Deadly Thyme (38 page)

She watched
, wondering what to make of this man. He seemed as outraged as she did.

Sally wiped a hand across her forehead. She moved her face into Ruth
’s line of vision and raised an eyebrow. “What is it? What are you looking at?”

“Nothing. I
’m fine.” She looked towards the back of the room.

Mr. Malone stood near the door. He caught her eye and gave a jaunty half-wave. She noticed Sergeant Perstow leave. He seemed to be in a hurry.
She shivered. The room suddenly felt cold. It crept all the way into her bones.

A sudden movement caught Jon
’s eye. Perstow moved quickly to leave, brushing past Mr. Malone who stood at the open door. Malone’s dark eyes swept the room. Jon was reminded of a ferret with his quick movements and his beaked nose sloping to a point. He wondered why Perstow exited the room so abruptly. He wasn’t supposed to leave.

The video expert, Mr. Clark Grimly, had his projection screen set up facing the courtroom. One of those PowerPoint slide shows
, very up-to-date. It must be his own equipment; it was doubtful the Perrin’s Point police had anything like it. Grey-haired, be-spectacled, and altogether the picture of respectability, Mr. Grimly spent the next few moments composing himself by straightening his bow tie and flattening his hair down to his skull. Now that all eyes and ears were giving him absolute attention, the esteemed Mr. Grimly stammered and sputtered until he noticed a smudge on one of the photo displays. As he set about wiping the spot, his manner smoothed.

Jon wanted to raise his voice and say, “Get on with it!”

When asked if the photo could show anything about the child’s death, Mr. Grimly replied, “The present formatted images don’t point toward any solid pictorial evidence.

For Christ’s sake would someone put a stopper in this man’s mouth and tell him there were more important things to do than listen to words like
“formatted images.”
Jon couldn’t sit through much more of this. Where had Perstow gone? Had he gotten sick? Perhaps he should check on him. He stood and moved down the aisle to step out into the hall. A spike-haired youth stood by the door speaking in low tones to Perstow. Was it a male? Who could tell? Very skinny, no boobs, must be male. He wouldn’t be out of place in London, but here, he looked lost. As Perstow became more animated, the youth appeared increasingly disturbed.

Jon stepped toward them. “Can I help you?”

A mass of dyed blue-black hair stood out all over his head except for bangs flattened and plastered down straight over the front of his face all the way to his chin. Jon imagined he must have to crane his neck to see in front of him. Of course, he could not bend his neck too far back because his skull would become pierced on the vicious spikes protruding from the thick leather collar buckled around his neck.

The boy whispered, “Are you the one in charge?”

“I’m one of them.”

“I
’ve got this for you.”

When he reached into a pocket of his black trench coat, Jon froze. Did he have a knife? A bomb?

The youth pulled a videocassette from his coat. With the peculiar singsong lilt of Cornwall, he said, “I picked this up on the cliffs. I thought it might have something interestin’ on. It did, but not for me.”

“What
’s on it?” Jon asked, taking the cassette.

“Her from the posters.”

Jon turned the plastic casing over in his hands. There, written in his own handwriting was the word “Beach.”

49

J
on reentered the courtroom, resolutely made his way to where Trewe sat and handed the videotape to him.

“What
’s this?”

Jon leaned forward
and whispered, “The beach tape. Fellow found it on the cliffs. I haven’t seen it as I didn’t have a VCR, but the boy says Annie is on it.”

Trewe growled, “Do say.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” the coroner said. He and the video expert glared from the front of the room.

Trewe nodded in Mr. Ackerman
’s direction, and turned to whisper. “We’ll need to record the tape’s receipt.”

Jon nodded. “I will get it in writing how the young man found it and all.”

Trewe stood up.

Mr. Ackerman stared pointedly at him. “Detective Chief Inspector Trewe?”

“Sir. We have just been presented with a videocassette, which may contain possible evidence. We haven’t been able to review it as no one has a VCR.”

