Decker smiled, but he shook her off. “Okay. This is the plan. You wait here for Tran and Smitz and let them know what happened.”
“They’re going to wonder what I was doing here with you when I’m supposed to be on suspension.”
“You weren’t with me, Lennie. I had no idea that you were coming. And if you don’t want to tell them that you came to Bigstore to play rogue detective, tell them you get your morning coffee here and shoot the shit with the girls who run the café. You ran into me when the doors opened. You went one way, I went the other way. You can also tell them that I insisted on walking you back to your car. Then you noticed it had been tampered with and we called the police. Shouldn’t be hard to remember because it’s all true.”
“What about Olivia Anderson?”
“Don’t worry about that. If it comes up, I’ll take care of it, okay?”
“Okay. Where will you be?”
“In Security. Like I said, the place has hidden cameras everywhere, including this behemoth of a parking lot. We know when you came, but I don’t know where the cameras are. Maybe—just maybe—we’ll get lucky.”
Chapter 26
Most of the outside cameras monitored people going in and out of the enormous sets of glass front doors. This was the way that security caught 90 percent of the shoplifters. Those with sticky fingers claimed that they were distracted and just forgot to pay. This worked with little items such as makeup—the number one filched item—but it was a little harder to claim memory loss when trying to stuff a Game Boy under a trench coat. Regardless of the item, Bigstore’s policy was always the benefit of the doubt. If the person went back inside and paid for the item, there was no need to involve the police.
Sometimes the items were so well hidden a person could leave the store without triggering the alarms. There were alarms in the parking lot, however, and when the thief attempted to stuff the item into their trunk, a silent alarm went off. The cameras in the parking lot provided backup evidence. Monitors also picked up a fair share of car break-ins.
Supervisor Benton Horsch—miffed, at first, by the interference of police—soon warmed up to the idea of being a linchpin in a real police investigation. He was in his office, at his computer, which was hooked up to dozens of mounted TV monitors. He was checking out squares of black-and-white images. He asked Lennie Baccus, “Where were you parked again?”
“Orange between 2B and 2C.”
He moved the mouse over a list of images. “Possibly we can pick you up on this camera . . . hold on.” A click of the mouse. “No, that won’t work, either. Let’s try a different angle. Hold on while I download the videos.” The camera was picking up multiple angles, flashing between the images. He pressed pause. “This looks like a Kia Optima.”
The image showed the windshield and part of the grille, including the top half of a license plate. Also discernible in the frozen frame was the top half of the passenger’s front door.
Lennie shouted, “That’s my car!” She announced her license plate ID, which corresponded with the truncated letters and numbers. “Oh my God, I can’t believe we actually found something on the cameras.”
“It’s not that unusual. We do put them at strategic spots.” Horsch seemed irritated. “When did you show up at Bigstore?”
“I was here before they opened the doors.”
“Okay. Then we’ll backtrack the monitor to before seven in the morning.” He placed the camera in fast reverse. The video contents flew by fast and blurry. It was impossible to make out images.
“How about”—Horsch pressed the stop button—“we start at six-forty-five since you don’t know exactly when you arrived.”
“Sure,” Lennie said.
Horsch pressed start. At twelve minutes to seven in the morning, the monitor showed Lennie’s Kia pulling into the parking spot. She got out a minute later and turned right and soon was out of the range of the camera.
“Great definition of the features on the face,” Decker noted.
“We have two-year-old equipment. Not the latest incarnation, but it’s pretty new,” Horsch said. “It’s an all-digital setup, not that grotty CCTV film, and the resolution is decent.”
“Best clarity I’ve seen,” Decker said.
The three of them sat in silence, watching people stroll by. There were young women holding babies and toddlers to their chest or wheeling them in a Bigstore shopping cart. Others walked quickly, grasping the hands of school-age children. Older couples were pushing empty leg-high shopping carts that they had brought with them. Families were going in with towels and exiting with wet heads, holding bloated Bigstore bags—supplies for the next leg of their journey.
