Becoming Quinn (8 page)

“You guys ready to order?” she asked.

“Oatmeal,” Jake said.

“All right. And you, ma’am?”

Berit was holding the coffee to her lips and blowing across the surface. “It’s too early to eat.”

“So, one oatmeal? That’s it?”

“Make it two,” Jake said. “She’ll get hungry.”

The waitress made a quick note on her pad, then left them again.

Berit rolled her head around in a circle a couple of times, and said, “I swear to God this better not be girl trouble. I will
kill
you if it is.”

Problems with the opposite sex were another thing they would discuss now and then, though it was more about the men who kept asking Berit out than the few dates Jake went on. It was interesting. They were the best of friends, but not once had either of them even hinted at taking their relationship further. She was a beautiful woman made even more so because of her intelligence, but he just never felt a romantic attraction. There was a very good reason for this: she reminded him of an older version of his sister, and he couldn’t deny she was filling the void Jake had created when he’d been forced to basically abandon Liz back home.

“No girl problems,” he said.

Her face grew a bit more serious. “Something at work? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he said hesitantly. “Everything’s fine. It’s just…” He paused.

“What?” When he didn’t answer right away, she said, “What did you do?”

He cracked a smile. “It’s not like that.”

“Then what
is
it?”

“The murder two nights ago,” he said. “I may have a lead on who did it.”

“Are you serious?”

He nodded, then proceeded to tell her everything. Somewhere in the middle of the story, the waitress returned with their oatmeal, but they barely noticed. When he was through, he pulled out the plastic sandwich bag he’d put the matchbook in at his apartment and showed it to her.

“You took that from a
crime
scene?” she said, staring at him like he was crazy.

“They’d already gone over everything. This could be nothing.”

“Or it could be
something
. Why didn’t you just give it to someone?”

“Look, I know I probably should have,” he said.

“
Probably
?”

“Okay, maybe I…I mean, I should have. But they would have just lumped it in with everything else. Who knows how long it would have taken for someone to follow up on it,
if
they even did?”

She rolled her eyes. “Did you at least tell someone about the markings you found on the ground? The cable impression? The spot at the tank where someone was sitting?”

“Those could have been made anytime.”

“And they could have been made the night of the fire, Jake. What the hell are you doing?”

Several people at nearby tables looked over.

Jake leaned toward her, dropping his voice to just above a whisper. “Think about it, Berit. What do I really have? Nothing that can’t be explained away in half a second.”

“That’s not a judgment for you to make,” she replied, the level of her voice now matching his. She frowned, and he could see she was trying to think it all through. Finally, the disapproval on her face softened. “Tell me about these guys at the hotel.”

Jake put the two printouts from the Lawrence Hotel on the table.

She examined them, then shrugged. “I don’t understand how you know these guys are connected to the murder.”

“I
don’t
know, not for sure,” he corrected her. “It’s just…a feeling.” He explained how he’d been going through the footage, but had stopped when he’d seen the two men come out the front door, and known immediately there was something different about them. He told her how he’d traced their movements backwards, the subtle communication between them, the matchbook.

“That’s it?” she asked. “Nothing connecting them to the murder, or even putting them in the vicinity other than the one guy picking up some matches?”

He shook his head.

“Just a feeling?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She frowned, then pointed at the printout of the man by himself. “What about this guy?”

Jake described the incident in the elevator.

“That could have been anything,” she said.

Jake nodded. “I know. He’s probably not even involved. But I got a print just in case.”

She was silent for several moments, then she gestured at the printouts. “These, I can understand you not wanting to tell anyone about. Other than some instinct you seem to have about them, there’s no way to connect these guys to what happened. But this other stuff—”

“There’s no way to connect them
yet
,” he said, cutting her off.

She narrowed her eyes. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I need your help.”

“I don’t like the sound of this.”

