The Night in Question

by Nic Joseph

  • • •

  The next morning, I got up and drove to the police station. Emma and I had agreed to meet there at 9:00 a.m. I was thirty minutes early, and I sat outside the station, gripping the steering wheel, my nerves making it hard for me to sit still.

  If she didn’t come, I was going to drive to her house and push the buzzer until she answered.

  I didn’t have to. At ten minutes to the hour, I saw a car pulling into the station parking lot and immediately recognized Emma in the driver’s seat. She pulled into a space and sat there for a few minutes, a couple of cars down from me. There weren’t many cars in the parking lot, and I watched as she scanned them until she saw me, sitting in my own car. She flinched, and I raised a hand and waved.

  We both got out of our cars, and she walked toward me, her purse on her shoulder.

  “Did he send it to you?” I asked.

  She nodded. I could see that her eyes were red and puffy, as if she’d been crying.

  “I can’t go in there,” she said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a jump drive. “Here’s the video. And by the way, even though he was there, it doesn’t mean that he actually killed her,” she snapped. “I want to be very clear about that.”

  I frowned. “I never said it did.” A thought crossed my mind, and I stopped walking. “Did you call him?”

  “What?”

  “Did you call Ryan? Did you tell him what we were doing?”

  “No,” she said, and when she saw my expression, she shook her head vehemently. “I didn’t call him. I promise.”

  I walked into the station and asked for Detective Puhl. A few minutes later, she walked out the back of the station, looking incredibly put-together for so early in the morning.

  She sighed when she saw me.

  “What’s this about?” she asked.

  “I have something I need to show you,” I said. “It’s about Ryan Hooks.”

  A few minutes later, we were both standing behind Puhl’s desk. She’d inserted the jump drive and was pulling up the file.

  “There, that’s the one,” I said.

  Puhl clicked on it, and suddenly, the video viewer popped up, filling most of the screen. It was slightly grainy footage of the dog park and the sidewalk beside it. We watched it for a few moments, then I leaned forward and clicked the mouse a few times.

  We saw something like a figure move by on the sidewalk, and I pushed the space bar to stop the video.

  “There,” I said.

  The video showed a man walking toward Emma’s apartment building. We both leaned close, but it was clear that the man in the picture was the one, the only…

  Ryan Hooks.

  “See,” I hissed.

  Puhl had an expression of disbelief on her face. “He really was there, wasn’t he?” she said, rewinding the video a couple of times. There was no mistaking that it was him. She dragged the video to the end, but there were no signs of him walking back the same way.

  “How long did this record for?” Puhl asked.

  “It stopped at 4:00 a.m.”

  “And we don’t see him leave…” Puhl muttered quietly. It was more of a statement than a question.

  The video stopped on the screen, a still shot of the park in the wee hours of the night.

  Puhl was tapping her pen against the table, and she seemed to be mulling something over.

  She leaned over and wrote something in her notebook. As she wrote, I stared at the image on the screen, the video stopped on the final, grainy image, and I tried to quell the voice that was rising in my head.

  Something is wrong.

  I leaned closer to the screen, trying to figure out what it was that was bothering me. There wasn’t anything in the picture, nothing you could actually make out, but I stared anyway, pulled in by the image on the screen.

  I was dragging my gaze back to Puhl when I stopped on one small piece of text on the screen and felt a chill run down my spine.

  It was the time stamp for the video, which, since it was at the very end, showed the length of what we’d just seen.

  3:58:48

  I frowned when I saw that, instead of the solid four hours of every recorded session in the flowerpot camera, this video was just a little bit short.

  There was a full minute and twelve seconds missing.

  I decided not to say anything to Detective Puhl, not right away. I left the jump drive with her and walked out of the station. As I did, I saw that Emma was still sitting in her car. I walked up to her window.

  “How’d it go?” she asked breathlessly. “Did they see him?”

  I nodded.

  “That was really tough,” she said. “Thanks for encouraging me to do it, though. As hard as it was, I know it was the right thing to do.”

  I watched her as she stared at me, her face the picture of complete innocence, and I wondered if I could have gotten it wrong. Maybe I’d misread something; maybe I wasn’t thinking straight.

  “The video,” I said before I could stop myself. “Did you notice anything about it?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  I hesitated. “It seemed a bit short.”

  She blinked.

  That was the mistake. I wouldn’t have noticed anything, yet her eyes darted away for just a moment, and I saw her jaw clench just slightly. Other than that, her expression remained perfectly neutral except for a slight furrowing of her brow in confusion.

  “What do you mean?” she asked again.

  “The video, Emma,” I said. “All the recordings were four hours long. Exactly four hours, because he set it for the maximum amount of time. How did we lose more than a minute?”

  She continued to stare at me, and then I saw something on her face that I couldn’t quite read.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, but there was something there that looked like…

  Satisfaction.

