Bested before he even began, Kilbane reached into his briefcase, a tattered faux-alligator attache. He pulled out another tape. "You'll change your tune when you see this."
They sat in a small room in the AV Unit. Kilbane's second tape was surveillance footage from Flickz, the store where the Fatal Attraction tape had been rented. Apparently, the security cameras were real at that location.
"Why are the cameras active at this store and not at The Reel Deal?" Jessica asked.
Kilbane looked dope-slapped. "Who told you that?"
Jessica didn't want to get Lenny Puskas or Juliet Rausch, the two employees at The Reel Deal, in any trouble. "Nobody, Eugene. We checked it out ourselves. You really think it's a big secret? Those camera heads at The Reel Deal are from, what, the late seventies? They look like shoe boxes."
Kilbane sighed. "I got more of a theft problem at Flickz, okay? Fucking kids rob you blind."
"What exactly is on this tape?" Jessica asked.
"I maybe got a lead for you."
"A lead?"
Kilbane looked around the room. "Yeah, you know. A lead."
"Watch much CSI, Eugene?"
"Some. Why?"
"No reason. So what is this lead?"
Kilbane put his hands out to his sides, palms up. He smiled, destroying whatever was remotely likable about his face, and said: "That's entertainment."
A few minutes later, Jessica, Terry Cahill, and Eric Chavez crowded around the editing bay in the AV Unit. Cahill had returned from his bookstore project empty-handed. Kilbane sat in the chair next to Mateo Fuentes. Mateo looked disgusted. He cocked his body at about a forty- five-degree angle away from Kilbane, as if the man smelled like a compost heap. In fact, he smelled like Vidalia onions and Aqua Velva. Jessica had the feeling that Mateo was ready to spray Kilbane with Lysol if he touched anything.
Jessica studied Kilbane's body language. Kilbane seemed both nervous and excited. Nervous the detectives could understand. Excited, not so much. Something was up here.
Mateo hit the PLAY button on the surveillance tape VCR. Immediately the image rolled to life on the monitor. It was a high-angle shot of a long, narrow video store, similar in layout to The Reel Deal. Five or six people milled about.
"This is from yesterday," Kilbane said. There was no date or time code readout on the tape.
"What time?" Cahill asked.
"I don't know," Kilbane said. "Sometime after eight. We change the tapes around eight and we're open until midnight at that location."
A small corner of the front window of the store revealed that it was dark outside. If it became important, they'd check the sunset stats from the day before to pin down a more precise time.
On the tape, a pair of black teenaged girls cruised the racks of new releases, keenly observed by a pair of black teenaged boys who acted out, playing the fools, trying to get their attention. The boys failed miserably and, after a minute or two, skulked off.
At the bottom of the frame, a serious-looking older man with a white goatee and black Kangol cap read every word on the back of a pair of tapes in the documentary section. He moved his lips as he read. The man soon left, and for a few minutes there were no customers visible.
Then a new figure walked into the frame from the left side, into the middle section of the store. He approached the center rack that held older VHS releases.
"There he is," Kilbane said.
"There who is?" Cahill asked.
"You'll see. That rack goes fromf to h," Kilbane said.
On the tape, it was impossible to gauge the man's height from such a high angle. He was taller than the top rack, which probably put him over five nine or so, but beyond that he looked exceedingly average in all ways. He stood still, back to the camera, perusing the rack. So far, there had been no profile shot, no glimpse of his face, just a vantage from behind as he entered the frame. He wore a dark bomber jacket, dark ball cap, and dark trousers. Over his right shoulder was a slim leather shoulder bag.
The man picked up a few tapes, flipped them over, read the credits, put them back on the rack. He stepped back, hands on hips, surveyed the titles.
Then a middle-aged, quite rotund white woman approached from the right side of the frame. She wore a flower-print shift and had her thinning hair in hot rollers. It appeared as if she said something to the man. Staring straight ahead, still denying the camera his profile-as if he knew the security camera position-the man answered her, gesturing to his left. The woman, nodded, smiled, smoothed the dress over her abundant hips, as if waiting for the man to continue the conversation. He did not. She then huffed out of the frame. The man did not watch her go.
A few more moments passed. The man looked at a few more tapes, then quite casually took a videotape out of the bag and put it on the shelf. Mateo rewound the tape, replayed the section, then froze the tape and slowly zoomed in, sharpening the image as much as possible while he did so. The graphic on the front of the videotape box became clearer. The image was a black-and-white photograph of a man on the left and a woman with curly blond hair on the right. Down the center, splitting the photo in two, was a ragged red triangle.
The tape was Fatal Attraction.
The sense of excitement was palpable in the room.
"Now, see, the employees are supposed to make customers leave bags like that at the front counter," Kilbane said. "Fucking idiots."
Mateo rewound the tape to the point where the figure entered the frame, played it back in slow motion, froze the image, enlarged it. It was very grainy, but it was clear that there was elaborate embroidery on the back of the man's satin jacket.
"Can you get closer?" Jessica asked.
"Oh, yeah," Mateo said, firmly center stage. This was his wheelhouse.
He began to work his magic, tapping keys, adjusting levers and knobs, bringing the image up and in. The embroidered picture on the back of the jacket appeared to be a green dragon, its narrow head breathing a thin crimson flame. Jessica made a note to look into tailors who specialized in embroidery.
Mateo worked the image to the right and down, centering it on the man's right hand. It was clear that he was wearing a surgical glove.
"Jesus," Kilbane said, shaking his head, running a hand over his jaw. "Fucking guy comes in the store wearing latex gloves and there's no red flag with my employees. They are so fucking yesterday, man."
Mateo flipped on a second monitor. On it was the freeze-frame of the killer's hand holding the weapon in the Fatal Attraction killing tape. The gunman's right sleeve had a ribbing similar to the jacket in the surveillance video. Although not concrete evidence, the jackets were definitely similar.
Mateo hit a few keys and began printing off hard copies of both images.
"When was the Fatal Attraction tape rented?" Jessica asked.
"Last night," Kilbane said. "Late."
"When?"
"I don't know. After eleven. I could look it up."
"And you're saying that whoever rented it watched the tape and brought it back to you?"
"Yeah."
"When?"
"This morning."
"When?"
"I don't know. Ten, maybe?"
"Did they drop it in the bin or did they bring it inside?"
"They brought it right to me."
"What did they say when they brought the tape back?"
"Just that there was something wrong with it. They wanted their money back."
"That's it?"
"Well, yeah."
"They didn't happen to mention that someone had spliced in an actual homicide?"
"You gotta understand who comes into that store. I mean, at that store, people brought back that movie Memento saying that there was something wrong with the tape. They said the movie was on the tape backward. You believe that?"