Tom was back by three o’clock. He said the height of the showcase counter at the pawnshop was indeed forty inches. Braced next to it was a floor-to-ceiling support beam that measured eight feet tall, and the distance between the top of the counter and the ceiling was four feet eight inches. By freeze-framing the robber standing next to the beam and using the software Tech had, Tom could gauge how tall the robber was. He said he should have the results in a half hour.
I wondered if he could do the same with the man standing next to the gravestone in the cemetery. If he could, we would have a pretty good idea whether it was the same guy at both places.
Lawrence called my desk phone and said that other than the skimming, they hadn’t found anything else suspicious with the Grimeses’ financials. The building had a second mortgage, but that had been taken out five years back. The couple lived upstairs and seemed relatively frugal. No extravagant trips, no fancy cars, and no wild spending sprees. They got by okay, but if someone was breathing down their throats for money, the skimming made sense.
Again, we hit a brick wall. We needed to find out who the man with the black sedan was, and my gut said he should be our focus. Unfortunately, not a single thing we’d found could tie a suspect to Kim. She hadn’t been threatened, she wasn’t in debt, and she had money in her savings account.
Could a murderer that nobody knew of stroll into Savannah and pick random people to kill? Could he slip back out of the city and move on like a summer breeze? Was that the type of person we were dealing with? If so, it was a brilliant way to commit murders and never be caught. No ties, no police record, and no license plates in the local DMV database. For all we knew, that black sedan could be a rental.
I punched my desk. “Why didn’t I think of that before?”
I looked up to see Rue frowning at me.
“You okay, buddy? You don’t normally blurt out your thoughts like that.”
“Devon, what if that black car is a rental? Maybe the killer, if it is that man, is from out of state. Maybe he couldn’t care less who he kills and just randomly picks people as he’s passing through. Maybe the pawnshop murders were his way of grabbing some cash and merchandise to pawn in some other city in some other state.”
“And maybe you should take a breath, pal.”
“I’m serious, dammit.”
“So, let’s visualize that scenario,” Rue said. “A killer rents a car in a different state and then flips a coin to decide where to go next. He hits that state, picks a city, kills a few people, and then moves on. A different method for sure and one that’s pretty difficult to solve. You could be on the right track, Cannon.” Devon rubbed his temples. “But how are we going to figure it out?”
“We have to put an APB out for that black sedan, but Tom has to give us the guy’s height first. At least we have the first few numbers of the car’s plate, and for all we know, it could have been an out-of-state plate instead of a vanity plate. Patrol needs to keep everything under wraps just in case the guy has some kind of scanner and is monitoring our movements. If Tom says the guy is over six foot three, then I’d feel safe to go ahead with the APB.”
“And we could still check his height against the gravestone as an extra measure,” Rue said.
I lifted my desk phone and dialed Royce. “I’ll let the boss know our plan.”