  “Thanks again for convincing me to come in,” she said, and then she began to pull out of the spot. “It was the right thing to do.”

  Chapter 30

  I was parked a few blocks down from Bolton’s apartment, watching the building. It had only taken a few Google searches to learn that he was the “lead volunteer” at a local animal shelter. I’d called the shelter and spoken to Erica, a chipper veterinary student who’d been more than happy to tell me his schedule for the week.

  “I’m so happy you were pleased with Reg’s service the last time you came in,” she had said. “He’s one of our best. He’s in every day except Mondays, if you want to come back on one of those days.”

  I drummed my fingers against the steering wheel. It was Wednesday, so he should be leaving soon, and then I was going to have to do something less legal than everything else I’d done in the past few days, which was saying a lot. I was going to have to go in and try to find the original footage of the recording from Saturday night. Emma had all but admitted that she’d cut something from the video because “it was the right thing to do.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  About ten minutes later, I saw Bolton step out of his apartment, his dog trotting along behind him. I slumped down in my seat and hoped he didn’t see my car; by now, I knew he’d recognize it, and that would be it. But he walked in the other direction and turned the corner.

  Was he just walking his dog?

  Or was he taking him to the shelter with him?

  I knew how bad an idea it was. But I simply couldn’t handle people acting like I was crazy any more. Like I’d made it all up. If Bolton had the evidence on his computer, I was going to find it. One way or another.

  I waited a full ten minutes after he left before getting out of my car and crossing the street, careful to keep my head down.

  You only look suspicious because you feel suspicious.<
br />
  You only look suspicious because you feel suspicious.

  I walked up to the door, took a deep breath, and pressed all the buzzers quickly.

  Nothing happened right away, so I did it again.

  In my very first apartment out of college, I lived in a building where the landlord constantly posted notices saying that we should not open the door when someone buzzed to get up if we did not know who they were.

  Which meant there were people who did that.

  I had to hope there was one in Bolton’s building today.

  I took a deep breath and did it again, dragging my finger along all the buzzers. Finally, I heard a woman’s voice come through the intercom.

  “Who is it?”

  “Sorry, gas company,” I said, thinking quickly. “I got locked out.”

  There was another pause, then the woman buzzed me in. It was a quick buzz—as if, by only pushing it for a second, she wasn’t letting in a serial killer. I pushed the door open quickly, and just like that, I was inside Bolton’s apartment building.

  I rode the elevator up to the second floor, overcome by a sense of déjà vu after my trip there with Emma the previous day. I tried to think about what she must’ve seen when she went into Bolton’s apartment. Something that incriminated Hooks? Something that incriminated her?

  Was she trying to help Hooks or hurt him?

  Whatever it was in that minute and twelve seconds she’d deleted would tell me the truth.

  I stepped out into the hallway and walked down to Bolton’s apartment. I hadn’t heard anyone else inside, and I knew he’d taken his dog with him to work. Still, my heart was racing as I raised my hand and tapped lightly on the door. I didn’t want anyone else on the floor to hear me knocking, but I couldn’t very well break in if there was someone else inside. I waited a few moments and then tapped again. When nothing happened, I reached into my pocket and took out the ID card I’d put there.

  I’d looked up how to break into an apartment on YouTube. Of course, the tutorials were designed for people who’d locked themselves out of their own apartments. But I’d studied how to open a door with a laminated credit card, and it was time to put my two-hour education to the test. I reached up to test the handle and let out a gasp as the door opened easily in my hand before I got anywhere near it with the card.

  I paused, unsure if I should believe my luck. In my search, I’d read that most burglaries happened during the day, through unlocked front doors, but I couldn’t believe that there were people who actually didn’t lock their doors in the middle of Chicago. As I stepped inside, I let out a sigh of relief that Reg Bolton was one of them.

  I closed the door behind me and leaned back against it, breathing heavily. I felt an immense amount of guilt wash over me as I stood in his apartment, his home. But I pushed it away and began looking around for the laptop where he’d said he stored the files.

  I moved quickly through the living room and the kitchen, but there was nothing there. At the far end of the kitchen was the door to the bedroom, and I walked inside slowly, the weight of my intrusion on his personal space making my stomach turn. I was considering turning around when I saw the laptop, right there in the middle of his dresser. I walked over to it quickly and opened it, moving my finger across the mouse pad.

  The desktop loaded almost immediately, and I thanked the password gods that he hadn’t protected it. His background was a picture of his puppy, but it was absolutely covered in file folders and icons.

  Shit.

  I leaned closer to the computer and scanned them, looking for anything that stood out. I found the folder a few minutes later: U-CAM37S.

  I opened it, and there was a list of recordings from the past two weeks. I wondered if he’d just started recording then, or if he’d been deleting them to save space. I scrolled through the list and found the one from Saturday. Sure enough, like the other recordings, it was exactly four hours long.

  What did you cut, Emma?

