“Any suspects—at all?”
“Seems like only angels work at Chuck’s. I’m wide open to ideas, Sergeant.”
I updated Beskin on our big bag of zeros. I summarized the stakeout at Barney’s Wine and Liquor, including the hand-lettered threat left in the briefcase. I told him about my day at the product-development plant and the prospective buyout by Space Dogs that might now be off the table. And I said that my partner and I were about to dive into surveillance footage, again.
Beskin wished me luck, and we exchanged promises to keep each other in the ever-widening, thus-far fruitless loop.
I hung up and looked across our desks to my partner.
He said, “Let’s each take a disk, press play, and see if something jumps out at us.”
I stared at the stacks of surveillance footage, thinking how much I’d love to have a single clean fingerprint or an eye witness or a drop of the bomber’s blood. That was the kind of forensic evidence cops had long relied on to point the way, to apply the screws, and nail a case shut.
On the other hand, watching a million hours of surveillance tape was probably the perfect antidote to my upcoming nervous breakdown as I thought about Yuki and Brady under the guns of paramilitary terrorists off the cold coast of Alaska.
“Lindsay?”
“I heard you,” I said to Conklin. “We’re looking for something to jump out at us. Preferably someone wearing a sign reading, ‘I’m the Bomber.’”
Conklin laughed. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”
He brought us coffee from the break room and I unwrapped the BLTs. After our trash had been dumped in the round file, we each cued up a CD from our chosen stack.
My first had been recorded on the day before the original belly bomb explosions.
We were 100 percent sure that the two students who’d been killed by belly bombs a week ago had eaten “hamburger bombs to go” from the Hayes Valley Chuck’s.
Somewhere in my stack of disks, there had to be a killer.
Chapter 62
Security systems in fast-food restaurants and parking lots rarely produce footage that’s HD, in focus, and Sundance Film Festival worthy. Chuck’s Prime’s Hayes Valley series was no exception.
I cued up the first disk, the footage that was shot inside Chuck’s on the day preceding the double belly bombs. The camera was set back and across from the cash register and trained on the cowpoke behind the counter. The camera angle also gave a partial view of the kitchen behind the counter, a sixty-degree-wedge view of the tables, and the front door.
I watched black-and-white images of people coming into the store for morning coffee, and then I hit fast-forward until I reached the three-hour mark, about the time Chuck’s began to fill for lunch.
I scrutinized the customers ordering, those picking up at the takeout line, and others who were dining in. Wait staff were doing their jobs and joking with customers. I didn’t see anything remarkable. It seemed to be a good day at Chuck’s Hayes Valley.
I studied the cooks and kitchen workers through the letter-box view of the kitchen and tried to imagine how one of them might plant mini-explosives in a hamburger patty.
It didn’t look all that hard to do.
Meanwhile, the mood inside our bullpen had changed from a high-functioning homicide squad into some kind of powerless mission control center agonizing over a derelict spacecraft. Throughout the afternoon, the day crew kept stopping by our desks to find out if Conklin and I had heard anything new about Brady. At day’s end, Cappy McNeil and his partner, Paul Chi, dragged chairs over and sat down. They had both worked with Brady, had friendships with Yuki, and were feeling frustrated and angry and helpless to the max.
Copy that.
Lacking any shred of good news, we batted around theories of how the hijacking might resolve with pirates dead and passengers safe. We put a hopeful face on it, but in fact none of us tossed confetti.
Before Chi and McNeil clocked out, Chi leaned over my desk and tapped a key that brightened my screen. Cappy gave me a pound cake he’d been intending to take home for dessert and kissed my cheek. A first.
After my old pals said good night, Conklin and I went back to hamburgers on parade.
I watched the relentless march of people on my screen, and after reviewing the entire fast-forwarded twelve hours of Day Minus One inside the restaurant, I changed out the disk and watched parking lot videos.
These were more of the same: slices of gray-and-white cinema verité: a bread truck arrival and departure, ditto a refrigerated delivery truck from Chuck’s main kitchen, bringing boxes to the back door. And I watched a few hundred cars park in Chuck’s lot and then depart onto Hayes Street.
Had I seen a killer and didn’t know it?
How could I know?
I went on to the next day’s disk, saw the two doomed college kids pick up their lunch from the takeout line, and noticed some of the same customers I’d seen before.
I made a note of the regulars, marking the time that they appeared on the tape, and I took screen captures for later comparison. Again I watched delivery trucks arrive and guys lugging cartons to the back door of the kitchen.
I watched the Hayes Valley kitchen crew dunk trash into the Dumpster outside the back door and lock up the store when the doors were closed for the day.
I got up and went to the ladies’, and when I came back, Conklin said, “I’m thinking Italian.”
“Fine idea.”
Chapter 63
Conklin and I walked out onto a darkened Bryant Street and headed to Enzo’s, a greasy pie pan joint on 7th, where we scarfed down a pizza before returning to surveillance footage hell.
It was my turn to make coffee, and Conklin used a letter opener to cut Cappy’s donated pound cake into thick slices.
Four hours later, I had marked and snipped out three images of customers who looked suspiciously like the same person in disguise: a skinny guy with (a) a beard, (b) a knit hat, and (c) a hoodie.
That was the extent of suspicious individual sightings. Still…
I showed my snippets to Conklin, who said sweetly, “I think you’re reaching, Linds.”
I took a fistful of pencils out of the mug on my desk and hurled them, one after the other javelin-style, toward the trash can near Brenda’s vacant desk across the room.
I made six baskets out of ten. Which sucked. It was a big trash can.
I said to Conklin, “Maybe I’m reaching. Maybe I’m right on the nose. You don’t mind if I send these photos to the lab. Get another opinion?”
“There’s a naked woman in my bed,” Conklin said, reaching behind his chair for his Windbreaker. “I think I’ll go now, catch her while she’s still in the mood.”
“Go,” I said. “This will still be waiting for us tomorrow.”
Conklin waved good-bye, and then my phone rang.
It was Joe, and he got right into it.
“This just in on the FinStar,” he said. “Shots have been heard. Another body has washed up. Crowds are gathering all over Alaska, demanding an end to the hostage crisis. The government of Finland is jumping up and down, but there’s absolutely nothing they can do. Communications with the Coast Guard vessel have broken down. That’s all I’ve got. I’m sorry.”
“Shit.”
“I know,” said my husband. “Come home now, Blondie. Your family misses you.”
Chapter 64
Total darkness had descended over southeastern Alaska. Sitting on the deck behind Brady, Yuki pressed her cheek against his polo shirt and just tried to breathe normally.
Brady said softly, “Sweetie, this will be over soon. They can’t keep six hundred people in this situation for very long.”
She nodded. “I know.”
They’d been fed and watered like animals. They’d been given limited access to stinking buckets for toilets and no privacy. They’d slept on their feet or sitting with their backs against others.