Deadly Dreams (11 page)

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 whoever 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.”

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 was 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.”

“I remember going to the Penn State–Ohio game.” His dreamy tone was the sort some men reserved for their cars. “Usually I just watched on TV, but I was taking film classes and it was my turn to videotape the game. That Mokey Hollis from Ohio. Tall hillbilly-looking gal with shoulders like a linebacker? She’d been fouling you hard the whole game, and they weren’t calling anything. Hooked you around the throat when you were going for a lay-up and laid you flat. Ref couldn’t find his whistle. The home crowd was screaming for blood. You couldn’t get off the floor. Remember that?”

The memory wasn’t an especially fond one. “I remember.”

“The coach wanted to take you out of the game but you refused. You went on to score a double-double. Eighteen rebounds and twenty-nine points. Your record still stands.”

Observing him more closely, she could feel tension returning to her muscles. Switching the ball to her right hand, she bounced it slowly. No fan she’d ever met had a memory like that, at least when it came to women’s basketball. But it would be easy enough to dig through old stats. Watch old footage to get enough details to strike up a conversation.

But for what possible reason?

“Who are you?” she asked bluntly.

He looked surprised. Then, oddly, hurt. A moment later he shrugged and thrust out his hand. “Jerry Muller. Northeast High? We graduated the same year. Well, actually I was a year ahead but was a few credits short. Ended up graduating with your class. That’s probably why you don’t remember me.”

She crossed to give his hand a shake. “That must be it.” That and the fact she’d graduated in a class of over eight hundred.

He smoothed back his thinning brown hair. “I didn’t even know you still lived in Philadelphia. Kind of lost track of you after your knee injury your senior year at Penn State.”

Jerry Muller seemed to have kept pretty close tabs on her for someone whose existence she’d been ignorant of until ten minutes ago.

“I don’t.” Although she’d been born and raised in the city, nothing about Philly had ever felt like home to her. She pointed at her mother’s house. “My mom still lives here.”

He looked poleaxed. She wondered if he were really that good an actor. Normal people didn’t have her innate suspicion of strangers. But then, she hadn’t been
normal
since she was five.

“Your mother is Hannah? Hannah . . .” He seemed to be waiting for her to supply the last name. When she didn’t, he came up with it on his own. “Hannah Blanchette.” He jerked a thumb at the house next to the drive. “This is my mom’s house. Eleanor Dobson?”

Her defenses lowered a fraction. She’d met the woman only once, but her mother was still heartbroken over her friend’s death. “I’m sorry about your loss.”

“Yeah.” His face fell a little as his gaze lingered on the house. “I only had time to stay long enough in February to make the funeral arrangements. I had a film in production and had to get back. This is the first chance I’ve had to return. Just got in last night. I need to get the house cleaned out so I can put it on the market, but . . . it’s harder than I expected. Going through her things, I mean.”