The Video Store

by S J Sargent

  “There’s just…inconsistency in what you’re saying.” He dug. “At first, you said that you had no relationship with Christine.” Bolin paused so Sofia could nod. A police academy tip he’d learned, in order to get the other party to become more agreeable. “But then you just went on to explain the altercation you had with her this past summer.”

  Bolin waited for her to say something.

  “Well, yeah…” She glared at him, wishing she’d never stopped by to say goodnight to them in the first place. “Christine is just a rude person. She’s not pleasant. To me, at least. I don’t mind that. I live my whole life straight forward with everyone. No problem to me. But when you speak to my customers the way she did, that’s another issue. You mess with my customers, you mess with my restaurant. You mess with my restaurant, you mess with my family. And when that customer works for the local paper and he writes a negative review of your place…” She shook her head violently. “What do you expect me to do?”

  After Bolin failed to say anything else, she continued. Her arms were still crossed. Too heated to maintain eye contact.

  “That hurt my business, you know. She just stormed in on some random Thursday night and started complaining that my customers were taking up too much of the parking lot and needed to move their cars.” She swung her hands with Italian flare. “It was crazy! I told her to get out of my store before I call the cops.” Sofia leaned forward at this point. “So you know what she does?”

  Bolin shook his head.

  “She started going from table to table to ask who was driving the black car that was parked in front of her store. I had to get my chef out to tell her to leave. But not before she was able to interrupt three different tables. Including the food critic from the paper.” Now Sofia leaned forward. “Did you know that one negative review in The Pecos Review can actually affect your business by 30%? The guy said that her outcry was a reflection of our atmosphere because we allowed it to happen.” Now her voice was elevating. “As if she worked for me! She would never work for me. I would never hire that psycho witch!”

  Bolin waited for her rant to end, seeing if she had anything else to add. Letting raw emotion come out was the key to getting honest responses. He put both hands in his pockets and checked his watch. 11:22. His wife had called him three times in the past hour. Followed by a series of texts, each angrier than the last. Rightfully so.

  “It sounds like you didn’t get along with her, then.”

  “Ya think?” She stood up. “She destroyed my business! And that wasn’t the first time. She’s been that way since she moved in. We never got along!”

  “…so you did have a relationship with her, then?” Bolin allowed his question to linger. She was steaming, probably more upset that he caught her to actually open up and share.

  “Can I go now?” She hopped up. “Why all these questions about Christine? What…did she go missing or something?”

  Bolin didn’t respond. But his stare gave her the horrific affirmation she needed. Sofia dropped her keys, flinging her hands over her mouth.

  “No…” Sofia stepped back against the door. “She’s not…”

  Bolin nodded.

  “Since when?”

  “Last night.”

  Bolin picked up her keys and held on to them. Her eyes stayed locked on his hands as he now clutched them. “Still looking at what might have happened. And who…who would be involved in something like this. It would have to be someone who had a motive. Who had a reason to play a role in something like this…”

  Sofia shifted her eyes between him and her keys. He was in front of the door. “Give me my keys back.”

  “…someone who had a history with her…”

  “You can’t just keep me here.”

  “You know, over eighty percent of abductions are done by people who know the victim. Someone around the victim. Who has access to the victim. Knows her lifestyle. Her patterns. Her tendencies. Someone like…a neighbor.”

  Sofia raised her finger. “Give me my keys or I will scream. I swear to God.” She was ready to slug him. “You don’t have the right to grill me like this. I want to go home. Now.”

  “Actually, it sounds like things are just heating up Sofia! I think I’m going to need you to stick around for a bit…” Bolin dangled her keys in front of his face. Then he picked up the surveillance tape that Peter had given him. “At least, until our little surveillance watch party is over.”

  She cocked her head. “What watch party?”

  26

  Surveillance Videos

  Sunday, December 19 – 11:24 P.M.

  “Put it in. Now.” Bolin yelled at Alex.

  “Okay!” Alex threw his hands in the air. “Dude, I was kidding. We can watch your dumb surveillance videos, bro. You don’t have to freak out like a Stars Wars fan on opening night here…”

  Molly laughed. At this point, that didn’t take much. Sofia stayed a safe distance from them as she paced along the counter. She eyed her snow-covered car outside, debating if she could still make it there before the detective caught up.

  Alex pressed play and handed Bolin the remote. He stepped back and watched Bolin zoom through black and white footage of Movie Madness from the day before.

  The surveillance video was cut into four shots that were synced to the same time code. On the top left was a wide shot of the whole store, from the front corner above the counter where Ken was always at. The second shot was the opposite angle from above the breakroom hallway. The third shot was of the breakroom hallway and back entrance. And the last shot was an exterior shot of the dumpster behind the building.

  As Bolin sped through the footage, Peter and Christine walked at hyper-speed around the store closing up shop as the few remaining customers filed in and out of the store. Peter tensed up as the whole room watched his every move from the previous shift. It’s a bizarre feeling to have a group of people watch you when you don’t think you’re being watched.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Sofia asked, arms crossed tightly. “I do not have time for this.”

