She led us to a back room, behind the motorized racks of hanging clothes in plastic bags. We gave her the exact date and time, and she tapped some keys on the computer on her desk.
“Would you mind starting it an hour before so we don’t miss anything?”
Bad choice of words. Of course she minded.
“I can’t sit here for an hour,” she replied. “I’ll miss customers.”
Suddenly she’s Ms. Customer Service? I raised an eyebrow. “That’s what the bell on the door is for, isn’t it?”
She gave me another of her stony looks, then tapped some more keys. Grainy black-and-white images of the sidewalk began to play on the screen. It took almost the full hour for Simon to appear. He was walking toward the camera. The woman I now knew to be Lilah was five feet ahead and almost out of frame. Because there were so many people on the sidewalk, it was hard to tell who, if anyone, in the surrounding crowd might’ve been with her. I told the woman to slow the footage.
Simon moved toward Lilah in jerky frames. His hands were both out and visible. “No weapon in either hand,” I said.
Bailey nodded. “And he’s, what, five feet behind her?”
I stared intently, hoping to get a view of the stabber and maybe a clearer view of Simon at the moment he grabbed Lilah. The latter would tell me definitively whether Simon had pulled out the box cutter at the critical moment. But as Simon closed in on Lilah, he moved out of frame. That was the last frame that showed Simon. No stabbing. No stabber.
“Damn it,” I said, frustrated. “And we can’t even see what happened after Simon grabbed Lilah.”
“Yeah,” Bailey acknowledged. “But it helps as far as it goes.”
I shook my head. “If the bank video doesn’t give us a view of the killer, Lilah’s our only hope.”
Bailey and I exchanged a look. The prospect of having to rely on Lilah was not a promising one.
Just then, the bell chimed.
“You’re done?” the woman asked.
It was tempting to say no just to irritate her, but I didn’t want to waste the time.
“For now,” I said.
We followed her out to the front of the store, where a young man in jeans and a big parka was waiting, bopping to the beat playing through his headphones. I hoped he paid her with a bad check.
“Make sure you hang on to that footage,” Bailey ordered her. “And don’t go anywhere. We may need to talk to you.”
“What for?” the woman asked.
“You’ve got a customer waiting,” Bailey pointed out, deliberately evading her question. She gave the woman an insincere smile. “Have a nice day.”
As we hit the sidewalk, I had one happy thought: if she gave us that much grief, she wouldn’t be so quick to cooperate with reporters. It didn’t take much to cheer me up these days.
39
The liquor store was farther away from the action, but we checked out the footage anyway. Nada. The travel agency two doors down didn’t have anything for us either, though the owner was a charming sort.
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” he said, sounding like he meant it. “But have you considered a trip to Costa Rica? It’s beautiful there this time of year,” he said eagerly. “I could get you a great deal.”
The mention of Costa Rica made me think of Graden. On our first date, he’d casually mentioned his ten-day trip to Crete and the Greek islands. At that point I’d already begun to wonder how a cop could afford a top-of-the-line, late-model BMW, so when he mentioned that vacation, I started to entertain the possibility of drug money. He’d laughed, seeing the suspicion on my face, and explained about the video game that’d set him and his brother up for life. The memory did nothing for my mood, but that wasn’t the travel agent’s fault.
“Sounds wonderful,” I said. “Maybe some other time.”
We walked out to Bailey’s car.
I yawned as I buckled the seat belt. The adrenaline of last night’s fight now largely burned off, I was feeling the effects of too much stress and too little sleep.
“Thought you got to bed early,” Bailey remarked.
Caught in the lie, I was forced to stick with it. “Happens that way sometimes. The more you get, the more you want.”
“I’ve heard that’s true about a lot of things.” Bailey smirked. “Speaking of which, I meant to ask if you guys had a good time last night,” she said, then added with a lascivious grin, “though from the look of you today, I guess I’ve got my answer.”
Now what? I knew I wouldn’t be able to put off telling her about our breakup for long, but I wasn’t in the mood to get into it right now. Maybe more to the point, I had no idea what I’d tell her about why we’d broken up. I nodded noncommittally and changed the subject.
“You got the bank footage?” I asked. At this point, neither Bailey nor I held out much hope that the bank video would give us anything new. My question was a stall, and it didn’t fool Bailey for one minute. She gave me a long look, but she knew better than to push.
“Yeah, I meant to tell you, it just came in,” she replied. “Want to go check it out?”
I was about to say yes but stopped myself just in time. Going back to the police station might mean a run-in with Graden. I had a hunch neither of us needed that right now.
“I’ve gotta get back to work. Mind dropping me at the office?”
Bailey raised an eyebrow, but she wisely left it alone.
“Sure, no problem,” she said.
“I’m not optimistic about it. But on the off chance we finally get a shot of our killer, let me know,” I said as we pulled up in front of the courthouse.
“Good to see you so excited,” Bailey said dryly.
I trotted down the steps and badged my way past the metal detector. When I got to the bank of elevators, I found Toni there, waiting impatiently as she looked from her watch to the lighted panel above. It brought back fond memories of our early days, when we’d place bets on which elevator would hit the lobby first. The sight of Toni was comforting yet unnerving. In all our years of friendship, I’d never managed to get anything by her. The chances of my being able to hide my upset about the breakup with Graden from her for more than five minutes were virtually nil. I was going to have to dream up a plausible story-fast.
I forced a smile and called out, “Tone!”
“Hey, girl,” she said, returning my smile. “Been out to lunch with that hunky lieutenant of yours?”
Did everyone suddenly have Graden on the brain? Or was I just now noticing it because I wanted to avoid the subject?
“No,” I replied. “I was out with the hunky Bailey Keller on that John Doe case, now known as the Simon Bayer case.”
The smile abruptly fell from her face. “You see the Daily Journal yet?”
I shook my head. I read the weekly version of the legal newspaper only to catch up on the recent appellate decisions.
Toni looked around to make sure no one who’d care was close enough to hear us.
“Hemet gave ’em a quote about you,” Toni said in a low voice.
The set of her jaw told me it wasn’t a paean to my legal prowess.
“Said you’re just another cherry-picking special unit deputy and you only picked off the homeless-guy stabbing to grandstand in front of the judge.”
“What? That’s bullshit!” I said, truly shocked.
“Keep it down,” Toni said, glancing around us again. “You know you’re preaching to the choir,” she whispered harshly, her voice drenched with disgust. “But this is exactly what I warned you about, isn’t it?”
The elevator dinged its arrival, and we crowded in with the rest of the herd. We had to wait until the fifteenth floor for it to empty out.
“I didn’t expect even Hemet to stoop that low,” I said.
“Look, if you had any doubt, now you know: it’s on,” Toni said, her eyes flashing with anger. “So what’re you going to do about it?”