It was camera five, and it was looking right out at the corner. A truck pulled in front of the camera as they were watching. You could see most of the truck and the back end. You could even make out the plate. Of course, it was still daylight and that helped immensely, but the picture quality wasn’t bad for black and white. Mac felt his heart skip a beat.
“Harold… do you mind if I call you Harold?” Mac asked.
Harold didn’t mind.
“Do you record?”
“Oh, yes, we keep it back several weeks.”
“What do you record on? Video tape?”
“No, no, no,” Harold replied, shaking his head with some pride, “We actually have a pretty good system. We record onto these DVDs. You can store a lot more on them and if you need to review them, the quality isn’t bad.”
Mac and Lich exchanged a look and a little smile. “Still a long shot,” Lich said.
“Harold my friend,” Mac said, and right now he was liking Harold a whole lot, “we need to borrow the DVDs for the last week. What do you say?”
“Would I have a choice?” Harold asked, a little smile coming across his face.
“No,” Mac replied.
“And in this case, I’m not gonna even let you think you have one,” Lich added.
They grabbed the DVDs and signed a form for Harold. He’d been helpful, and they wouldn’t want him to get in trouble with GasUp management. Mac could feel the adrenaline running through him as he bounded out the door to the car. Lich picked up on it, but cautioned, “Don’t get your hopes up, son.”
Mac knew he was right, but he didn’t care “Have you read the file on this case yet?” Mac asked back.
“I read the Readers Digest version Riley gave us last night. Not much there.”
“That’s right. And you know what? They haven’t caught a break yet. Not one,” Mac replied. “Well, maybe they just caught one. Lord knows Riles could use it.”
Lich picked up on the feeling, “That he could, my friend. That he could.”
Mac wasted no time getting back downtown, taking University over to Robert Street into downtown and pulled into the parking garage. He finally had some warmth returning to his body, having already put much of the twenty ounces of coffee away. Once inside the building, he began to feel human again. They headed for the detail conference room. Riles and Rockford were inside, looking at the map, putting pins in for where the victim lived, worked and where they’d found the body. Mac assumed the others were working the phones or maybe had already gone back out. Riles saw them and had a slightly perturbed look on his face. “Where have you guys been?”
Mac explained what they’d found. He could see just a little color return to Riles face. “You’re not suggesting we’re going to see anything on there? I mean I’d never get that fucking lucky in my lifetime.”
“What have you got to lose, Pat?”
“Only my hair, a clump of which I found in the shower drain this morning. Pretty soon I’ll look like Lich,” Riles replied ruefully and with his first smile of the day.
Chapter Seventeen
Mac, Lich, Riles, and Rockford spent a few hours putting together a list of vehicles from the neighborhood and then went to forensics to watch the video.
Riles was pumped. If they were right about the Ford Econoline and that Hampden was the only way back to the vacant lot, there was a chance they would see the van. Could they get anything else of use off the video? Well, that would be another story.
Mac had planned to spend the night with Sally. When he called, she understood and was excited. “Call me if you guys find anything,” she said. She had been assigned as legal counsel to the detail. Of course, she managed to torture Mac a bit, mentioning her disappointment that he wouldn’t see what she’d bought at Victoria’s Secret over the lunch hour. “That’s playing dirty,” he said.
Linda Morgan stayed to help them, and popped the disk for the previous night into the computer and projected it onto a larger screen.
Rockford, in his best boxing announcer voice, said, “Let the tedium begin.”
And begin it did. Black and white video of a surveillance camera pointing out to a street corner-can’t get much better than that. They started the video at 10:00 p.m. store time, 8:00 p.m. their time, and let it run real time.
The GasUp station was plenty busy for the first couple of hours, with vehicles coming and going. Many turned on Hampden to get to the GasUp and many then left the station on the Hampden street exit, turning right and then going either left or right on University from the corner. There were a few dark-colored vans that turned into the GasUp station. None of them looked promising. None of them were Ford Econolines. They took down license numbers anyway. When the vans would leave the station, if they turned left on University they could see the back of the van and, if the lights for the plate box on the back were on, they could just barely see the plate, although not the license number.
“A little enhancement on that and you might make it out,” Riley mentioned.
“Possibly,” Morgan replied. “It’ll be tough.”
About midnight on the video, 10:00 p.m. their time, the action started slowing down. They started slowing down as well. Lich was out, sitting in a plastic chair, his head tilted back and snoring. Rock was doing the head bobs of impending sleep. Mac was fine, being a night owl most of the time. Riles was with it as well, desperate for something to break. Yet a fifth pot of coffee was brewing in the corner.
Two hours later, 2:00 a.m. GasUp station time, Lich got up and said he was going home. He would see them in the morning. Rockford woke up as well. He rubbed his eyes and yawned. He stared at his watch.
“Rock, if you want to go, go,” Riles said. “We’ll let you know if we see anything.”
Rock nodded, staggered up out of his chair, put on his coat and left without saying a word.
Thereafter, the action on the video was almost nonexistent. There was an occasional car that turned onto Hampden and went by the GasUp station. At 2:47 a.m. on the video, 12:47 a.m. their time, a minivan turned onto Hampden and went by the camera. Mac checked their notes. “Didn’t we have someone who said they got home between 2:45 and 3:00?”
“Yeah, what was her name? Something funky. Oh, yeah, Lemonjello Hardy.”
“Lemonjello?” Mac replied quizzically.
“Yeah, spelled just like lemon Jell-O, but run together,” Riles replied with a tired smile.
“Unbelievable.”
“Nope. What’s unbelievable is that she has a sister that lives with her, guess what her name is?”
“What?”
“Orangejello.”
“No way,” Linda replied. Mac just shook his head. First Dick Lick and now the jellos. What next? Someone names their daughter ESPN?
At 3:25 a.m. GasUp Station time, another vehicle looking like a van went by. “Anyone coming home around this time?” Mac asked.
Riles yawned and consulted his notes. “Yeah,” he took a sip of coffee and flipped a page in his notes. “Mike Moriarity, dropped off by Kevin McReynolds, who drives a Ford pickup with a topper.”
Morgan replayed the DVD and got close to the screen to look at the truck as it went by. It looked like that’s who it was. Playing the DVD another minute or two confirmed it as the truck came back out and turned left onto University.
Virtually nothing passed after that. At 2:50 a.m. Riles got up and hit the head. Mac, who had started to nod off a little, sat up and rubbed his eyes. He put his coffee up to his lips when he saw it go by. “Linda, run that back.”