The Girl They Couldn’t See (Blind Spot #1) (Blind Spot Series)

by Laurence Dahners

  Roni pulled out the big wad of envelopes she’d put in her coat pocket. A chill washed over her as she realized that if she kept the money, the organization would decide the cops or the paramedics had taken it. They might well kill them all rather than trying to sort out who had it. Stepping back over, she reluctantly stuffed the cash back into Nick’s pocket.

  The cops were talking quietly to one another. Roni stepped near. “… Nick Castano!” she heard. “And the big guy’s Mario Esposito!”

  The younger policeman said, “Holy crap, man, those are some bad dudes!”

  The older one leaned close and spoke quietly, but Roni was able to hear him say, “Yeah, when he took them out he did the world a favor.”

  “So you figure it was the big guy did it?”

  “Thompson? Yeah.” The older cop snorted, “Sure as hell wasn’t the little girl.”

  For a panicked moment, Roni thought they were talking about her, then she realized they were talking about the cashier.

  She got a sick feeling when she realized the cops were about to pin her acts on Mr. Thompson.

  The younger cop looked around, “I’d like to believe Thompson. Too bad he doesn’t have any security cameras in this place.”

  The older one snorted again, “You think maybe a vid would show a ghost bashing those dudes in the head?”

  Roni left the store. I murdered someone, she thought, thinking she should feel horrified, but she didn’t. I’ll probably feel bad as soon as it sinks in. Even if he deserved it, it wasn’t my place to deliver justice.

  A block later, she thought, Mario killed Mr. Demopoulos, and he shot that girl. He’s probably killed a bunch of other people too. It might not have been my place to stop him, but nobody else was going to do shit!

  She decided she was not going to feel bad about it. She’d done what needed to be done.

  She did feel bad about Mr. Thompson getting Mario’s death pinned on him though. She touched the phone in her pocket, Maybe I can clear him with the video?

  She wondered what she’d do if the video cleared Thompson, but showed her—hopefully unrecognizable self—swinging that bat.

  ***

  With trembling hands, Roni jacked her phone and the external hard drive with her Castano evidence into her computer. She transferred all the videos from the day—except for the one from Thompson’s Sporting Goods—directly to the external drive. She’d been very careful never to store any of the digital records of the Castanos’ deeds on her own computer’s drive, going so far as to occasionally search for the file names associated with the evidence to make sure those files hadn’t inadvertently been stored on her computer.

  That done, she moved the video from Thompson’s Sporting Goods onto a jump drive and played it back to learn what her phone had recorded. Most of the way home she’d been worrying that Mr. Thompson had been standing so that he blocked the entire video, or that the video had missed Mario shooting the clerk, or that the video had Roni herself in every frame.

  It wasn’t that bad, but there were some problems. Thompson did block 10 to 20 percent of the image, but that was actually good because it showed where he was. It was especially good because it showed he’d never been near Nick or Mario. When Roni’d run to get the two bats, she’d crossed the video image which was a problem. Fortunately, when she was standing behind Nick and Mario at the counter she was off the edge of the image. The video did capture Mario shooting the girl, though the girl had backed up to the edge of the screen before he fired, and then when he shot her, she immediately fell out of the frame.

  When the girl was shot, Thompson stepped toward her and blocked the image during the moment that Roni hit Mario on the head with a bat. However, his presence right in front of the camera made it evident that he couldn’t have hit Mario since he was too far away. Thompson stepped back right after Roni hit Mario, evidently startled by the impact. The video showed Mario falling forward to flop and shake on the floor. Nick crouched, and the bat could be seen flying across his shoulder to thump the back of his head and knock him out. Roni’s hand and a bit of her sleeve were visible in the images of Nick getting hit.

  Unfortunately, once Nick fell to the floor beside Mario, Roni fully entered the frame, tossing the phone to Thompson and dialing 911.

