I could from the video while he was walking around. The height and weight that we had estimated on our suspect seemed in line with the man on the video. I made a mental note of his appearance—dark short hair; thick mustache; scruffy, unkempt beard; and dressed in a suit, which was another similarity. He sat at his table, alternating between taking bites from a leg of chicken and scooping up forkfuls of what I assumed was mashed potatoes.