  Bolin put a hand up in the air to stop her. “I’ll decide if you have time or not.” She rolled her eyes. “We are looking to see if anything happened last night as the store was closing. If anyone unusual came in that may have…lingered too long or was making observations. Anything at all. Usually I would do this on my own, but we are working with limited resources here. ”

  When the time code reached 9:14, Bolin stopped fast-forwarding and let it play.

  “There,” he said. “Right there.” Bolin paused the video.

  “Right where?” Alex looked at the shots of the empty store with Peter cleaning things up.

  “In the side glass. Do you see that?” Everyone squinted their eyes to try to make out Bolin’s discovery. “Right there. Someone is standing there. Someone is looking through the glass at Peter.”

  He was right. They could barely see it, but someone was outside the side glass peering into the store. Though not looking too closely. Just casually standing with their hands in their pockets, a few feet back from the glass. Since the only clear shot was the interior camera on the opposite side of the store, all you could make out was the outline of the person.

  “Wait. What?” Peter popped up and got closer to the TV. “Someone was watching me from outside while I was closing up the store?” Bolin looked over at Peter with an I-told-you-so smirk. Peter stepped back. His heart racing faster than when he was in the interrogation room.

  “Not necessarily.” Molly quickly chimed in. “It could have been a customer seeing if you were still open.”

  “Or Christine…” Alex suggested. “We can’t really see a face. That could be anyone…”

  Bolin’s eyes stayed on the screens. “No. She was back in the office. The footage showed her walking in there a while back and she hadn’t left yet. We would’ve seen her leave in one of the other shots. Unless this footage is lying, that isn’t Christine.”

 
“Yeah. He’s right,” Peter said. “She was back there until we walked out together. It couldn’t have been her. And if it wasn’t her and the store had been closed for an hour, who was out there? And what were they doing?”

  Bolin continued exploring. “Is there any other way to exit the office to the outside without using the breakroom hallway? Without the cameras seeing her?”

  Peter shook his head.

  An uncomfortable silence fell over the room. It was the first piece of evidence that created any notion of foul play at Movie Madness. Bolin had nothing beyond hopeful suspicion up until then. But this blurry figure brought a new layer.

  Sofia checked her watch, confident that this was a waste of her energy. Even if it was something, she still didn’t know what it had to do with her.

  Bolin pressed play and the group watched the shadowy figure remain still. So still that Molly questioned if it actually was a person. Her mind started to trick her into thinking it was a reflection or an odd lighting trick. Or any other reason that made more logical sense than a motionless, noiseless person peering at Peter through the glass. In the footage, Peter walked to the back with one cash bag, almost right in front of the figure without even noticing.

  “Oh my gosh. I walked right in front of him?” Peter looked down at the ground. “How could I not have seen him? When he was right there?” No one responded to him. Everyone watched as a few moments later into the footage, the person casually wondered off screen towards the back of the store completely disappearing out of the shot altogether.

  Molly recited something she’d learned in psychology class. “When your mind is thinking about other things, it looks past what’s familiar. You were trying to get the store closed up so you could go home. The last thing on your mind was outside.”

  “Seriously…” Alex put his hand on Peter. “It was past curfew. You’re not going to start peering through the glass to see if there are any weird lingering men staring at you…”

  Bolin corrected him. “You don’t know it was a male.”

  “You’re right.” Alex grinned. “This was clearly a seven-year-old girl with a Paw Patrol lunch box. Nice police work, Detective.”

  Detective Bolin ignored him as he kept fast-forwarding through the footage to see if the person appeared again. But there was no sign beyond that brief seven-minute cameo in the footage from 9:14-9:21 p.m. No other shots showed someone outside the store around that time. Eventually, he gave up and set the remote on the counter. A grave silence fell over the room as they waited for Bolin to say something reassuring.

  “So what does this mean?” Molly asked the detective, anxious for answers. The lack of clarity in her life over the last week was enough to drive her crazy.

  “Does this mean…” Peter looked up. “…I let this happen? Like, I could’ve stopped it and I didn’t even…”

  Sofia finally spoke up. “All we know is that some guy…or girl…walked around outside for a few minutes and then left. That doesn’t tell us anything.” She looked over at Peter with compassionate eyes. She’d always liked his caring nature. It reminded her of her own son, who she hardly saw anymore.

  Peter kept with his narrative. “What if this was the guy? What if he was right there and I walked right by him?”

  “We don’t know anything.” Alex reasoned. “All we have is a shot of someone standing in front of the glass. That’s barely evidence at all.”

  “I’ll decide what’s evidence,” Bolin finally said. “Someone standing outside the store, unannounced, just under an hour before she goes missing? I would say that’s some pretty big evidence if you ask me.” Bolin zoned in on Alex now, waiting for his routine rebuttal. Alex’s struggle to come up with a logical excuse for the figure caused him to cower. While he’d been intrigued by each development of the case up to that point, this one hit differently.

