“Okay.”
“First of all, do you have any idea when this tape was made? What day, what week, what month?”
She bit her lower lip and shook her head. “I don’t think so. No, I’m sure Wayne never told me. I assume it was fairly recently, though. It didn’t seem like the type of situation that had weeks to develop.”
“I see. And one other thing . . .” I dropped my voice a little lower and leaned down, putting my face close to hers. “Does your daughter know her father is dead?”
She met my eyes, and I saw a shimmer of moisture on hers. “No,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t tell her here. I can’t. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us, and . . . and until I do, I have to keep her happy. It’s hard enough to handle this when she’s happy, but if she wasn’t . . . ”She shook her head again. “I just couldn’t take it.”
I nodded. “That’s understandable. I’m not criticizing you or suggesting you sit her down on the bed and tell her immediately, but I wanted to know. Last question—what’s your relationship with Aaron Kinkaid?”
She frowned, puzzled by the question. “Aaron? He was Wayne’s partner.”
“I know that. He’s also helping us on this case, and he claims he was in love with you. Said their partnership ended because Wayne was mad about Aaron’s feelings for you.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed. “Aaron hit on me once at a Christmas party. He was drunk, and it was just a silly thing. Wayne wasn’t happy, but it was no big deal. I can’t believe it really meant anything to Aaron.”
I looked at her, taking in her beauty, and I thought that what seemed like a silly, drunken advance to a woman like Julie could mean an awful lot more to a man like Aaron Kinkaid. She went back to the bedroom, and I looked at the tape in my hand. I was surprised to see it was an ordinary Sony VHS tape with eight hours of recording time. I’d expected Weston would use higher-grade stuff. I slipped the tape into the VCR, turned the television on, and pressed play.
For a minute there was nothing but a light blue screen, and then a dimly lit room rolled into view. I leaned forward and squinted at the screen. There was a round card table and wood paneling, but nothing else was visible. I didn’t recognize the room. A lone man was seated at the table. Only his upper body was visible, but there was a lot of it. He was an enormously fat man, balding, with bushy gray eyebrows. As I watched, he looked up at something out of view of the camera and nodded his head, then got to his feet and walked out of the room. Three new men stepped into view, and I recognized two of them—Alexei Krashakov and Ivan Malaknik. Krashakov was the tall, blond Russian who had given me the twenty. I’d never met Malaknik in person, but Cody had showed us pictures of him. The third man, who was shorter than Krashakov but muscular under a black shirt, I’d never seen before. He was clean-shaven and wore a silver chain around his neck. His dark hair was short and curly.
The three of them sat around the table and talked. I tried turning up the volume, but it was pointless, because there was no audio. Wayne Weston hadn’t been as efficient as I’d expected. Somehow, I found that hard to believe. Probably there was an audiotape floating around, too.
Two minutes of talking passed. I’d been anticipating violence, but I was still surprised when it happened. All three men appeared to be laughing heartily when suddenly Krashakov slipped a gun out from under the table and shot the third man in the chest. I jerked when he did it. It seemed that out of place in the apparently jovial meeting. The third man slumped onto the table, and blood began to drip onto the floor. Krashakov and Malaknik got up and pushed the body out of the chair. Then Malaknik opened a rear door. The door appeared to open to the outdoors; a slight glow from streetlights on the pavement was visible. Malaknik disappeared outside, then came back a minute later with a blue plastic tarpaulin. Krashakov helped him roll the body onto the tarp. They folded the ends—to keep the blood from leaking onto their clothes, probably—and carried the body out the door. Several minutes passed, and then Malaknik returned with another man. I recognized him: Vladimir Rakic, who lived with Krashakov. Rakic had a bucket and a mop. The two of them set to work cleaning the floor. Krashakov never returned to the room. He was probably busy disposing of the body. Rakic and Malaknik worked on the floor for a while. I could hear Julie and Betsy Weston laughing in the bedroom, and I knew I might not have much more time. I hit the fast-forward button and advanced the film quickly. They continued cleaning the floor, and then they left, too. No one else came inside. Almost immediately afterward, the tape ended and the screen went blue again.
I rewound it and played the first five minutes again, staring closely at the first man in the room and the victim. I didn’t recognize either of them, but I wanted to be able to offer a good description. I didn’t know too much about camera surveillance, but my guess was Weston had been using a wireless camera system. He had told his wife a camera that was illegally installed captured the murder. That implied breaking and entering to install the camera, which meant it had to be small and well concealed. A closed-circuit camera seemed out of the question in that circumstance, because that meant the camera, recorder, and tape all had to be on the premises. That would be far more difficult to conceal than a wireless camera. Joe and I had equipment catalogs with some extremely small color video cameras that would broadcast a signal fifteen hundred feet or more. Some of them, the really expensive stuff, used satellite technology much like a cellular phone and could broadcast a signal as far as you needed it. Hubbard could certainly afford to pay for that, if he’d wanted such technology.
Betsy’s laugh grew louder, and I realized they’d left the bedroom. I ejected the tape, put it back into its box, and slid it under the couch, then turned to them. Julie’s eyes were searching me as if she could absorb what I had seen without asking. I kept my face impassive.
“Get the room cleaned up?”
“We made the bed real pretty,” Betsy said. “Wanna see?”
Julie laughed. “I don’t think Mr. Perry needs to see, hon.”
“She can call me Lincoln,” I said. “You guys ready for that walk now?”
“Yes!” Betsy said, clapping her hands. “I love the beach.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “To the beach we go, then. Hold on one second while I go brush my teeth.”
I went into the bathroom, carrying my bag, and removed the Glock. I clipped my holster onto my belt near the small of my back. The holster fit inside the waistband of my shorts, helping to conceal it, and it clipped onto the belt with two snaps, meaning I didn’t have to take the belt off each time I put the holster on or removed it. The gun was secure and hard to detect, but I could draw it quickly. I hadn’t been expecting to need to wear the gun at all times, but that plan had changed. Death can come when least expected. The morning’s video viewing had reminded me of that.
CHAPTER 17
IT WAS an amazing day. The sun was out in full force, and the rays reflected off the sand and water, making the entire beach sparkle. There was a mild breeze off the water, and the temperature was in the mid-seventies. We walked along the tide line. Betsy walked very close to the water, jumping back when the waves came close and shrieking with laughter when the water touched her feet.
“It’s cold,” she said. “Too cold for swimming. That’s not fair. I wanted to go swimming.” Her skin looked dark enough that I was sure she’d spent plenty of time in the sun the past few days. Julie’s was the same shade. I was trying not to pay too much attention to her skin, though. Once you started, it was damn hard to stop. Better never to get started.