After some time had passed, Decker said, “We were in Bigstore for around an hour and a half. I know you’re a busy man. If you want to do other things, we’re fine.”
“No one touches my equipment except my people,” Horsch said. “It’s also better if I’m here. I can swear that you didn’t monkey with anything.”
“I understand. I just didn’t want to waste your time.”
“Not a waste of time to catch a break-in,” Horsch said. “It looks good on everyone’s record.” To Lennie, “Is anyone processing your car?”
“Two detectives from Hamilton arrived twenty minutes ago. They’re waiting for a forensic team to get here.”
“Tran and Smitz?” After Lennie nodded yes, Decker asked, “Chief Baccus show up?”
Lennie made a sour face. “He wasn’t there when I left to come here, but I’m sure he’ll hear about it.” Her nails clicked. “No one’s going to believe that we came separately.”
“Not my problem.”
“Tran and Smitz seemed annoyed with me. They can’t understand why I didn’t pick up a tail. I was looking out of my mirrors all the time.”
“It’s hard to pay attention to someone following you and drive at the same time.”
“I swear I was looking around—”
“Freeze the frame,” Decker interrupted. Horsch stopped the digital tape. The image centered on a man who was approaching Lennie’s car. His face was turned with three-quarters visible to the camera. To Lennie. “One of our guys?”
“The heavier one?”
“Yeah. Him.”
Lennie looked at the composite police drawing and then at the image. “Could be.”
Decker said, “Could you slow it down from this point forward, Mr. Horsch?”
“Ben,” Horsch replied. “Sure.”
Unknown Man stopped at the Kia and looked around. Decker sat up. “Just how much no good are you up to?” Unknown Man checked over his shoulder and bounced on his feet. Miraculously, he turned, and just for a moment, he was facing the lens. He was a stocky fellow. In the black-and-white video, he appeared to have a full face with white hair and dark eyes. He was wearing a bomber jacket—overly heavy in such warm weather. It also didn’t go with the board shorts that showed muscular legs and flip-flops on his feet. The big bulky jacket meant he was carrying tools.
Horsch paused the frame and wrote down the time to the exact hundredth of a second. “That’s a good image.”
“That’s a great image!” Decker said.
Lennie looked at the police rendering. “Not a bad likeness.”
“I wonder if any frames show his wrists.”
“For the tattoo.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll keep going then.” Horsch pressed the play button. The camera was advancing at half-speed. Unknown Man kept going in and out of the camera lens as it flashed to other angles of the parking lot, and then back again to the Kia. Unknown Man appeared to be walking around the car, hands in his pocket. Slowly the images advanced. Four minutes, twenty-three seconds later, another unknown man, designated by Decker as UM#2, arrived at the Kia. He was also wearing a jacket. The two men conversed. Then UM#2 went to the driver’s side of the car and ducked down—out of range of the camera—for at least five minutes. UM#1 stood at the front of the car, clearly ac
ting as a lookout. After UM#2 popped back up, he fiddled with the front passenger door until it swung open. UM#1 went around so that the door hid most of his body. Then he ducked, probably sifting through the car’s contents from the passenger side. Both men were lost to the camera’s lens.
They were out of range for over five minutes. When they popped up again, they conferred for a moment, then appeared to go their separate ways. The men were on-screen for twelve minutes, forty-two seconds. Although the camera captured a good image of UM#1, his accomplice male, UM#2, never appeared full-faced in the lens’s eye. Horsch stopped the progress of the digital tape.
“I’ll splice out this clip and give it to you.”
“That’s great for evidence if we get them. What I really need are their vehicles. I’m assuming it’s two vehicles since they arrived at different times. But it could have been they staged it that way. Or possibly one of them took an Uber.” A pause. “Do you have Uber in Hamilton?”
“Uber and Lyft.”