  Molly looked around. The idea of this little dusty video store playing a vital role in the case was now starting to make her, and everyone else, stiffen up.

  “Where did he disappear to?” She asked.

  “For the record, we don’t know if it was a he at all,” Bolin clarified. “Let’s not rule anyone out at this point. And let’s avoid using assumptive language.” Bolin took the opportunity to glance over at Sofia. Less out of suspicion, more to remind her why she was being forced to stick around.

  “Wait!” Peter hopped up as he watched the footage continue to play at 3x speed. He put his finger on the TV. “In the back. Right there!” Bolin rewound the tape and played it back. As it replayed, the figure makes a second cameo in the exterior dumpster shot for a brief moment. At 9:29, it could be seen walking through the top corner of the back shot. “Eight minutes later…” Peter said.

  “What’s back there?” Bolin asked. “Behind the dumpster?”

  “Nothing,” Peter answered. “The only thing back there besides the dumpsters is the employee parking spots.”

  “For who? Just the video store?” Bolin asked.

  Molly spoke up so Peter didn’t feel so interrogated. “No. The whole building. That’s where we park, the restaurant parking, and the insurance practice. We all park back there. It’s locked with that gate so that people can’t come and dump stuff in the dumpster in the middle of the night. That used to happen all the time. Then last year, the owner put in signs so the employees could have their own spots too. They told us it was for safety.”

  Bolin laughed at the irony of the comment. He really needed to work on his police bedside manner. “So, you’re telling me that the only people who could get back behind the dumpster is someone with a key? Which would be one of the employees?”

  “Well…” Molly paused. She now realized where Bolin was headed. “Yes. Unless the gate was already open. In which case…”

  “And who all has keys to the gate?”

  “Just the building employees,” Sofia finally said. “Video store. Our restaurant. And the fancy insurance man. No one else. The owner, that guy. He would never allow anyone else to have a key. Trust me.” Sofia gave a suggestive look, alluding to a backstory that the detective didn’t have time to hear.

  Bolin stood up and looked around. “So just to be clear. The only way someone could have walked from the side of the video store to behind the dumpster and walk through that shot after the building was closed was if they had a key to the gate?”

  “I guess?” Peter said. “I don’t know.”

  Bolin was now standing in front of Peter. “And the only way they would have a key is if they worked in this building? Right? The video store, Bruno’s, or the insurance practice…”

  Peter nodded.

  “Well…” Bolin looked around at the other four people in the room. “That means one of two things, then. Either that person is really good at picking locks. Or our suspect pool just got a whole lot smaller.”

  27

  Back At The Station

  Monday, December 20 – 12:10 A.M.

  The calming snow brought an ironic peace to the dreadful night. For the town of Pecos, the white blanket that covered the roads was familiar. In the morning, plows would come and people would commute back to work. Students would hop on their buses and go to class for more finals. The snow didn’t disrupt life in Pecos. It simply coexisted.

  It wasn’t what was happening outside that was affecting the town. It was the mystery of what might happen next inside that made it hard for people to sleep. And Detective Bolin knew this. The town was not forgiving to a young, first-time detective trying to crack the most violent crime in the history of Pecos. Their confidence had hit rock bottom and stayed there for the past several days. He’d received more hate emails this past week than in his previous years combined.

  What’s taking you so long?

  Why are you dragging this case out?

  My family is less safe with you at the helm!

  What will a curfew even solve?

  Have you called other police departments to help you?

  Molly, now back at
the police station, had the same worries herself. The more time she’d spent with Bolin, the less comfortable she had felt. She could tell where he was grasping for straws and where he was trying to connect dots that were on different pages. She could hear the insecurity in his voice. She could resonate with Alex’s concern with the detective actually being able to solve this case before another victim falls prey.

  The leather loveseat in the lobby was actually an upgrade from the counter she had been sitting on the last few hours at Movie Madness. The power had been restored in the station so the lights were back on, too. That also was far more preferable than the fluorescents that illuminated the video store.

  She let out a big yawn and curled up to try to get some sleep. Regardless of what happened here, she hadn’t slept in just over eight hours. Molly had hardly thought about her schoolwork all night, which was rare. Part of her was relieved to have a mental break from the constant worry of finals. Though, this wasn’t the circumstance she had in mind.

  Why couldn’t this have happened three days from now, after finals had wrapped up and they were on winter break?

  She immediately shook her head. It was a horrible thought. She should be thinking about Christine and making sure she is found soon. Instead, as she gazed out at the beautiful December snow, all she could think about was the impending fear that she might fail a test for the first time in her life.

  A 1960s rendition of Jingle Bells faintly leaked through the lobby speakers to add an unusual ambiance to the room. There were a few strands of Christmas lights strung across the ceiling to illuminate all the criminals coming in.

  Molly looked over at Peter, whose head was buried in his hand as he tried to explain the situation to his parents over the phone. She could hear their yelling through the receiver from across the lobby. He looked up at her and shook his head. The minimal amount of energy he had left was used to lean his tall, lanky body against the wall.