The four of us walked to our cruisers. As we stared out at West Bay Street, we saw a number of liquor stores, shops, and fast-food restaurants as well as gas stations.
“Okay, some business in that bunch has to have a camera.”
“Sure,” Rue said, “but why would their cameras face the street and beyond instead of their own entryway?”
“Then maybe a gas station whose cameras point out at the pumps. That’ll probably be our best bet,” I said. “With any luck, we’ll see a vehicle turn into the motel driveway. We’ll need to begin right after the car accident with Brandon and continue until this morning just to err on the safe side.”
Rue and I drove to the first of three gas stations across West Bay Street. Lawrence and Bentley drove to the second one. After seeing the camera mounted above the entryway, I parked and walked up to the device. As I’d imagined, it pointed out, but did it catch only the pumps or beyond that? We needed to find out.
We walked inside and told the twentyish young man behind the counter that we wanted to see the manager. He made a call, and within a minute, a man headed toward us from a hallway lined with cases of soda.
I introduced Rue and myself to the manager and told him what we needed. His response was that he couldn’t help us. The camera system was being updated with new software and hadn’t been functional for two days. With a groan, I thanked him, and we left.
Rue made the call to Lawrence and asked what the verdict was at the second station. He said that as we spoke, they were walking back to the office where the camera was located. They would take a look at the live feed and see if the street and the motel entrance showed up, and he’d call me back in five minutes.
As we waited, I turned into the third station’s lot and parked. I craned my neck to see if I could even spot the motel from there. The end units of the motel were in view of the gas station, but the driveway wasn’t, and we didn’t know whether the camera was set to catch anything beyond the pumps. If necessary, we would ask about that after Lawrence’s callback.
“Do you think we need to talk to Nancy again?” Rue asked.
That same question had bounced around in my head after we discovered Abraham. No vehicle in the motel’s lot had matched the description she’d given us.
“I think we do, and that has to take place as soon as we get back to the precinct. Something is off, and it needs to get straightened out.”
“Maybe Abraham’s accomplice owns a green truck and that’s why none were reported missing.”
“And that’s a good possibility, partner. There could have been another person in that truck with Abraham when he killed Brandon.”
My phone rang seconds later. It was Lawrence calling back. “Hey, buddy, what have you got?”
“The gas station’s camera does pick up the motel’s lot. I think this one will be a winner. We just need to watch the last thirty hours or more of footage.”
“Okay, have the manager send the camera footage since Tuesday over to my email. We’ll watch it at the station.”
“Roger that.”
I turned to Rue as I hung up. “Looks like we’re good with the footage. The gas station manager is emailing it to me. Let’s head back to the motel and update Royce.”
After sending off a quick text to Lawrence saying we were heading out, I pointed the nose of the cruiser toward the motel and took off. Our stop would be short. We had camera footage to look over.
The five-minute stop was all that was necessary. Royce waved us on after I told him that gas station camera footage was being emailed to me at the precinct. We planned to review the footage right away, but as soon as Bentley and Lawrence got back, they would take over. Rue and I needed to interview Nancy Davis again.
By the time we arrived at the station, the email was already in my in-box. I took my seat, and Rue was on the guest chair next to me.
I gave him a glance. “Ready?”
“I was ready a week ago.”
“Good. Me too. Common sense would say that nobody would try to drag a body into a motel room in broad daylight.”
Rue rubbed his chin. “So, you want to skip the daylight hours?”
“We’ll get through it faster.”
“And if nothing comes up, then what?”
“Then we go back to the beginning and watch every car that came in and out during the day. I still think starting at night will speed up the process.”
“Yeah, I’m on board with that.”
“Okay, here we go.”
I clicked the email then the video attachment. After tapping the full-screen icon, we settled in. In the bottom right corner, the footage showed the date and time—12:01 on Tuesday morning.
“We can fast-forward through this until we get to, say, seven p.m. on Tuesday. How does that sound?”
“Yeah, since it doesn’t get dark until almost eight o’clock.”
I pressed the forward arrow and watched the time pass on the screen. Once I reached seven o’clock at night, I let the footage run at normal speed. It would be a long process of watching the screen unless we sped things up until we saw a vehicle’s headlights turn in to the motel’s driveway. One way or another, we had to shorten the time it would take to watch the footage. We had Tuesday and Wednesday nights to review.
I paused the footage and turned to Rue. “Tapper thinks Abraham has been dead for thirty hours.”
“Give or take.”
“Right, give or take, yet Wednesday was just yesterday.”
“True, but now it’s late in the day. I still think we should watch all of last night, too, just so we know with ninety-nine percent certainty that we didn’t overlook anything.”
“I guess. Okay, let’s push through this. I’ll speed it up just a little but not enough to miss a car going in or coming out of the motel’s parking lot.”
We were at the eight thirty mark when the other detectives got back. They took over so Rue and I could talk to Nancy. I made the call to Jack, asked him to put Nancy in the first box, and said we would be down in a minute. We had to know without a doubt the kind of vehicle she’d seen.