  Roni took a big breath and thought for a moment. She deleted the video from the beginning up through the time where she ran across the screen to get the bats. This left the video starting just before Mario shot the girl. It continued as Thompson involuntarily stepped forward to block some of the screen and then stepped back to show Mario falling to the floor, Thompson never having come near him.

  She pondered trying to do some video editing to block her hand and sleeve from the frames that showed Nick getting knocked out, but worried that someone with video processing savvy might be able to undo whatever she did to block it out. Instead, she just deleted those frames. She left in a few more seconds of video showing Nick falling to the floor with Thompson nowhere near him, then cut it again right before she stepped into the frame to toss Thompson the phone.

  She moved the edited video to a new jump drive and then carefully recorded over all the data on the jump drive she’d been using to hold the transfer from the camera until she edited it. Next, she recorded a movie into her phone’s memory, large enough to overwrite all the videos which had been marked for deletion. Finally, she marked the movie for deletion so she’d have space to record new videos.

  She made a couple of copies of the jump drive with the edited video. She’d installed a fake power outlet in the back wall of her room. She lifted off the wall plate and put the original jump drive with the external hard drive behind the sheetrock there.

  Now I just have to figure out how to get this video to Mr. Thompson. Or his lawyer.

  ***

  As Hax sat down for dinner, his father tossed him a spoon.

  Hax caught the spoon before he had time to think of the implications.

  Ravinder smiled and lifted an eyebrow. “Good catch,” he said, making it obvious that he recognized Hax’s coordination was orders of magnitude better than it had been. He said, “I got a call from a Coach Rasmussen today.”

  Inside, Hax cursed. Externally, he simply nodded.

  “The coach said he’d like you to go out for the baseball team.”

  “Really?” Tansey said to her husband. She turned to Hax, “You should be good at pitching.”

  Feeling a little bit like the object of a tag team wrestling match, Hax looked back and forth from father to mother.

  Ravinder gazed at his wife, “Why do think he’d be good at pitching?”

  She smiled, “He’s gotten my family’s coordination.”

  Ravinder rolled his eyes. “Your family’s coordination? Admittedly, he can catch now and he never used to be able to.” He lifted an eyebrow, “Everyone in my family can catch. Maybe it’s my family’s gift.”

  Tansey grinned. She turned to Hax interrogatively, “I’ll bet he’s good at catching but amazing at throwing.”

  For a moment Hax considered denying it, but then curiosity got the better of him. He gave a little nod.

  “Why would he be better at throwing than catching?” Ravinder asked.

  “It’s our gift. We don’t have unusually quick reactions to let us catch better than other people. Where we excel is in our ability to do things with great precision. Dancing, gymnastics, shooting, throwing.” She shrugged, “I can juggle, not so much because I’m good at catching the things I throw up in the air, but because I throw them so they’ll come back down exactly where I want them to.” She tilted her head as if to gauge their understanding, “Then I reach out to catch them at the exact spot where I know they’ll arrive.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ravinder said, frowning, “dancing and gymnastics can move pretty quickly.”

  Tansey nodded, “But you get to plan your moves. If Hax’s like the rest of us, he’ll do well reacting to changes, but be really good at executing things he
initiates.” She turned to Hax, “I’d be willing to bet that in your martial arts classes, you’re good at defense, but you outclass everyone when you’re attacking, right?”

  Hax wasn’t sure he wanted to answer this question, but Roni excitedly answered for him. “That’s right! He’s okay when someone attacks him, but he’s amazing when he’s throwing someone else.”

  Tansey arched an eyebrow, “And I’ll bet this baseball coach is excited because you can throw a ball exactly where you want it to go, right?”

  Hax nodded grudgingly, “He had a pitching net set up. I didn’t realize most kids wouldn’t even be able to hit the strike zone.”

  Sounding astonished, Ravinder said, “You sound like you didn’t want to do better than they did.”

  Hax shrugged and looked down. “I don’t like to stand out,” he grumbled.

  “Oh come on!” Ravinder said, sounding aggrieved. “Everyone likes to stand out when it’s in a good way!”

  Hax glanced up at him from beneath lowered brows, “Not everyone.”

