Director's Cut (32 page)

“How did you meet Catherine?”

“I was representing one of the actors in her Broadway play. He made a recommendation, and she hired me on. When she came to Hollywood, I thought it would be a good time to open another office.”

Catherine approached. “Thank you for bringing me,” she said.

“Did you say what needed to be said? Are they okay with everything?” I asked.

“Yes. They were very disappointed in me, but they said they understood. They want me to perform again.”

“That's great, baby,” Franco said. “But maybe you should take this whole play thing off. You need some rest.”

“They want me to act tonight.”

“Tonight?” That surprised me. “What did you tell them?”

“I owe them. I told them yes.”

I offered to drive Catherine to my home so she could rest before the play, but she declined. She wanted to help Harold any way she could, refresh her lines, and “get in character,” something she felt she could do better by being in the theater. She also admitted she wanted to talk to the other actors. “They deserve some explanation,” she said. I admired her humility.

That left Franco. He made a couple of attempts to talk his client out of doing the play, but Catherine carried many of the same genes for stubbornness I do. Franco was wasting his breath. He offered to stay with her but she said no. She needed things to be as close to normal as possible, and she insisted that he leave. He looked crestfallen. I was expecting a protruding lower lip, but Catherine made everything right with a little, platonic kiss on the cheek. He melted.

The polite thing to do was offer to drive Franco back to his car in the parking lot of city hall, but he declined. I had the feeling he'd had all of me that he wanted. He said he'd call a cab to take him to his car but promised to be back for the play. Catherine said she'd like that.

Franco's fierce independence freed me to escape the office. I placed a call to Nat and asked if she was up for company. She was and I was on my way.

Part of my reason for visiting with Nat was more than to spare me a drive back to the office. I also wanted to spend some time with my friend and campaign manager. I had only been back from Sacramento for a few days—very long days—days of great distraction as far as the campaign was concerned. If there had been any luck in this horrible week it was that Nat and I planned a light schedule, knowing my desk would be full of work when I returned. Next week I was back to having two jobs: mayor and congressional candidate.

I said a few good-byes, made Catherine promise not to run off again, and drove to Nat's Santa Barbara home. I parked out front and walked up the concrete path to her porch. I waved at the small camera I knew was tucked away in a soffit above the door.

I didn't bother knocking. She knew I was there. Since her accident, Nat had become a self-educated expert in electronic gizmos, at least those that could make her life easier. There were times when a woman in a wheelchair didn't want to answer the door. She could see her porch, front and rear yards, and the street in front of her house. She was a wired woman.

A speaker above my head sounded, “Come in, Maddy.”

I did and found the living room and the adjoining dining room empty.

“I assume you're hidden away in your office,” I said loudly.

“Brilliant as usual.” The voice rolled down the hallway that led to Nat's bedroom and the room she had converted into an office. “There are diet sodas in the fridge. Grab a couple.”

I set my purse on the dining room table, walked into the kitchen, scooped up two Diet Cokes, and headed down the hall. Nat was sitting at her computer. A large monitor was positioned to her right, revealing what her unblinking cameras saw. Several video recorders were stacked on one side. Whenever Nat left her home, she activated these recorders and then played the images back at high speed. She liked to know who'd been by while she was gone. I was surprised to see she was on the phone. A headset pressed her blond hair to her scalp.

Popping the soda, I set it on a coaster near her right hand. She mouthed the word, “Thanks.” I took the only seat in the office, a chrome and leather chair that had once been stylish but would now be called classic modern.

“And you said you searched some of the blogs,” she said into the mouthpiece while typing commands into her computer with one hand. “And that led you where?”

Blogs?

I opened my can of soda and took a sip. Watching Nat work was amazing. Confined to the chair and having full motion of only one hand, she could still do more than most people I know.

The soda tasted sweet and the bubbles felt soothing. I've learned to rest in forced downtime. This was a good time to take a deep breath and sort my thoughts. The first thing on my agenda was prayer. Catherine was back and safe. Two murders remained to be solved, the theft of signs and other safety items remained a major problem, Doug and the Slater boy were still in the hospital, and the election was less than a month away and aside from a speech I gave at the chamber of commerce, I had done nothing to solicit more votes. The problems piled before me like tons of mounded snow ready to give way in a town-eating avalanche. But Catherine was home and safe. God was good, and with soda in hand and eyes closed, I told him so.

When I opened my eyes I saw a short video playing on Nat's computer screen. The quality was poor, the image grainy, and the motion a little jerky. At first I assumed that Nat was talking to one of her clients. I could see a car moving forward. The video was shot from an elevated position. Occasionally something blurred the edge of the frame. Something happened I didn't quite catch but Nat pulled back and groaned.

“Hang on,” she said to the caller. “I'm running it again.”

There was something familiar about this. I rose and stepped behind Nat.

She turned her head my direction. “Brace yourself.”

“For what?”

The video started again. I could see that although the overall image was poor, it was in color. The car appeared from the left of the frame and approached the intersection. It was a Ford minivan. Time seemed to stretch as a half second later I realized what I was watching.

The minivan moved forward. A young boy stepped from the curb. Nausea filled my belly and burned my throat. I had no words. I had just seen a child hit by a car. The sweet taste of the soda turned rancid in my mouth.

“Is that . . . ?”

“The boy in the hospital you told me about? I think so. The police can confirm it . . . what's that? Hang on.” The last comment was directed to the caller.

“Who are you talking to?” I asked.

“Floyd, Maddy is here, I'm going to put you on speakerphone.” Nat punched a button on the phone and removed her headset. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes. I hear you fine. Are you there, Mayor?”

