Teddy’s scenes wrapped early. Peter shot the Teddy and Tessa scene first, and the rest of the afternoon was just Tessa and Brad.
He went home and removed the videotapes from the safe. If the surveillance camera was working, they might show the killer, and him.
In order to watch them, Teddy had to buy a VCR, which wasn’t easy. No one used them anymore. He found one in a pawnshop for twenty dollars.
“Do you have a tape I can try?” Teddy asked.
The pawnbroker was exasperated. “Are you shitting me? You’re not buying a home entertainment system. Twenty bucks, as is. I’ll throw in the cables.”
Teddy took it home and hooked it up to his TV. The remote didn’t work, no big surprise. Teddy replaced the batteries, pressed the power button, and the machine clicked on.
The first tape he tried was all static. Teddy couldn’t tell if that was the tape, or if the player didn’t work. He took the tape out and tried another. He rewound slightly and pressed Play, with the same result. A third tape was no better.
Teddy considered running out to one of those mall stores where they had bins of old prerecorded tapes for $2.99 to test the machine. It was a depressing prospect.
The VCR made a clacking sound. It had rewound to the beginning of the tape and shut off.
Teddy pressed Play.
An image filled the screen. It was a hallway in the building, but not the one outside the Ace Detective Agency. Teddy could make out the office number 810.
Teddy held down the fast forward button and the images jumped across the screen. At least they would have, if anything had been happening. The scene was just an empty hallway.
Teddy stopped the tape, hit fast forward again, and wound ahead. After several seconds he stopped the tape and pressed Play. The image was the same.
Teddy kept running the tape forward until static filled the screen. He ejected the tape and saw that it had stopped right about in the middle. It was rewound slightly farther than the other tapes from the machine.
Using the tape as a guide, he rewound another tape slightly past that spot. Another view from the building appeared, this one from a back staircase. Teddy located the spot where the image became static. It was exactly the same place as on the other tape. Teddy tried another tape with the same results.
That confirmed the hypothesis. The killer would not appear on any of the tapes. Nor would he. The killer hadn’t just disabled the camera on the third floor, he’d cut the main feed before going in.
Teddy couldn’t help but feel a grudging admiration.
This guy was good.