by Kylie Brant
“What? You found something already?” Slipping out of her suit jacket as she spoke, Risa hurried to look over his shoulder.
“Found a few somethings. Juicy is apparently a hot nickname among dirtballs.” He shifted to allow her a better view. “But my bet is on this guy.” He scrolled back up to the top of the screen.
“Possession with intent, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder . . . a varied career.”
“For which it looks like he’s only done time once. Three years on the attempted murder charge. That doesn’t make sense.” He read more carefully, jotting down notes on a pad he took from his center desk drawer. One of the arresting officers was in a neighboring district. He took out his cell and called the number given on the report. Risa leaned forward and nudged his hand away from the keyboard so she could scroll through all the listings.
She had her dark blond hair pulled back today, but one long strand had worked free and curved along her jaw. In profile she looked almost delicate, which was a joke. Even in the short time he’d known her, he had a feeling that she was about as delicate as a pit bull.
“The third one’s a possibility, too,” she said, and turned to look at him. Her eyes were an odd amber color, wide and thickly fringed. And when the call went to Randolph’s voice mail, he had to clear his throat before speaking.
“This is Detective Nate McGuire, Homicide. I’m heading the task force on the three dead detectives and one of your old arrests may be of interest to us.” To divert his attention from the female standing too close to him, he scrolled back up the screen to check the name again. “Javon Emmons.” He read off the arrest report number. “I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call back at this number.” He rattled off his cell and disconnected. Thankfully, Risa moved away, her arms folded across her chest, looking thoughtful. He made a second phone call on the photo she’d indicated, identified as Dwayne Jersey, and once again had to leave a message, this time for an Officer Pelton. After consulting the list on-screen once more, he made a third and final call concerning one William Fox.
“We could show Crowley an array of these photos and see if he IDs one of them.”
“And we will. But I’d like to have a pretty good idea who he met there so if he thinks about lying to us again, I can nail him.”
Before Risa could respond, the ancient department phone on Nate’s desk rang. He reached out to snag the receiver. “McGuire.” After listening for a moment, he bolted out of his chair. “On my way.” He dropped the receiver in the cradle with a clatter. “That was the captain. IT just dropped off a dub of the tape we found at the scene.”
Morales already had a wheeled cart with a TV/VCR combo sitting in his office when they got there. Nate took a moment to wonder where he’d dug up the system. From the thick coating of dust everywhere except on the freshly dusted screen, no doubt it’d been resurrected from the tombs of the basement.
“Karen Loomis. Detective Nate McGuire. Marisa Chandler.” Morales made short work of the introductions as they crowded around the TV. “Ms. Loomis is from IT. She’s going to explain what we’ve got here.”
Loomis was a foot shorter than Nate and probably only twenty pounds lighter. Her dark brown hair was sticking up in odd spikes all over her head. After a moment he decided the style was deliberate. But she carried her weight lightly and sounded authoritative when she began speaking.
“What you’ve got is one very old tape.” She tapped the panel covering the tape insert. “Well, not the copy we made, but your original. It’s well worn and I’m guessing it might be a relic from the eighties. Mainly because that’s the decade the camera heralds from. But given the wear on the tape, it was either used over and over or it’s aged, as well. Or both.” She punched the buttons to turn on the TV and the VCR. If the unit came with a remote, it was obviously missing.
There were a few moments of blank screen before the recording came into view. Nate saw immediately what she meant. The picture crackled with static before settling into view. And the scene had his throat drying out.
“Ah, Jesus,” he whispered, when he saw the flames shooting skyward. They were imprinted on the inky blackness of the surroundings. A macabre beacon against the night sky, gilding the dark figure at their core.
“Is there sound?” Morales demanded.
Loomis turned up the volume. The crackle of the flames was heard. In the distance was a barking dog. But nothing else.
It took a moment for Nate to find his voice. “The other victims weren’t gagged. Liz didn’t mention finding anything to suggest this victim was either. Chances are he was dead by the time the tape was turned on.”
“Which begs the question of why the tape was started at that time.” The captain was frowning fiercely at the television screen. “Either he wants to film the entire scene to relive later or he wants to catch the crime scene being discovered and worked. Each way means he’s coming back for the tape.”
“Maybe he’d already filled one tape,” Risa suggested. It was the first time she’d spoken. Nate glanced at her. Her face was bloodless. Her eyes fixed on the screen.
“Possible,” Loomis answered cheerfully. “And no way for us to know for sure. What we can be certain of is that this particular tape was set to record for eight hours. Which means, of course, that you get a lower-quality recording. And you’ve only got about six hours of recorded material here. The first hint of a live person in the area comes sometime around dawn.” She fast-forwarded the tape until she found the bit she was looking for.
An unseen woman’s voice sounded. “Buster. Buster, stop it. Damn, would you just . . .” An excited barking was heard. “Yeah, I see it. What is that? It looks . . . ohmyGod, ohmyGod . . .” They all listened in silence as a still unseen Heather Bixby called 911, described what she’d found.
Afterward they watched as the woman moved onto the screen, pulled by the large mastiff, and got much closer to the smoking body than she’d led them to believe. Her next call, as expected, was to Crowley.
