Chapter Forty-seven

Parrott left Herman’s office and headed to South Philly, where Wyatt Wukitsch’s apartment was located. The thirty-minute drive gave him a chance to reconsider the details coalescing in his mind. At this point, any one of them might break open the case. Parrott had to become the kaleidoscope. He had to roll the details around, look at them from every aspect, and push them together into patterns that made sense.

Wyatt had given him an address on Tenth Street, an old neighborhood populated with mixed residential and commercial entities. If Wukitsch’s story about someone’s using his car as a drop were true, somebody on the street might have seen something. There had been at least four contact events—when the first note was left on the windshield, when the subsequent note was placed on the windshield, and twice when the money was placed in the back seat of the car. The final payment was last Wednesday or Thursday, after the explosion, so Parrott was looking at the time frame of the week before that.

Parrott’s GPS took him to a corner grocery store, Liberty Foods, a two-tone brick building with a sign in front that said, “United We Stand.”. On either side of the store were walkup apartment buildings, and across the street was a liquor store, The Hob-Nob. Parrott checked the address to make sure the grocery store was the address Wyatt had given him.

Parrott opened the screen door and pushed against the inner one, greeted by the smell of chickens, cooking on rotisserie spits beyond the front counter. The store was small, but neat. A long wall of colorful refrigerated and frozen items stared him in the face. A dark-skinned man with pock-marked cheeks and a name tag that said Ankush presided over the counter, ringing up a handful of customers. When the last in line had paid, Parrott sidled up to the counter.

“I’m a police detective from West Brandywine P.D.” He showed his badge. “A man named Wyatt Wukitsch gave me this address. Said he lives here.”

The clerk grunted and pointed. “Upstairs. They’s four apartments. Wukitsch lives in the first one.”

“You the owner?”

The man nodded, as his eyes scanned the store. Maybe he didn’t want the customers to know he was anything more than a cashier. Keeping his voice low, he asked, “You got a warrant to see?”

Parrott shook his head. “Not this time. You know Wukitsch’s car?”

“Yeah, an old Ford Escort. Dark blue.” Parrott nodded. Wyatt had said the same, plus he’d given Parrott the license plate number.

“He parks it on the street here?”

“This street’s busy. Traffic every day. Night-time, peoples park who live here.”

“You have a security camera outside the store?”

The man nodded and pointed to one aimed at the cash register. “Inside and outside. Part of business these days, eh? You go across the street. You hear the same story. The cameras, they may be a pain in the ass, but we got them.”

“How long do you keep the videos?”

“They get uploaded to the computer every night, you know? I don’t do nothing with them unless I need to. They sit there forever.”

Hope rose in Parrott’s throat. Depending on where Wyatt’s car had been parked, he had a possible four chances to find someone, putting notes on the windshield or opening the back door. “You mind if I look?”

“Sure. Give me to ring up this customer. Then I take you into the back room over here.”

A few minutes later, Parrott sat at a metal kitchen table with a fake marble top, whizzing through videos from the past three weeks. The camera angle showed a slice of the front of the store, and a broad expanse of the west side of Tenth Street. Dates and times were given at the bottom of the screen.

Ankush was right. Tenth was a busy street with both car and foot traffic. Cars pulled in and out of parking spots. People went in and out of the camera’s view, most likely shoppers at Liberty Foods or residents of the apartments on that side of the street.

Parrott scanned the videos, looking for a dark blue Ford escort. He didn’t see it. What he did see, though, sent ripples through his stomach. On Wednesday, the week before Claire’s barn had exploded, someone was walking down the street, placing flyers under the windshield wipers on every car. No one paid any attention. The stocky figure in a greenish workout suit with an Eagles cap strolled between cars and plopped down flyers with an unremarkable rhythm. The man or woman—he couldn’t tell—moved with speed and efficiency.

How easy it would be to place a fake notice on every car, except one, and for that one, to substitute an invitation for mayhem. Parrott waited for a quiet moment in the store and asked Ankush to view the video in question. “Do you recognize this person? Might he or she have been a customer?”

Ankush shook his head. “Many of my customers wear these clothes.”

“How about the flyers? How usual is it that someone puts flyers on cars here?”

“Ah, flyers are more uncommon, but occasionally a restaurant or store puts out coupons.” He scratched his head. “Typically, these are more colorful. Looks like the flyers in this video are white or light-colored.”

