Claire waves and runs toward the vehicle, veers around the far side and opens the passenger door. The car’s interior dome light comes on for two seconds and goes off.
“Go back,” I said.
Sal backed up the video a few seconds, hit PLAY again.
“Stop it when the inside light comes on,” I said.
It took him two tries to freeze the frame at just the right spot. As best I could tell, the only other person in the car was the driver, but it was impossible to determine anything about him, or her. Nothing more than a grainy smudge.
“It’s hard to see anything real clear,” Sal said apologetically. “The cops were pissed, too.”
“I’m not pissed,” I said. “I appreciate it. Is there any way you can blow up that image, get any kind of look at that license plate?”
“Nope,” he said. “Hopeless.”
“Let it go ahead. I want to see where the car goes.”
Once Claire’s in the car, the Volvo turns hard right, does almost a three sixty, and vanishes from the right side of the monitor.
“You have any other angles that would show it leaving?”
“Nope,” he said again.
“What about arriving? If we go back before where you started.”
He took us back to 9:45:00. There is no car behind his Subaru at that point. He kept moving ahead until 9:49:17, when the car appears from the right side of the monitor, sidles up next to Sal’s car, and stops. The lights go off.
I had him keep running it right up until ten p.m., just in case whoever was in that car decided to come in for a coffee or a burger. No such luck. Whoever was behind the wheel stayed there.
“Sal,” I said, drawing his name out slowly.
“Yes?”
“Can I have a coffee?”
“Sure thing.”
When I went into my pocket for some change, he said, “On the house. Whaddya take?”
“Two creams,” I said.
While he was gone, I dropped into his computer chair and stared at the screen. Thinking it through.
Claire thinks she’s being followed. Gets Hanna to switch places. Now someone’s following Hanna, who’s with me. Hanna gets out and runs. Pitches the wig. Whoever’s been on our tail now knows it’s a trick. Figures out the switch happened at Iggy’s.
Thinks: Maybe Claire’s still there.
Sal returned with a take-out cup of coffee for me. “It’s really hot,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to spill it on yourself and then sue us for millions of dollars.”
I forced a chuckle.
“I want you to take me through the rest of the evening,” I said. “Right up to closing time.”
“Yeah, sure, I guess,” he said. “Same view?”
I thought about that. “No. At least, not to start. Let’s go to the front counter. Yeah, that view, that shows everyone coming in, looking up at the menu.”
“If we get held up, we can get a good look at them from here,” he said. “Where do you want me to start from?”
“Start at ten thirty.” I took the lid off the coffee and blew on it. “Fast-forward through.”
He did. People shuffled in and out comically. Before long, I spotted someone I recognized.
“Stop,” I said.
It was Sean Skilling. He’d said that he’d dropped by here, and Patchett’s, after everything had gone wrong, after the brief, troubling call from Hanna.
In the video, he bypassed the counter, disappeared into another part of the restaurant.
“Can you find him on the other cameras?” I asked, taking a sip of coffee. Still hot, but good.
Sal tapped away. “There he is.”
Sean had poked his head into the ladies’ restroom, just as I had done, but he hadn’t gone right inside. Finding no one there, he returned to the front of the restaurant. Sal found him on the other camera again, and we both watched him leave. The video continued to roll.
“Well,” I said.
“Was that what you wanted?”
“I don’t really know what I want,” I said. “Mostly I just want to go home and go to bed.”
“I should have got you a decaf,” Sal said.
“I don’t think it’ll matter,” I said. “I could be injecting it straight into my veins. When my head hits the pillow tonight I’m— Hello, what’s this?”
The monitor was still displaying the front counter. The time was 10:58:02 and counting.
A heavyset man with brown hair and a moustache had come in. Not in a suit, but nicely dressed in black slacks, a white collared shirt with the cuffs rolled up.
“Pause that,” I said.
Sal clicked. “You know that guy?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I only met him recently,” I said.
Just this evening, in fact. It was Adam Skilling, Sean’s father.
Twenty-six
When I came out of Iggy’s there was a Griffon police cruiser parked behind my Honda, blocking it in. Officer Ricky Haines, along with his partner in crime prevention, Officer Hank Brindle, were leaning against their car, presumably waiting for me to show up.
“Mr. Weaver,” Brindle said, pushing himself upright. Haines followed suit.
“Evening, Officers,” I said.
“You kind of slipped away from the scene in a hurry.”
The chief had sent me home, but I didn’t see why I had to explain myself to these two, so I said nothing.
“Thing is, we still had some questions for you,” Brindle said, tipping his hat up half an inch as if to get the full measure of me. So far, Haines was letting his senior partner take the lead here.
“Ask away,” I said.
“I suppose,” Brindle said, “you may think you enjoy some kind of special status, being married to the chief’s sister and all, but Officer Haines and I have to follow our investigation where it leads us, even if that might make our boss unhappy. But ultimately, I believe Chief Perry will understand.”
“I’m waiting.”
“What exactly did you and Miss Rodomski talk about before you kicked her out of your car in the middle of nowhere?” Brindle asked.
“I didn’t kick her out,” I said. “She demanded to get out of the car.”
Brindle smiled. “All right, then. What did you and the girl talk about before she demanded to get out of the car?”
“I figured out right away she wasn’t Claire, and called her on it. Asked her what was going on.”
“And what’d she tell you?”
“Not much. She said it was nothing for me to worry about. I told you this before, and I’ve told Augie.”
“Augie,” Brindle said, smiling and nodding. “We don’t call him that. We call him Chief. Or Sir. And sometimes, behind his back, a few other choice words, but I’m sure I can count on you not to pass that along.” That grin. “As you say, Mr. Weaver, you told me and Ricky this before, but that was before we knew the girl was dead. So that makes whatever you two had to say to each other more relevant.”
“But it hasn’t changed what we said,” I told him.
“I guess what I’m wondering is why you really picked up the mayor’s kid in the first place. I mean, a man your age, giving a ride late at night to a teenage girl, that’s not the smartest thing a fella can do. And I’d think, given your line of work, you’d be smarter than that.”
I took in a long breath through my nose and let it out slowly. I’d met cops before who tried to rattle you, make you do something stupid. It’s just possible I might have done it myself a time or two back when I wore a uniform. I knew the drill, and the importance of keeping my cool.
“Claire said she knew my son. I couldn’t say no at that point.”
“Were you hoping maybe she wouldn’t say no, too?” The grin morphed into a schoolboy sneer.