  I double-clicked it, and the video opened up. It was the familiar shot of the dog park, highlighted in the night by the large streetlights that surrounded it. I moved the video forward to the end, but there was nothing there in the last ten seconds, just more footage of the same. Which meant she’d cut from somewhere earlier in the video.

  I began to drag the bar around to different portions of the night, but nothing changed. Just the same shot, every now and then showing someone walk by. Dragging the bar again, I searched for what she could’ve cut and felt myself start to get impatient.

  What am I missing?

  I needed more time. I could email the video to myself, but then there’d be a record of me breaking into Bolton’s place. Taking a breath to calm myself down, I placed the video at the halfway mark and then fast-forwarded, watching as the image on the screen shook. I got to the part where Hooks walked toward the building as we saw at the station. The video wobbled for another minute or so as it sped through the night, and then suddenly—

  I saw a figure move past the camera in the opposite direction.

  I froze, reaching out and tapping the space bar quickly to pause the video. My heart was racing as I dragged the bar back and maximized the screen. When I saw the figure on the screen, I pressed Play.

  It was a man, walking away from Emma’s apartment with his head down and shoulders slumped.

  Hooks.

  Walking back the way he’d come, just a few minutes or so after he arrived.

  There was a loud noise from the living room, and I gasped, stepping back. I froze for a moment and then closed the video screen and the laptop.

  I was holding my breath and praying that I had made it up when I heard voices.

  “I’m supposed to be at work. They really need me today,” Bolton said. “I don’t know why this couldn’t wait until later.”

  “I know, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

  Emma.

  “I’ll give you a ride to the shelter. I’m so glad I ran into you, because this is really important. I need to see that footage you showed me yesterday.”

  “I sent it to you!”

  “I know,” she said. “I just need to check something out from one of the other days. Please. It will only take a second, and then I’ll take you to work.”

  I stood there paralyzed for a few moments as I heard them walking toward the bedroom.

  She was going to delete it.

  I grabbed the laptop, raced across the room as quietly as possible, and stepped into Bolton’s open closet. I pulled it closed just as the door to the bedroom opened and they walked inside. I opened my mouth and took in long gulps of air, certain I would pass out if I didn’t just breathe.

  I needed air.

  Think, Paula.

  I watched them through one of the slats in the closet door.

  “Well, if it’s so important, go ahead,” Bolton said, gesturing toward the dresser. “Then we need to hustle. I don’t want to be late.”

  “Where is it, Mr. Bolton?” Emma said.

  I saw Bolton spin around, and he frowned. He turned to look around the room, first at the bed, then his nightstand, and then back at the dresser.

  “What the hell?” he said, walking over to the dresser and putting his hand on it. “I left it right here.”

  They both spun in slow circles, then Bolton walked out of the room.

  “Maybe I left it in the living room,” I heard him yell.

  Emma stood there silently in the middle of the room. For the first time, I saw something in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before—a clear, quiet determination, and the mask of something that was almost…

  Sinister.

  She was still looking around the room, but I saw her stop, and she looked at the closet door. My heart almost stopped as she seemed to look right at me.

  “Mr. Bolton,”
I heard her call out as she continued to stare at the closet door.

  “Yeah,” he called out from the living room.

  “You said your computer was here when you left this morning?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said.

  “And how long have you been gone?”

  “I don’t know, twenty minutes or so?”

  “Can you come here, please? I need you to do me a favor.”

  I heard footsteps, and a disheveled-looking Bolton was back at the bedroom door, his eyebrows raised.

  “What is it?” he asked. “I can’t find my computer. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I think someone stole it,” Emma said assertively. She reached into her pocket, took something out, and handed it to him. “I need you to call this number,” she said, then she leaned over and said something else quietly to him that I couldn’t hear.

  Bolton said something back, then turned and walked away.

  Emma turned to look at the closet door again, and in that instant, without any real proof at all…

  I knew the truth.

  I stared at her face, her nostrils flared, her gaze razor-sharp, and I knew instantly that I’d gotten it all wrong. I flashed back to the night of the dinner party as I lay on the ground watching Hooks pressed up against Emma in her kitchen, and I felt, more clearly than I had felt anything else in the last couple of days, that it just wasn’t right.

  The curves and lines of the woman’s face in the kitchen, and the one staring at the closet door…

  They weren’t the same.

  It wasn’t her.

  I’d gotten it wrong, so terribly wrong, but I didn’t have time to think about what that meant.

  Because a moment later, she charged.

  Chapter 31

  Claire

  Four days after

  Claire was standing on the staircase at the apartment on Oak Street when the call came in. She’d found that the best way for her to tackle a case was to go over all the things—big and small—that didn’t make sense about a case until they did.

  First, there was the blood in the stairwell. Most of it had belonged to the victim, except for one smudge at the bottom of the staircase, completely outside any logical place where Beverly’s blood would have fallen.