Parrott had noticed that, too, a detail that might help people remember the flyer or the messenger. “Do you have any idea what this light-colored flyer might have advertised?”

“No. Sorry. You can maybe ask the residents or the customers.”

Thanking Ankush for his time, Parrott stressed the importance of keeping the security videos available for re-viewing. He crossed the street and entered the Hob-Nob Liquor Store, which was surprisingly busy for this early in the day. If Hob-Nob had security cameras, they would show the east side of the street, and, if lucky, Wyatt’s car.

Parrott waited until the customers had been served before approaching the clerk at the counter. Introducing himself and showing his badge, he cut to the chase this time.

“Yeah, we’ve got security cameras. Gotta today. Everyone grabs and goes.”

“I’m interested in seeing videos from the last three weeks.”

The middle-aged clerk’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Something happen I don’t know about?”

“This is related to a case in West Brandywine.”

“Why should I help you? You got a warrant?”

Parrott hated dealing with guys like this, but sometimes he had to. “No warrant, but I’ll tell you what. I’ll call a Philadelphia police officer to come babysit you in this store for ten hours to make sure you don’t touch those videos. When I come back with a warrant, you and he should be very good friends.”

“All right, all right. You made your point. You got an hour to spare—I’ll set you up. M’name’s Mike, by the way.”

Mike took Parrott into a back room, nearly identical to the one at Liberty Foods. The computer was already on, and current views of the street showed in thumbnails. Mike took the video back to the given date and pointed to the chair in front of the computer. “You do what you have to do.”

This time Parrott knew what date and time the flyer-guy would appear. He was tempted to fast-forward the video to one-thirty-two on that day, but he decided to start at noon. He wanted to get a feel for the other side of the street, the comings and goings of people and cars, and especially whether he could spot Wyatt’s car.

This time, he could see people going into and coming out of Liberty Foods, as well as walking further down the block. Cars came and went, too, and dogs. The east side of the street was just as lively as the west, if not more.

Around twelve-fifteen, a white panel truck vacated its parking spot about six cars down in the frame. The previously-hidden seventh car looked like a dark blue Escort, possibly Wyatt’s. Parrott froze the video, enlarging it to see whether the license plate was visible.

Unable to view the plate number, no matter how he edited the view, he decided to let the video proceed, while he kept his eye on the car and the time flashing at the bottom of the screen. As the time advanced, other vehicles moved in or out of the scene, but “Wyatt’s” car remained in place. At one-fifty-five, sure enough, the person with the flyers showed up, apparently having finished the west side of the street.

The angle from this camera provided a slightly better view of the person, but Parrott was unable to determine gender. A glimpse of the face showed dark sunglasses, perched over a medical mask. No hair was visible. Eyeballing the body against the height of the vehicles, Parrott guessed the height at about five-eight or nine, weight at about one-eighty. But padding and bulky clothes could make that estimate iffy.

The flyers came from a bag, slung over the shoulder, similar to ones he’d seen newspaper deliverers use. One-by-one, Parrott watched the person slap the white flyer onto the windshield, secure it with the wiper blade, and move on to the next car. Six cars, approximately eight steps between cars, reach into the bag, remove a flyer, place on car.

Parrott held his breath as the person approached the seventh car. Eight steps, reach into the bag—no. This time the person reached into a pants pocket, unfolded a white piece of paper, and placed it on the car. Parrott’s heart raced. He made a note of the date and time on his cell phone.

He wanted to burst into the liquor store and ask Mike for a copy of the video, right now, but before he acted on impulse, he wanted to see if there would be a similar nugget later, when Wyatt’s car supposedly had a dollar bill hanging from the rearview mirror, or when someone put something on the back seat floor. It took another half hour to examine the videos, but he never found anything else to substantiate Wyatt’s description or any other suspicious person on the east side of the street.

Disappointed, but overall, elated with the video he did have, Parrott asked Mike if he could copy it onto the stick he carried in his pocket.

“Sure. I got no problem w’that. You gotta do what you gotta do.”

Like Ankush, Mike had no idea who the “guy” in the Eagles hat was, no idea what the flyers said. Parrott didn’t really mind. He was so excited by what he’d witnessed on the video. This was the first piece of real evidence that he could tie to the chain of events leading to a young man’s death and an older woman’s property being damaged.