  “Well, I told the coach you’d go out for baseball this spring.”

  Hax shrugged, “Maybe.”

  Ravinder opened his mouth to retort, but then looked at his wife and subsided. Hax glanced over at his mother. She just gave him a big smile, so Hax had no idea what she did to get his dad to shut up. Nonetheless, he appreciated it.

  Ravinder turned to Roni. “Mr. Burrell from next door has been having some computer problems. He asked me who handles those kinds of problems for me.”

  Roni nodded a little apprehensively.

  “I told him you did that kind of stuff for us.”

  Roni gave another nod.

  “He asked me if you’d like to earn a little spending cash by helping him?”

  Roni almost said no. After all, she had plenty of money with what she’d taken from Nick and she expected to get more. But then she thought, A cash business! I can launder my own dirty money if I get some customers.

  As he ate his dinner, Hax thought, Shooting? His mother had thrown that out as an example of things her family was good at—which seemed bizarre.

  When dinner was over, Hax and his mother were on cleanup. As he sealed up the left-overs, he said, “Shooting?”

  His mother gave him a big smile, “Yeah, your grandfather and your uncle were both champions.”

  Curiously, Hax said, “What kind of shooting?”

  “Targets, mostly. They were good at skeet, but hitting a moving target isn’t as much in our wheelhouse as stationary ones.” She looked into the distance and smiled fondly, “My brother used to show off by snatching a gun off a table and shooting six targets. He could do it so fast it sounded like rat-a-tat-tat. Every target would be a bullseye.”

  “Off a table? Why not quick draw?”

  “Out of a holster?” Tansey said, shaking her head. “Good way to shoot yourself in the leg, trying to jerk an unsafetied gun out of a holster.” She gave Hax a look, “Mind you, he was so coordinated I’m sure he could have done it, but he wouldn’t have wanted to give anyone dumb ideas.”

  Hax eyed her, “Do you shoot?”

  “I did,” she said, looking into the distance as if reminiscing.

  “Do you still have a gun?”

  Tansey turned to look at her son speculatively. “Why do you want to know?”

  “In case we need to defend ourselves.” Hax tilted his head inquisitively, “Can you teach me to shoot?”

  “I’m not sure,” Tansey said slowly, “that teaching a teenager to shoot is the best way to keep him safe.”

  Hax gave her a steady look, “But, if my knowing how to shoot suddenly becomes a life or death matter for our family, I’ll bet the need occurs way too fast for you to teach me right then.”

  His mother stared at him so long he thought he could feel the seconds snapping by, one by one. Finally, she said, “Your father doesn’t approve of guns; he couldn’t know.”

  Hax nodded.

  “And you’d need to promise me…” she paused, evidently as she thought how to phrase it, then her eyes got fierce. “That you wouldn’t screw around with a weapon. That every time you handled a gun, you’d ask yourself if I’d approve what you were doing.”

  Hax swallowed, then nodded again.

  She turned back to the dishes, “I’ll find time to take you to a shooting range.”

  ***

  Roni had found the name of Thompson’s attorney in a news story. She’d invisibly delivered one of the jump drives that had the video clearing Thompson to the attorney’s office. She’d left it on the man’s desk in an envelope just saying, “Mr. Thompson - Evidence.” Another jump drive went to the police, though she wondered if that one would do any good. In theory, they should just let Thompson go, but she suspected they’d be afraid to drop the charges unless the Castanos approved.

  Then she’d headed out to get more damning evidence against the Castanos.

  With Nick off the streets in the hospital, Roni wondered how she was going to figure out who was making his rounds for him. She decided that it was time to find another of the Castanos’ enforcers out making rounds at a different set of stores. She’d already been worried about sending the FBI video records that only included Nick and Mario. What if they only arrested those two?

  Well, she thought, it’d only be Nick now that Mario’s out of the picture.

  In fact, she’d been concerned that only giving the FBI evidence of extortion wouldn’t show them the whole picture of the Castanos’ criminal undertakings. Not that Roni had the whole picture either, but she felt certain that the Castanos’ fingers reeked of other reprehensible activities.