“I am, Floyd, but I just got here. Someone needs to fill me in.”

“That would be you, Floyd,” Nat said. “You're the genius who found this.”

“I'm no genius. I just got lucky. Really anyone familiar with—”

“Floyd,” I interrupted. “Talk about the video.” I looked at Nat who made no attempt to conceal the smile.

“Oh, sorry. You asked me to do some research for you and I did. First, I searched for a way to videotape an accident and sell it on the Internet. I found small video cameras are easy to buy over the Internet. Some people use them as nannycams—you know, a way to make sure their babysitters aren't stealing the silverware or beating the kids. Others set up surveillance of their homes so that they can check things while they're at work or on a business trip.”

“That's what the police found in the tree?” I asked.

“I guess so. I asked Detective Scott if I could see it, but he said no. He also said a couple of other things you probably don't want to hear. Anyway, I started searching the Internet and learned that there's a whole industry that sells covert video cameras and other spy stuff to the public. They have all kinds of neat stuff. Some of it's kinda scary.”

“Tell me about the cameras,” I said. Nat took a sip of her soda and looked very proud.

“They come in various sizes, but most are small. The quality varies depending on how much you want to spend. Most are little black plastic boxes. Some come with transmitters and receivers. For example, you can buy a spy camera and set it up in the cafeteria and sit in your office and see who is stealing granola bars.”

“You can do all this wirelessly?”

“Yes. Some systems are good for a thousand feet or so. The good ones are expensive. It would be easy to spend over a thousand dollars for one system. Cheaper ones are available.”

“That seems out of the range for high school kids,” I said.

Nat jumped in. “Are you kidding? Between iPods, laptops, tricked-out cell phones, and other gadgets, kids own a lot more technology than a grand can buy. And that's assuming they bought it. The devices could be stolen.”

“I knew you were busy with Catherine so I called Nat. She knows more about this stuff than I do. She's been a big help.”

“Nonsense, this is all Floyd's doing. All I did was guess the level of sophistication of the camera. Like Floyd, I hadn't seen it, but based on the image quality I would guess that it's a higher-end camera but the signal is being stretched to the limits. In other words, the receiver is a little too far from the transmitter. They still got footage but the quality isn't as good as it could be. I'm kind of thankful for that.”

So was I. “But where did you get the video?”

“You said that they might want to sell this stuff on the Internet. That's easy enough, but it isn't something you want to advertise. This isn't the kind of thing you put on a billboard. So I did some basic searches but came up with nothing. Then I thought, what would I do? Blogs was the answer.”

“Blogs?”

Nat answered. “It's short for ‘Web log.' Take the ‘b' from Web and add it to ‘log' and you get ‘blog.' Think of them as online journals. In some cases, others can post to your blog. People with common interests exchange information through blogs and bulletin boards.”

“Exactly. I found a posting about a gross video of an auto accident. The guy was bragging. I followed the link and found the video. It was uploaded to a personal website but the only way to view it is to have the exact URL.”

“I'm not following,” I admitted.

“Let me explain it this way,” Nat said. “A client hires me to do some research. I do my job and I want to post pictures, text, video, and the like on my website but I don't want others to see it. I upload the information to my site as a separate page and give it an address like www.natsanders.com/client101 or similar. Then I call or email my client and give her that address. Only people who know the address can access the site. Sometimes I add a password.”

“So that's what happened here?”

“Yes, except there's no password. That's kind of stupid.”

“Even considering this is kind of stupid,” I said. “Someone buys or steals the camera and recorder, sets up the scene, records until there is an accident, then uploads it to his or her website.”

“Not his or her website. They were smart enough not to do that. They uploaded it to someone else's site.”

“Can you do that?”

Nat nodded. “If you have the transfer protocols you can.”

My mind was chugging like an old percolator. “Whose site?”

“Santa Rita High School.”

Our suspicions had been right. “This isn't good.”

“Actually, it is.” There was a pause. Floyd never contradicted me. Having just done so must have shocked him. “You see, the police might be able to find out who knew the transfer protocols and who had access to the computers at the time the video was uploaded. Or if it was uploaded from someplace else, where that was. I don't know if they need search warrants or anything.”

“We can leave that up to them—”

“There's more,” Nat said. “Go on, Floyd.”

“Well, there's a limited range on the spy camera's transmitter. Nat thinks it's a thousand feet or so. That fits with the specs I found. That means that the receiver must be close. Unless the guy is sitting in a car recording this stuff, then the recorder is most likely in one of the houses. The police should be able to find out if any students live within a thousand feet of the camera location, and see if that student has access to the high school website. At the very least, it's a start.”

“And,” Nat said, “your brilliant aide had another idea. He searched the business license records to see if there was a local electronics shop that specialized in spy equipment. Want to guess what he found?”

“That there is?”

“Yes. It's called Eye-Spy.”

Energy fired through me. We were making some assumptions but they were reasonable and based on solid evidence. It was time to act. “I'll be right back.” I stepped out of the office and returned with my cell phone. I called the police station and asked for Detective Adrian Scott. He was on the line a moment later.

“Good afternoon, Mayor. Did you know your assistant was over here a little while ago nosing around in my investigation?”

“Nosing around?”

“That's right. He wanted to see the camera we retrieved. We're trying to keep that information from the public so as not to alert the perp.”

I sighed for effect. “Okay, Detective, here's what I need you to do. I need you to get up, walk across the parking lot to city hall, and go to my office. My nosy aide is going to show you the video that was taken from the camera you wouldn't let him see, then he's going to tell you where it is on the Internet and how it probably got there. Then he's going to give you some more information that will send you to the high school to talk to a few people.”

“He found the video on the Net?”