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.