“What if we do a little checking? We can see if someone closer to the crime scene might have noticed one of these guys the other night.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“I’m just saying it wouldn’t hurt anything to show the pictures around,” he went on. “If we start now, we could be done by lunch.”

“You can’t be serious.”

He smiled. “Come on. It’ll be fun. And when we don’t find any connections, you can tell me what an idiot I’ve been.”

“I can tell you that now.”

“I promise that when we’re done, I’ll turn in the matchbook and the pictures I took of the marks in the ground and tell them everything.”

“That’s…going to get you in a lot of trouble, you know,” she said, her voice suddenly uncertain.

“You’re the one who’s been saying I should, and you’re right. Whatever happens to me, I’ll deserve it. I’m just asking for a few hours of digging first. That’s all.”

She huffed out a laugh, then gave him a smirk. “That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“I swear to God, if I get fired because of this, I’m going to kill you.”

“So you’ll do it?”

For a moment, she simply stared at him, then she said, “Three hours. That’s it.”

“Three hours is plenty.”

•    •    •

Jake’s hope was that if the men from the Lawrence
had
been involved in the Goodman Ranch Road murder, they would have made a stop somewhere on the way—maybe for gas, or a bite to eat to kill the time.

With a few minor variations, there was really just one logical route from the Lawrence Hotel to the crime scene. Before they began their search, though, Jake grabbed his stuff out of his Civic and hopped in Berit’s vintage Charger. From Di’s Diner, they went to Berit’s townhouse, where, with considerable effort, Jake convinced her that they should don their uniforms.

When he saw the skepticism on her face as she came back down to the living room, he said, “Trust me. It’ll make things easier.”

Her only reply was a low grunt.

They drove out to Goodman Ranch Road, stopping a couple of lots short of the crime scene to make sure they didn’t miss any potential places the men might have stopped, then Berit executed a quick U-turn.

Three-quarters of a mile back down the road, they came upon the first possibility, a combination gas station/mini-mart. It only took a few moments before Jake realized a glaring flaw in his plan. If the men
had
made a stop somewhere, it would have been at night. Which meant anyone who had been working on Saturday night probably wouldn’t be working that Monday morning.

The look on Berit’s face when the clerk shrugged and said, “I don’t recognize them, but I get off at four every afternoon” let Jake know she’d realized the same thing. But she didn’t say anything.

Rookie mistake
, he thought. If you’re doing a business-to-business search, you either got the names of whoever might have been on duty at the time of the incident and contacted them directly, or did the search at the same time the incident occurred. But while they
could
get names, contacting them seemed like taking things one step too far.

Already feeling defeated, they continued on. Two gas stations, a coffee shop and a donut place all had the same answer: “Sorry, haven’t seen them.”

It was as they entered another convenience store that he realized he truly was an idiot.

When the clerk gave him the same response the others had been giving, instead of saying, “Thanks,” and leaving, Jake said, “I see you have security cameras.”

“Uh, yeah,” the clerk said.

Berit had been turning to leave, but Jake’s comment stopped her.

“Do you record, or are they just live feeds?”

“Insurance wants us to record,” the clerk said.

Jake tried to contain his optimism. “You keep the recordings on site?”

The clerk motioned toward the rear of the store. “In the office.”

“How far back?”

“Supposed to keep two months’ worth,” the clerk said, looking a bit uncomfortable.

“But you don’t?” Jake asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Sir, how far back?”

The clerk grimaced as if he were in pain. “Two weeks. The owner doesn’t like to waste the money on VHS tapes. Don’t tell him I told you, though, okay?”

Jake tried to look stern, while inside he was feeling relief. “I’ll tell you what. We won’t say anything if you let us take a look at a couple of them.”

“Sure. No problem.”

“You have a monitor somewhere we can use?”

“Let me show you,” the clerk said.