“That would be the best of both worlds because then the company would have a record. Anyway, is there a way you can pick them up as they walk to their cars?”
“It would involve using other cameras,” Horsch said. “It will take a while.”
“It’s important.”
Horsch said, “I have to fiddle around with other cameras, but I’ll do my best.”
“Thank you. It’s a major case.” Decker turned to Lennie. “Why don’t you wait here while Mr. Horsch is setting things up? I’ll go talk to Tran and Smitz. Possibly those two jokers left behind usable shoe prints.”
“I can do it for you—” She stopped, remembering she was suspended, then said, “Uh, good plan. Sure.”
Within an hour, Decker got the make and model of UM#2’s vehicle. No plates visible. When he checked with the local DMV, he discovered that the same make and model had been reported stolen three hours ago. He recongregated with Lennie, Tran, and Smitz, watching SID work. Tran wore black slacks and a yellow shirt, sleeves rolled up at the elbow. Smitz was dressed in a blue suit and a white shirt but no tie. He was fair to the point of being bleached. He’d burn quickly in the morning sun. Perhaps that’s why he was wearing a cowboy hat.
By the time Chief Baccus arrived—clad in uniform—Decker had a good face shot of UM#1 pulled from the digital disc. He presented Baccus with the image; the chief studied it for a long time. “I wish I knew who he was, but I don’t.”
Decker regarded his face. No deception that he could see. “You can keep that, show it around.”
“This guy is around my age, maybe older. People in the department aren’t going to know him if I don’t.”
“Right.”
“But I’ll post it anyway. Whoever he is, he’s not a cop in my department. Maybe you should show it to your captain.”
“Absolutely.”
“It could be someone from Greenbury’s past.”
“Absolutely.”
Baccus turned to his daughter. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I wish that I knew what they were looking for. Whatever it is, I don’t have it.”
“What were you doing here at Bigstore in the first place? You know you’re on desk duty.”
“Of course, sir. I was just getting my morning coffee before work. I come here once or twice a week.”
“And you just happened to run into him?” Meaning Decker.
“Yes, sir.”
Baccus looked at Decker, who waited for a question. One thing he learned: never volunteer anything. “What about you?” the chief finally said.
“Working on the Brady Neil case. Showing the sketches around.”
“I wanted you to wait until I posted the images on police bulletin boards.”
“Sir, with all due respect, Neil was an employee here. I was showing them to people he worked with, not a community.”
Baccus made a sour face. “Any luck?”
Decker pointed to the clear image of UM#1. “This is luck.” A pause. “We’ve just got to get someone to identify him. I’ll post it on our websites and put it in our local paper. If you could do the same for the Hamiltonian?”
“I suppose that would be a good game plan,” Baccus admitted.
“Thank you, sir.”
A woman from Forensics, dressed in blue scrubs and shoe covers, ripped off her gloves. “We’re done here. We have a lot of prints.” She turned to Lennie. “I know you have a card on file, but it’s always better to get fresh prints. We’ll need them for elimination.”
“Of course.”
Baccus said, “I’m going back to work.” He turned to Lennie. “My office. Three o’clock.”
“Yes, sir.” After Baccus walked away, she sighed. “Not going to be good.”
“Maybe not for you, but this is a great outcome for the case,” Decker said.
“Spoken like a true homicide detective.” Tran shook his head. “The only thing that was hidden in Boch’s house were those old black-and-white pictures. If that’s what they were looking for, why would they assume that Lennie has them?”
“She stole the file, so maybe she also has the pictures,” Smitz said.
“I didn’t steal anything!” Lennie said.
Decker said, “Who, besides a police officer, would know that she had taken the files home?”
No one spoke. Then Tran said, “You think it’s someone from our department. I’m telling you that this joker isn’t one of us.”
“I’m not saying he is. But there is a possibility of a leak.”
“Maybe from your department, not from us,” Smitz said.
