The playback was choppy due to the still images, but it was more than sufficient to see the faces of the customers.
“Can you speed it up?” Jake asked.
“A bit.”
The manager pushed Fast Forward. On the screen, customers began moving rapidly.
When the time stamp read 7:48 p.m., both Jake and Berit said, “Stop.”
The manager hit the Pause button, and the image froze on the monitor.
“Back up a couple of seconds,” Jake said.
The manager did as asked.
On the monitor, standing just beyond the register, were the two men who’d left the Lawrence Hotel at the same time. There was no mistaking them. And unlike in the footage from the hotel, they were no longer acting like they didn’t know each other.
“You were right,” Berit said, her voice barely audible.
“Are these the guys you’re looking for?” the manager asked.
Ignoring the question, Jake said, “Can you move to a couple minutes before this point and let it play?”
“Of course.”
They watched as customers came and went, then the two men stepped up, placed their order and exited the frame.
The manager reached out to stop it, but Jake said, “No. Let it play.”
They watched for another five minutes. The men didn’t come back, but Jake hadn’t been expecting them to. Who he was really hoping to see was the third man, but there was no sign of him.
“Can you make printouts?” Jake asked.
“Printouts,” the manager said, sounding embarrassed. “People can do that?”
Jake stood up. “Don’t worry about it. Thanks. That’s all we’ll need for now.”
“Oh, ah, all right,” the manager said. “No problem at all.”
“How long before you erase what you’ve recorded?” Berit asked.
“A week.”
“We’re going to need you to hold on to the cassette,” she told him. “You can at least do that, right?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Good,” Berit told him. “We’ll be in touch.”
Neither Jake nor Berit said anything as they walked through the coffee shop and out to her car. The silence continued after they got in, both lost in thought.
Finally, Berit said, “We have to tell someone.”
“Tell them what?”
“What you’ve found out.”
“And what exactly have I found out?”
She looked at him like she couldn’t understand what he meant. “The men. They were here.”
He returned her gaze, not saying anything, waiting for her to realize what he’d already figured out. That no matter how much they might see the connection, there was still absolutely nothing solid. In fact, there was nothing even remotely close to solid. It was all relying on a hunch, a feeling of a rookie cop who didn’t quite fit in with the others.
When it finally hit her, she said, “Then what are we going to do?”
“Dig deeper, I guess,” he said. “Find something that can’t be ignored.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?”
He thought for a moment, then said in all honesty, “I don’t know.”
11
“How much does he know?” Peter asked, obviously not happy.
“No way to know for sure,” Durrie told him. He was in his car, trailing Oliver and a woman cop in a Dodge Charger. For the past several hours, the two police officers had been making the rounds of businesses near the crime scene.
“He must know something,” Peter said.
“He has a matchbook, that’s all.”
“And the security footage at the hotel.”
“He looked at the footage, but what are the possibilities he could have picked us out?”
“A pro could have picked you out.”
“Might have picked us out,” Durrie corrected him. “But this guy’s not a pro. He’s a twenty-two-year-old rookie cop. My guess is, when he couldn’t find out anything at the hotel, he decided to check closer to the crime scene. He’s just playing out some hunches. In another day or so, he’ll forget about the whole thing.”
Ahead, the Charger turned off the road into a strip-mall parking lot, and pulled into a slot in front of a coffee shop.
“I have a lot of other things that need my attention now,” Peter said, his tone heavily underlined with anger. “I don’t need some punk cop distracting me.” He paused for a moment. “This can’t become a major headache. Do you understand?”
“Don’t worry, Peter. It won’t be.”
“I want to make sure it isn’t. I’m sending someone to help you.”
“I don’t need help.”
“I don’t care. Larson should be able to get there in a few hours.”
“What?” Durrie couldn’t help sounding surprised. “I don’t need that asshole messing things up.”
“I want to be prepared if a termination is necessary. Are you telling me that’s something you’d like to do yourself?”
“If there has to be a termination, we can make the call later,” Durrie said, slowing his car and pulling into the lot.
“Either work with him, or go home and I’ll send in another cleaner to finish the job. Your call.”
Through gritted teeth, Durrie said the only thing he could, “Fine. I’ll work with him.”
“I though you would.”
The cleaner found a parking spot at the far end of the lot with a view of the coffee shop’s entrance.
“Anything else to report?” Peter asked.
Durrie hesitated a moment. He had yet to mention the fact Oliver had taken on a partner. “Nothing yet,” he said.
“Report in if something changes.”
Peter hung up.
Durrie allowed himself a few moments just to steam. The last thing he needed was someone else meddling with his operation, especially Larson. The guy had screwed up massively at the barn. People made mistakes all the time in the business, and when it didn’t get them killed, they usually learned from it. But Durrie got a sense Larson was not someone who learned much from anything. His arrogance would get him killed soon enough. Durrie just didn’t want to be around to get caught in the crossfire when it happened.
As his anger began to ebb, he focused on the coffee shop. For a second he wondered if he’d been there before. There was something definitely familiar about it. But there was no way he could have been, so he shook the feeling off and kept his eyes on the door.
He wished he knew exactly what Oliver and his woman friend were looking for. At some of the places they stopped, they were only inside for less than a minute. At others, it was sometimes a quarter hour before they reappeared. The coffee shop was turning out to be one of the latter.
Finally, the door opened and the two cops came back outside. Gone was the frustrated look he’d seen on their faces as they’d left the other establishments. Instead they both looked deep in thought.
As they walked to their car, they momentarily covered up the logo painted on the window of the shop. Durrie’s gaze stopped on it once they’d moved out of the way. He suddenly remembered.
That’s what he’d seen before. The logo.
It had been on the coffee cup that Larson had carelessly left in the barn.
Durrie’s eyes shifted to the Charger.
It wasn’t possible, was it? Could Oliver have traced Larson from the hotel to here?
Who the hell was this kid?
12
Jake got to work an hour and a half before his shift, and spent the time looking through mug shots in the various databases the department had access to. But none of the pictures matched the faces of the men from the hotel—and the coffee shop.