“Baby, you’re not going to believe this. There’s been nasty doings in the park last night.” She stopped. Listened. Gave a bray of laughter. “No, not that kind of nasty. You have a one-track mind. Yes, you do! Oh, shit.” She fumbled with the phone as she tried to pull the straining dog away from the pad of cement. When her voice came again, she had moved out of the picture. “I’m telling you, someone burnt something here last night and I think it was alive. Maybe even human.” After a moment a pout sounded in her voice. “I’m not exaggerating. Whatever it was is still smoking. I called the cops. Why? Because I had to. I’m telling you, this . . . thing . . . it might have been a person. You shouldn’t come. You know what your parole officer told you about avoiding trouble.”
There was a great deal more that Nate could have gone without hearing. Apparently Crowley berated her for calling prior to their hooking up, instead of after. And then there was a long-winded conversation about the details of the acts they were going to have to forgo because of the call she’d made summoning the cops. Details that included a great deal of imagination and an ingenious flexibility that had him frowning consideringly.
She hung up only moments before other voices were heard. The uniforms had arrived on the scene.
Loomis fast-forwarded again. “You appear shortly here, detective. And you, Chandler. But this is what I wanted to show you.” When she stopped the tape again, Risa was leading Nate in the direction of the tree. Several minutes passed before the picture tilted, righted itself, then went abruptly black.
“Ke-e-ep watching,” Loomis murmured, her eyes glued to the set. There were bursts of static as the picture scrambled, then cleared to show a different scene.
Nate moved closer to the set, his shoulder bumping Risa’s as she moved at the same time. He squinted, trying to make out the image. It looked like a group of people gathered around a table. Not for a meal. There were no dishes in sight, although there were plenty of beer bottles. Part of the video was cut off, as if w
hoever had filmed the movie hadn’t centered it.
Three men were in view, although one could be seen only from the back and one in profile. And given the length of the sideburns sported by the men, it had clearly been shot decades earlier. The conversation was a jumble of voices for the most part, with an occasional outburst of laughter.
An unseen man was heard. “How the hell are you gonna make sure of that, Johnny?”
The man shown in profile responded, his voice ringing out over the others. “How am I going to make sure? I’ll tell you how. ’Cuz if he doesn’t, I’m going to cut off his long black dong, chop it into little pieces, and force-feed it to that nigger-loving bitch of his.” He turned his head and looked across the room in the direction of the camera. “You hear that, Lamont?”
Raucous laughter sounded. A jolt of recognition struck him, but he couldn’t put his finger on the feeling of familiarity. “That man.” He reached out and tapped the face on the TV screen. “Not the loud mouth. Second to his right.” He frowned, searching his memory. It wasn’t someone he knew, at least not directly. Swearing silently, he tried to recall the context in which he’d seen the man. Someone he’d arrested? Not likely. He’d probably been a kid when this thing was filmed. An old newspaper clipping?
The realization slammed into him with the force of a fist.
He looked at Morales. “It’s the first victim. Roland Parker.”
The captain looked from him to the screen, then back again. “What? Are you sure?” They leaned nearer to the TV. “Can you back that up, Karen? Right to the spot where they all start laughing? Yeah, there. Stop.” They stared in silence for a moment. “Maybe. Maybe,” Morales muttered. “How can you be certain?”
“I can’t be positive. But I attended Parker’s memorial service. No viewing, of course, so his wife had pictures everywhere. Lots of them were older. I’d swear it was him.” He looked at the IT tech. “Is it possible to get a picture from this tape? Like a close-up?”
She nodded. “It won’t be the clearest, since blowing it up will blur some of the clarity. And the tape isn’t in that great of shape to begin with. But yeah, we can pause it, take a picture, and you can show the photo to the widow for an ID.”
Risa spoke. “Or compare it to the man’s older department ID photos.”
“Yeah. Yeah.” Nate was concentrating fiercely on the screen. He had to approach this cautiously but certainty was growing inside him. It was Parker, he was almost sure of it. And if he was right, they’d found their first link on this case. “Get us a still of the speaker, too, will you?”
“We’ll do our best. What happened is the footage from the crime scene was shot over this older tape,” Karen said after they watched the tape until it ran out. “And I already know what you’re going to ask.” She sent a sly look to Nate. “The answer is no.”
“Can you remove what was filmed over it two nights ago . . .” he began.
“Negative. Once these old tapes have been recorded over, the original material is erased. It’s not like a computer where you can trash items but they still exist somewhere on the hard drive. This material is gone. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard about kids taping over their parents wedding video, or some ex-jock’s football highlights lost forever because his wife taped her soaps over it. There is no retrieval system for something that ceases to exist, and that’s the case for the material you’re talking about.”
“What about the sound on the remainder of the tape?” Nate refused to feel disappointment. They might not have the rest of that film, but they had a snippet of it. And it might be enough to provide them with their first real leads in this case. “Can it be enhanced so we could hear more of the conversation?”