Mr. Malone tromped to the front of the room waving his hand as if there were a taxi to stop. “As County Magistrate, my office is here. I have a VCR. If you would like to use it to view the tape,” Mr. Malone announced
, “it’s just through that door.”

Trewe interjected, “I
’d like Mr. Grimly to review it, to see what it contains.”

Mr. Ackerman shrugged. “An hour adjournment. No more. We have a duty to perform and it is important we do so in a timely manner.”

Murmurs and low conversation swelled to full-voiced clamor as chairs scraped and the doors opened to outside sounds and fresh air. Distant thunder rumbled. A storm was brewing. It was probably the reason for the dead air and stuffiness of the courtroom.

Jon
’s attention focused on Ruth. She had stepped up from her seat and made her way to where they were standing at the front of the courtroom. She grabbed Trewe by the arm. “I want to see it.”

Trewe carefully extracted his arm from her grip. “Mrs. Butler, we don
’t know what’s on this.”

“Let me see it.”

That’s the way!
Jon silently encouraged her.

“Let me make myself better understood,” Trewe said. “We
’ve been told Annie is on this tape. We don’t know if this is the tape of her on the beach, or …”

“Or?”

“Or if the killer has recorded something different on this tape.”

Jon watched Ruth
’s face as the implications of what the killer may have filmed of her daughter sank in. “I’ve been through hell these past few weeks. I don’t expect anything worse can happen, do you?”

Jon interrupted, “I imagine there can be worse piled upon worse.”

“But—”

Jon noticed Malone standing at the door of what he presumed was his office, waiting on them. They would not let him view the video until they had run through it once.

“No,” Trewe told her, and he and Mr. Grimly went into Mr. Malone’s office.

She turned to Jon. Her eyes flashed heat enough to take the skin off his face.

“They have to make sure of what is on the tape,” he said quietly.

“Someone
’s got to
do
something!”

“I understand.”

“How could you?” Ruth turned away.

“What
’s going on?” Jon hadn’t heard Sam walk up from behind them.

Ruth growled, “A video. There may be something on it about Annie. They won
’t let me see it. Everyone seems to forget that this is my daughter.”

Trewe came out of Mr. Malone
’s office. “Mrs. Butler.”

Ruth jumped to her feet. “Then you
’ll let me see it now?”

Trewe sighed. “It
’s almost identical to the other videos, Mrs. Butler, but yes, you may view it. And we need the computer expert to manipulate things, enhance things. There might be something.”

Mr. Malone was waiting with the coroner at the podium. “I would like to view the evidence myself.”

Mr. Ackerman pointed to the two television monitors in the room. “And why not use these?”

Trewe
’s face had grown progressively redder. He sputtered, “It’s a damned circus as it is. No, we’ll use the computer in Malone’s office only!”

Jon leaned toward Trewe and murmured, “I
’d like another constable or two in the room with us. Aren’t there some firearms officers on the team? Someone with a gun?”

Trewe frowned.

Sam interjected, “May I join?”

“You can wait,” Trewe said.

Jon was surprised with Trewe’s calm but firm response and whispered, “Besides the mother, the person most interested in seeing this would be the killer.”

Sam sat some feet away. His face had gone scarlet. He looked as if he would say something
, but instead clenched his fists and muttered to himself.

Trewe paused
, considering. “Yes, Mr. Ketterman. Do join us.” Then Trewe excused himself and came back a few minutes later with two uniformed officers that Jon didn’t recognize. Perstow, Mr. Malone, Mr. Ackerman, Jon, the lab’s video expert, and Ruth crowded forward. Trewe more or less pushed the group through the door.

As Jon entered, Malone switched on another light. The room had been dim in order, Jon presumed, to see the video better. The eminently respectable magistrate had turned this room into a comfortable office for village business. Jon swallowed. Comfortable wasn
’t the correct word to describe it. Decadent would be a better word.

“Oh
, wee!” was Perstow’s exclamation.