“Maybe.” Decker didn’t argue. He knew everyone in Greenbury. No one was a candidate for a mole. But Baccus had a point. Decker couldn’t rule out that the unknown men were people from Greenbury’s past. “If no one needs me, I’m going back to work.” He hit the photograph. “I need to let my people know about this.” He looked up. “By the way, I’m going to be out of town this weekend. I’m leaving on Friday, but I’ll be reachable on my cell. If something comes up, please call me.”
“Where to?” Tran asked.
“Visiting my ninety-four-year-old mother.”
“Is she ill?” Smitz said.
“No, not ill, just ninety-four. She lives in Florida, and I haven’t seen her in over a year. It’s time.”
“Have a good one,” Smitz said.
“A good one?” Decker laughed. “It’s clear you’ve never met my mother.”
Chapter 27
After posting the CCTV camera shot and the two sketches on the Greenbury Police Department bulletin board, Decker began looking up the current roster of Hamilton PD. Within a few minutes, Radar was at his desk, peering over his shoulder.
“What the hell are you doing, Decker?”
“No need for profanities, Captain. I’m just thinking that someone had to know that Lennie took the Levine files home.”
“Shut that down,” Radar snapped. “My office. Now.”
Decker was irritated but kept it to himself. He slowly made his way to Radar’s office. The captain had a distasteful look on his face, as if he had just bitten into a mealy apple.
“I am not looking for a conspiracy, okay?” Decker closed the door. “I’m attempting to find out how anyone other than a cop could have known about the file being checked out.”
“If they posed as cops before, they could have posed as cops to the person who was in charge of Hamilton’s archives. A secretary wouldn’t know every cop on the force. Between uniforms and detectives, Hamilton must have close to one hundred police officers.”
“Well, then let me take the sketches over to Hamilton archives and see if I can’t get an ID from the receptionist.” When Radar didn’t respond, Decker said, “If it is one of them, they’re not going to police themselves.”
“That’s not necessarily true. Anyway, this isn’t what I wanted to talk about. What were you thinking . . . working with Lennie Baccus?”
“I wasn’t working with
her. She showed up—”
“Yeah, to get morning coffee. You really think I’m buying what you’re selling?”
“You should, because it’s the truth . . . mainly.”
“Mainly?”
“She went to Bigstore for the same reason I went to Bigstore. To get an ID on the men in the police sketches. I didn’t go with her. We met by chance at the front doors before the store opened.”
“You should have just sent her home.”
“I suggested it. She didn’t take my suggestion. I don’t have control over a grown woman. What did you expect me to do? Call her dad?”
“I didn’t expect you to work with her.”
“I didn’t. We went our separate ways.”
“Meaning you two didn’t coordinate efforts or anything like that?”
“She was going to ask around at the café. I was fine with that. She knows people there. I went straight to Carter Bonfellow to ask him a few questions.”
“Who’s he?”
After Decker explained, he said, “Carter was the one who told me about Security’s cameras. My thoughts were to see if these guys had ever been in Bigstore. And if they had been caught on camera, maybe I could catch them talking to Brady Neil and/or Boxer. After the head of Security told me it would be at least a day to pull up all those cameras, I decided to interview Olivia Anderson—a girl who worked at Bigstore, and, more importantly, she had gone out with Brady. Lennie set up the interview for me because she was the one who had originally talked to Olivia—when she was still with me on the homicide. After the interview, I walked Lennie to her car. And that’s when she discovered it had been broken into. We went back to Security. Luckily a camera was pointed on part of her car, and we saw the guys who did it on the monitor. We got a couple of great frames that showed a full-face shot. It wasn’t what I had planned when I went to Bigstore this morning, but it all worked out.”
Decker took a breath.
“Now you’re up to speed.”
Radar was silent. Then he said, “Baccus wants you off the case. He says you’re not only butting into his homicides but you’re undermining his orders to those under him.”
Walking Shadows Page 23