“Now that’s a possibility.” Karen hooked her thumbs in her waistband, which only served to draw attention to her girth. “Again, it’s going to depend a lot on the wear and tear the tape has already undergone, but I think we can do better than this, yeah. Maybe, maybe mind you, we can do well enough to give you a sample for a voice match on a speaker or two. Don’t know if that will do you much good or not.”
“You never know,” Nate murmured, staring blindly at the TV as his mind raced. “Better to have it, just in case.”
Long after Karen had gone back to IT, the three of them watched and rewatched the tape. If there was something to see on the footage shot prior to Heather Bixby happening upon the crime scene, none of them found it.
“Careful bastard.” Nate rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. They felt like they were filled with grit. “He was damn cautious about staying out of the camera’s view.”
“That makes me think he set this tape up before he left.” Risa’s voice was expressionless. And her face had regained the color that had leeched out of it when they’d first begun viewing. “Or maybe that’s when he changed tapes. At any rate, you’re right, he would be careful about not exposing himself that way.”
“Let’s go over the end of the tape again, the part that shows those men,” Morales said. His suit was rumpled and his eyes red rimmed. Nate could only imagine that he looked the same, or worse. “I’ll call Loomis and tell her to focus on where that neon sign reflects on the window in the door.” They’d stared at that portion of the tape until their eyes bled, but could only make out what they’d agreed was a z and a p. “Until and unless IT can figure out how many voices are heard in that segment, we can’t know the number of men sitting around that table.” His voice went hard. “And we can’t discount the fact that any one of them could be the suspect we’re after.”
Chapter 6
It felt more than a little anticlimactic to Risa to be standing in her mother’s living room staring out the window at barely six thirty P.M. She’d imagined they’d be working the case until late. She’d welcomed the possibility. Long hours meant exhaustion, which sometimes led to a deep dreamless sleep.
She hoped so. She couldn’t afford to avoid sleep in an effort to evade dreams that came without her consent, sneaking into her subconscious like a thief in the mist.
Broodingly, she stared at the near-empty street. She’d committed to this case for better or worse. And God help her, things couldn’t get much worse than they had over the last few months. It was as if she’d become stuck in place, while time passed her by. If she didn’t want to become a still life, she had to move forward. And if that thought still had the power to strike fear in her heart, at least she was moving toward something.
That would have to suffice for now.
She watched a dented-up navy compact drive slowly by, only to be forced to turn around at the cul-de-sac at the end of the street. The house she’d bought her mother was modest but it was in a safe neighborhood, and Hannah felt comfortable here. The others she’d shown her had been pronounced “too grand,” although they were anything but. Life had long since stripped Hannah Blanchette of pretensions.
Just like a series of poor choices in male companions had robbed her of illusions.
Shaking off the mantle of melancholy that threatened to overtake her, Risa strode to her bedroom. She thought Eduardo had been as surprised as she at Nate’s awkward explanation that he had to get home because of “family matters.” It had appeared as if he knew little more about the man’s personal life than she did. Nate had promised to call her if he were able to make it back to the station house later, but she’d known even as he’d made the promise that no call would be forthcoming. And once the captain had left, there had been nothing keeping her downtown.
Stripping off her clothes, she changed into a pair of shorts and a tee. The house next door had been unoccupied since last winter, when Hannah’s neighbor and friend who’d lived there had died. But it had a basketball hoop, and she’d spent many an hour rehabbing her shoulder by taking shot after shot at the ancient rim. She grabbed the worn ball from her closet and headed out the door.
Thirty minutes later, her shirt was drenched with perspiration, her muscles weeping from exertion, but her head w
as clear. Her mood more cheerful. There was nothing as happily mindless as the grueling drill of three-point practice, midrange shots, grab the rebound, lay-up, and repeat. She lost track of time. Lost track of thoughts. Just focused on muscle, movement, and response. Over and over again.
Finally weary, she bent over, resting her hands on her knees, lungs heaving, and a wave of contentment settling over her. Exercise had always been able to bring her peace.
And with it, escape.
Applause sounding nearby had her rearing straight, jerking around in the direction of the noise. A short, stout man, grinning hugely, stood between the cracked driveway and the house. “That was amazing. Absolutely incredible. Like . . .” His eyes rolled upward as he seemed to search for description. “Like watching Xena the Warrior Princess practice for battle. Knife, sword, hand-to-hand, bow and . . .”
Risa dribbled the ball rhythmically with her left hand while she surveyed him. “It’s basketball,” she reminded him, and wondered if there was a nearby mental facility he might have wandered away from. He looked like an eighties porn star, with the heavy gold chains and rings and his shirt opened halfway down the front, showing a thicket of curly chest hair. The vest he sported was meant to be fashionable. Probably. But it was too tight for his portly frame and instead managed to make him look like a sausage breaking free of its casing. “No weapons in sight.” Although she’d once broken a guy’s nose by slamming a basketball to his face, she’d matured since then. And learned far more effective ways to take down a man who was intent on changing her very emphatic no to a yes.
“Chandler the Handler, right? Watching you just now, I knew it had to be you. Penn State hasn’t had a player since who could match you with the basketball.”
She winced a little at the old nickname. “That was a long time ago.” Turning, she released a hook shot. Jogged over to scoop up the rebound. “Another lifetime.”