“What in hell are you talking about, Charlotte?” “Hell” comes out southernized, like “hay-ull,” which means Franklin’s tired and cranky. My usually intuitive producer isn’t understanding my strategy tonight. No reason why he should, I guess.
“Listen.” I try to interrupt his escalating tirade.
“You listen. I don’t know what’s going on at your end, but it’s last call here. They’re closing the bar. Half an hour, and then I’ve got to get the Explorer. I thought I would hear from y’all by now.”
“Well, isn’t that what we needed to hear. You had it wrong,” I say. Oozing sarcasm and talking over him again. I shake my head and shrug at the police officers, performing as many rueful-looking gestures as I can. “Now that means we’ll have to come pick you up, I suppose. I’ll call you in ten minutes, okay? And then we’ll talk.”
I snap the phone closed with a theatrical flourish. Franklin will be fuming, but not for long. And maybe this will get us out of here.
“Well, those idiots,” I say, tsk-tsking. “You know how it is, right? Bigwigs sent us on a wild-goose chase. Bozos can’t even keep their facts straight. Got the town wrong. Middle of the night, can you believe it? They’re not the ones out here freezing, right?”
The officers are nodding at me through the open widow, making empathetic noises. “Scorn for the boss,” a universal emotion, crosses all sectors of employment.
“With ya on that one, Charlie,” Harker says. My new best friend.
“The suits strike again, huh?” Solano snaps off his flashlight and we’re in semi-darkness again. Thank goodness.
“No story here,” I say to J.T. with an exaggerated sigh. “We’ve been ordered to head back to the barn.”
He nods. “Bummer.”
Solano and Harker touch the brims of their hats. “Have a good one,” Harker says. “We’ll inform the neighbors you’re clear. See you on TV.”
“We’ve gotta go. Turn on the heat,” I say. Our cop buddies have pulled away, actually waving in newfound solidarity. J.T. and I are regrouping. We need to move fast. I turn the key in the ignition and hope the engine noise doesn’t freak out the neighbors again.
J.T.’s hoisted the camera back onto his lap. I’ve got my coat back on. Outside, the door to the garage is still closed. The lights are still off. I look at the clock on the dashboard. Quarter till two. I really-really-really want to get video of No-Hat driving back on the Turnpike and returning the car to the hotel. That would be the real clincher of the story, proving the car was driven into the garage with an air bag and driven out without one. Chain of evidence. On the other hand, if we miss that, it’ll still be recorded on the hidden cams. If they worked.
Should we wait here? Or try to catch up with them on the highway? If we leave right now, and the traffic is light and no state troopers nail me for speeding, there’s a chance we could manage it. And arrive at the hotel the same time they do.
“The Explorer’s got to be gone. Doesn’t it?” I shift into Drive but don’t pull out onto Rantoul Avenue. “They’re going to assume Franklin will want the car back by closing. No-Hat’s gotta know that.”
“Who?” J.T. says. He looks at me, confused, as he clicks the heat to high.
“The driver. The valet. He wasn’t wearing a hat. You know.” I wave him off. “Anyway, the question is, is the Explorer still here? Is it in the garage, and they’re waiting for the cops to leave? Or what if there’s a back door? And they’ve already gone?”
“Your call. I’m set to roll if we need it.” J.T. shrugs and adjusts something on the camera.
Stay? Or go? There’s no way to know the answer to this.
“They’ve seen us, our car at least, and they know the cops came. I bet they wouldn’t risk moving the car in front of them.” My fingers are drumming on the steering wheel, but I’m staring at the still-closed garage door. At least I’m beginning to feel my toes again.
We’re staying.
“I bet they’re still here. They wouldn’t connect this car with what they’re doing in the garage.” I shift back into park. “They have no idea we followed them. Probably. And they pushed the timing with Michael Borum’s car, remember? They know people aren’t suspicious if the car is a little late.”
“Valets always take a long time returning your car,” J.T. says. “I guess now we know why.”
“Exactly. So it takes, what, fifteen minutes to get from here to the hotel?”
“With you or me driving?” J.T. says. He’s staring at the garage door, too.
And it begins to open.
Chapter Twenty
“The old camera-in-the-ceiling-light trick,” J.T. says. “Works every time.”
“I’m in love with it,” I say, pointing. “Look at that.”
“Slam dunk,” Franklin says.
The three of us are crowded around the minuscule screen of our portable monitor, watching the video from the hidden cameras J.T. wired into the Explorer. At some point, ENG Joe and ENG Joanna will transfer them to normal-size cassettes so we can look at them on our regular playback machine. But we can’t wait for that. We’re exhausted and I’m starving, but we can’t resist success. We need to see each one of the tapes now, even on this frustratingly tiny viewer. We’re addicted to the moving images on the glowing screen. So far, our surveillance worked. Every tape. Every time. Every shot.
Lots of little pictures. One big story.
“There’s the air bag,” I say. “See? They’ve popped it right out. We got this exact moment on our camera, too. And I bet they’re taking all the air bags, not just the ones in the front. That’s why they have to go to the garage.”
“Good thing I didn’t get into an accident driving home,” Franklin says. He steps back from the screen. “Oh. Charlotte. I almost forgot. Remind me to tell you about Drive Time.”
“Check it out,” J.T. says. “They’re stuffing-newspapers? Into the space in the dashboard where the air bag came from.”
Franklin turns back to the screen. “Newspapers?”
“So the dashboard won’t sound hollow if you tap on it. I’ve read about that,” I say.
“This should be on the network,” J.T. says. “Let’s look at a different tape. Check another angle on the air-bag shot. And let’s see if we got them writing down the VIN.”
No one else is here to share our triumph. The bleach-and-lemony disinfectant smell means the cleaning people have come and gone. At three forty-five in the morning, the Special Projects office is deserted, littered desks empty, lights off.
“I wonder how long they’ve been doing this,” I say. While J.T. selects the next tape, I push a stack of notebooks out of the way and perch on the edge of my desk, imagining hundreds and hundreds of cars left in valet parking by trusting drivers.
“You go in, you hand over your keys, you have a nice dinner. You’re thinking how convenient the whole valet system is. No parking hassles. And little do you know.”
J.T. flips open the lid of a clear plastic cassette box and dumps the tape into his hand. “Yeah. Your car is going for a ride. Without you.”
“Hand me that box. It needs a label,” Franklin says. He’s busily pressing narrow stick-on strips to each tape and cassette box. From my vantage point across the room, I can see they’re somehow numbered and color coded. Only Franklin understands how. “Wish we could record audio.”
“You know state law,” I say. “No can do with a hidden camera. Doesn’t matter though. A picture is worth-”
“Yup, usually,” J.T. says. He pushes Play, then points to the little screen. “But look at this picture. This one’s worth a million words. That’s the VIN number, see? And there’s a guy’s hand, writing it down on a piece of paper. Man. That close-up lens above the dashboard rocks.”
The piece of paper and the man’s hand leave the frame. And then we see nothing but the dashboard and a snippet of windshield. Doesn’t matter. We got the money shot.