Jon crossed the room to glance out the window and get his bearings. They were about four meters from the cliffs. He turned back to face the room, the air permeated with scents of lemon oil, old leather, and quiet. Except for the desk and a few side chairs
, there was no other furniture in the room. The colorful vase sitting near the door was a bit startling. Then again, the walls behind Malone’s desk held their own surprises. Inlaid light and dark woods held a central disk of carved semi-precious stones and mother-of-pearl. Jon leaned in to examine the relief carvings. On closer inspection, he realized the sculpted figurines were set in risqué situations.

Trewe coughed. “I
’ve never been in here before, Quentin. You’ve kept it well.”

“In the eighteenth century, this room was a meeting room for gentlemen
’s pleasures. Pleasures, if you catch my meaning.” Mr. Malone stood behind his gigantic desk, waiting. His grin seemed a bit over the top. “This wall had been paneled over, if you can believe that. I’ve brought it back to its original grandeur. True grandeur.”

Trewe cleared his throat, “Down to business.”

Chairs had been dragged from the outer room to the desk. The uniformed officers stood by the door. Malone turned to loosen the gold brocade rope from the curtains covering the windows. “To darken the room a bit to view the video better. Just darken it a bit.” He moved around to the back of his desk to stand behind them.

Trewe and the video expert, Mr. Grimly, sat themselves in front of the computer, with Jon standing on the other side of Mr. Grimly. They had moved the VCR and the television monitor to the desktop. Ruth stood behind Trewe. Sam stood to her left, closer to the door. Perstow stood next to him. They could all see the monitor. They waited while the expert plugged VCR adaptor into the computer. “Will only be a moment, while this loads. We want to record what we see. I will remove it entirely when we are done, Mr. Malone. You won
’t even know it’s been on here.”

“Fine, fine, anything for the experts. Anything
,” Malone grumphed.

Mr. Grimly pressed
“rewind” on the VCR and then pressed “play.”

The light from the monitor brightened the room.

Jon glanced at Ruth. How would she react to seeing this? He heard her gasp as the picture flashed of the girls as they picked up shells and laughed together in the blue-gray morning. The familiar shoes—God, this must be horrible to see her daughter’s last free moments.

Dot
mouthed something and ran off. Annie turned. She was singing. There was an undecipherable muttering. The video expert stopped the action and began moving the cursor to bring up a separate window of colorful panels that he minimized to fit alongside the video. He brought the tones up and down and adjusted a video resolution file. Jon watched the bars change; it was like looking at the front of a stereo as the bass, treble, balance, and tone bands were manipulated. But this had to do with tones of the shadows in the video.

Mr. Grimly
paused the action and looked at Trewe and Perstow. They shook their heads. Jon heard Ruth give an audible sigh next to him, and beside her Malone shifted his feet.

The expert pressed
“play.” On the tape, Annie stopped as if listening. As she turned, her face registered shock, and then she walked toward the camera and looked up. Surprise? Annie started to say something, then there was a flash of black to one side, behind the girl, then the screen went darker—shades of dark, and shadows—then the screen was filled with blackness. The expert used another window block to manipulate the tones. It made matters only worse.

Trewe muttered, “Back it up. Play it again.”

The expert quickly did as he was told and pressed “play” again.

Jon leaned forward in his seat. He pointed, “There
—pause it there.”

The flash of black in the corner was the dog running across the screen in the background
, then quickly disappearing. But forget the dog. Chelsea distracted the eye from the really important part. “Wait!” Jon grabbed the mouse from the expert and stopped action.

“What?”
the video expert sputtered, “We’ve been over this.”

“Quiet.” Jon backed the footage to the part he might have seen in that instant. “Here
,” he let go the mouse, “advance frame by frame, and stop it when I say.”

Trewe gave him a look. Mr. Grimly growled, “If you say so, sir.”

He did, and Mr. Grimly stopped action when Jon said, “There.”

The picture framed not Annie
’s face, but the side of the sheer cliff. The sun had made a brilliant appearance in that brief second and the reflection cast shadows dimly, barely discernible. Frozen on the screen a ghost of a shadow fell across the tall shelf of stone behind Annie. The shadow of a man drooped across the stone. Though distorted, the shadow of the distinct facial profile was easily recognizable.