  What she’d really wanted was to find out where the Castanos had their headquarters. Because she felt sure they were involved in the drug business, she kept envisioning them working out of some kind of warehouse. She’d asked around a little, but it was hard to pose questions without people wondering why she was asking. Besides, no one she knew had any reason to know where the Castanos did their business. So, as she’d followed Nick and Mario around, she’d listened attentively to their chitchat in the hopes that they might say something that’d give her a location, but they hadn’t.

  And, at the end of their workdays, Nick and Mario’d always gotten in Nick’s car and driven away. Roni couldn’t follow them on foot or by bus. She’d thought about getting a taxi, but had an uneasy feeling that at least some people in the taxi industry had a loose association with organized crime. At the least, they might not be happy about being told to follow a Castano. At the worst, they might tell the Castanos about a girl who’d followed them. She couldn’t, after all, give a taxi driver instructions while she was invisible.

  Today, she’d borrowed a friend’s bike. She had Hax watch to be sure she could make the bike invisible, the rode into a somewhat disreputable area close to downtown. She wouldn’t have dreamed of going to this area of town if she couldn’t make herself invisible, but it seemed safe enough when no one could see her.

  As she rode up and down the streets, she became more and more convinced it was just the kind of area where the Castanos would set themselves up. Seedy, dirty, some buildings empty, streetlights broken, and, not a cop to be seen.

  She turned a corner and saw what looked like Nick’s car parked along the street. She slowed the bike to a stop just behind it and confirmed the car had the custom rear deck speakers she’d seen in Nick’s vehicle.

  Looking around, she decided someone in the Castanos’ employ had moved it away from the area near Thompson’s store. She hoped they’d put it near the heart of the Castanos’ little empire. Looking around, she saw mostly big buildings, some of which she suspected might be warehouses. The car was parked next to a building with a bunch of broken windows. She thought it looked deserted. It appeared creepy enough to belong to the mob, but she didn’t think the Castanos would do business in a place you could get into without even knocking.

  The building across the street looked too well
kept up. She walked over and looked in the windows of what appeared to be the office of a warehouse. There weren’t any logos, but five people worked at desks. Of course, they could be doing something illegal, but Roni decided they didn’t look subjugated enough to be working for the Castano family. Knowing she could easily be wrong, she nonetheless went down to the corner and crossed to the big building there.

  This building also had an office in its corner. She looked in the window and saw two harried-looking people working at desks. She looked down and saw a small logo in the corner of the office window that said, “Castano & Sons.” Roni snorted to herself, I probably could have googled the address, she thought, irritated over having made a physical search instead.

  Stepping around a corner, she found a door. She’d just sent out a thought commanding people not to notice the door opening when it opened of its own accord and a burly man exited. Roni slipped in the closing door, merely putting a finger on it to slow it enough to allow her passage.

  Roni paused to allow her eyes to adjust to the dim light, made worse by her dark scarf. It appeared she was near one corner of a voluminous building. The office where she’d peered into the window had to be behind the heavy steel door in the concrete block wall to her left. Some distance down the perpendicular exterior wall to her right were some large rolling doors appropriate for trucks.

  Eyes adjusted, Roni walked deeper into the warehouse, looking about as she went. She didn’t see any security cameras and would’ve been surprised if she had. It seemed unlikely that the Castanos would want there to be a record of their goings-on. The concrete block wall continued past the depth of the corner office. Several more heavy looking doors were set into the wall at intervals, each with impressive looking locks. Roni had a feeling that the rooms behind them held contraband.

  Roni gently tested the knob on each door as she passed, but none of them turned. She stopped at one, contemplating the locks and wondering whether she could find a way to defeat them. Not without the keys, she decided. Or maybe a sledge-hammer and chisel. Somehow, she’d expected something even more secure than steel doors with heavy locks. He’s probably counting on his fearsome reputation to keep anyone from trying to break in, she thought.