Unlike at the Lawrence Hotel, Jake knew exactly the time range they needed to look at, so it was a simple matter of identifying the correct tape and fast-forwarding to the time in question. Unfortunately, the men had not stepped through the door in the hour and a half prior to the murder. But he didn’t let that get him down. He’d found a bandage for his flawed plan, so there was hope.

He and Berit retraced their steps to the places they’d already checked, and in all but one, they were allowed a look at the security footage. Unfortunately, the men had not stopped at any of those places, either.

Because they had to watch video everywhere they stopped, their progress was slower than Jake would have hoped, and soon it was approaching noon.

“This is a waste of time. You know that, right?” Berit said as they pulled away from yet another gas station.

 Jake stared out the front window, saying nothing, but thinking the same thing. They probably should just give up, but that feeling that he was right was still nagging at him, telling him to keep going.

“Just another thirty minutes?” he asked.

She frowned, then rolled her eyes. “Thirty minutes. But that’s it.”

“Thanks.”

The next two businesses had no security footage at all. After that, they hit a coffee shop called Oscar’s Grind. As they walked in, Jake knew they could make only a couple more stops, at most, before the thirty minutes were up.

Once more they went through their routine with the manager. Oscar’s had a camera system, but to save on storage space, the system was programmed to take still images every two seconds instead of shooting continuous video.

“What night was that you wanted to look at?” the manager asked.

They were in the back room, crowded around a small desk that held a monitor and a VHS player.

“Saturday, between seven and nine,” Jake told him.

The manager stuck the appropriate tape in the machine, and soon the monitor filled with an image of the coffee shop. The angle was from behind the cash register, looking over the counter. In the foreground was an employee taking orders, her back to the camera, while on the other side was the front of the line of people waiting to be served. In the lower right corner was a time stamp: 6:58 p.m.

The playback was choppy due to the still images, but it was more than sufficient to see the faces of the customers.

“Can you speed it up?” Jake asked.

“A bit.”

The manager pushed Fast Forward. On the screen, customers began moving rapidly.

When the time stamp read 7:48 p.m., both Jake and Berit said, “Stop.”

The manager hit the Pause button, and the image froze on the monitor.

“Back up a couple of seconds,” Jake said.

The manager did as asked.

On the monitor, standing just beyond the register, were the two men who’d left the Lawrence Hotel at the same time. There was no mistaking them. And unlike in the footage from the hotel, they were no longer acting like they didn’t know each other.

“You were right,” Berit said, her voice barely audible.

“Are these the guys you’re looking for?” the manager asked.

Ignoring the question, Jake said, “Can you move to a couple minutes before this point and let it play?”

“Of course.”

They watched as customers came and went, then the two men stepped up, placed their order and exited the frame.

The manager reached out to stop it, but Jake said, “No. Let it play.”

They watched for another five minutes. The men didn’t come back, but Jake hadn’t been expecting them to. Who he was really hoping to see was the third man, but there was no sign of him.

“Can you make printouts?” Jake asked.

“Printouts,” the manager said, sounding embarrassed. “People can do that?”

Jake stood up. “Don’t worry about it. Thanks. That’s all we’ll need for now.”

“Oh, ah, all right,” the manager said. “No problem at all.”

“How long before you erase what you’ve recorded?” Berit asked.

“A week.”

“We’re going to need you to hold on to the cassette,” she told him. “You can at least do that, right?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Good,” Berit told him. “We’ll be in touch.”

Neither Jake nor Berit said anything as they walked through the coffee shop and out to her car. The silence continued after they got in, both lost in thought.

Finally, Berit said, “We have to tell someone.”

“Tell them what?”

“What you’ve found out.”

“And what exactly have I found out?”

She looked at him like she couldn’t understand what he meant. “The men. They were here.”

He returned her gaze, not saying anything, waiting for her to realize what he’d already figured out. That no matter how much they might see the connection, there was still absolutely nothing solid. In fact, there was nothing even remotely close to solid. It was all relying on a hunch, a feeling of a rookie cop who didn’t quite fit in with the others.