Amanda gloved up and so did Trent. Their main goal was to see if there were signs of foul play. Had Leanne and Gracie left of their own volition or had they been coerced?
“This is it.” Tommy waved toward a rust bucket.
The metal-eating virus had rotted away the wheel wells and was working its way along the sides. The Reillys had obviously never bothered with yearly rustproofing.
“And the keys?” Trent asked the man.
“We don’t have ’em, but the doors are unlocked. I’ll leave you to it. When your friends arrive, I’ll let them back.”
“Thank you,” Amanda told him.
Tommy responded by waving an arm overhead while he retreated toward the office.
Trent opened the driver’s door and stuck his head inside but quickly retreated. “Whoa, that’s ripe.” He fanned a hand in front of his nose.
She caught a whiff feet back. “Smells like a rotting carcass. Pop the trunk.” She headed to the tail of the car.
He popped the clasp and joined her. They both moved back from the stench.
There were seven bulging cloth grocery bags.
She took shallow breaths. “My guess is there’s meat somewhere in there that’s gone bad.”
“No arguing with that reek.”
Neither of them moved toward the source of the odor.
“You know what this is telling us?” Amanda asked.
“Not to leave your groceries in the car?”
She understood his desire to delay acknowledging what this find told them. But she wasn’t going to sugarcoat it. “Leanne wouldn’t have grocery shopped and then took off of her own free will. They were taken,” she said, resolved. “We need to save them, Trent. That’s if we’re not already too late.”
“We’ll do all we can.”
“I’m sure you agree it seems likely Leanne was loading the trunk when she was interrupted by the killer.”
“Yep.”
“So did she toss her phone in the vehicle or did the killer? We might get his prints off it.” The spark of hope burned bright, even for a second. “Hate to say it, but we need to dig.” She nudged her head to indicate the bags.
“Guess we’re going in.” He took the lead.
She rummaged in a bag next to the one he was going through. “Nothing here.” She buried her hand in another and came out with it wrapped around a cell phone. It served as a bittersweet discovery. She held it up for Trent to see, then turned it over in her hand. She tried to wake the screen, but the battery was indeed dead. “We’ll get this bagged and hand it over to a uniformed officer. He can give it to CSI Blair. Let’s hope there are prints on it that get us somewhere. You and I are going over to Corey’s Grocer. Maybe they’ll have video surveillance and we’ll get something to go on.”
“If they don’t, I’d bet one of the places in that plaza do.”
Amanda refused to raise her hopes too high. Hope was a best friend that sometimes stabbed you in the back.
The cashier at Corey’s Grocer paged Brad Stevens to the front, and Amanda thanked her.
“You’re welcome. But if you could just stand over there…” She swept a hand to indicate the area at the end of her till.
“Sure thing.” Amanda turned to leave the lane, but an older woman who was unloading her items onto the belt grumbled. “If I could just get by you.”
Reluctantly the woman moved out of the way.
“Thank you.”
Amanda joined Trent where he was standing next to the gossip magazines. To his credit, he wasn’t even scanning the headlines.
“As you heard, the manager’s been paged,” she told him.
“I did hear.” He smiled, and she realized how rarely she’d seen his smile of late. She’d ask if he found out any more about his aunt and her disconnected number, but now wasn’t the time.
“Brenda?” A man’s voice had Amanda turning, and the cashier who had paged him pointed to Amanda.
She stepped over to him. “Brad Stevens?”
“That’s me. What can I do for you?” He was bright-eyed and eager, late twenties, and held obvious pride in his position.
Amanda tapped her badge, clipped to her waistband. “Detective Steele, and this is Detective Stenson.” She gestured to Trent. “We’re with the Prince William County PD. Do you have somewhere private we could go to talk?”
“Ah, sure. This way.” He took them up a set of back stairs to an office. It had a window that looked out over the store, and a desk and computer, as well as multiple stacks of printouts. A chair for visitors was against a wall but heaped with paper.
Brad sat at the desk, and she and Trent stood in front of him.
“You called to have a vehicle towed from your lot on Wednesday afternoon,” she began.
“I remember. It had been here overnight. I don’t like to call on people right away, but there are signs posted. Parking is for customers with a two-hour limit, which is generous.”
“You keep a close eye on your lot?” Trent asked.
“Somewhat.”
“Did you notice anything unusual on Tuesday?” Amanda realized how vague that question was and the room it left open. She added, “The reason I ask is that my partner and I believe that a mother and daughter may have been abducted from here.”
“What? No. Well, nothing that I noticed anyhow. Wow.” Brad’s previous bubbly personality dulled to a fizz.
“Does the store have security video, or should we contact the plaza owner?” Often surveillance and towing landed on the shoulders of property management.
“The management for each store is responsible for their own monitoring and even the install of cameras.”
That might make it easier to obtain the footage than going through some corporation. She’d assume the same went for towing unwanted vehicles, as Brad had made the call to Tommy.
He added, “And we do have cameras, just not dedicated staff to watch the feeds all day.”
“Yet you seemed confident that Volvo had stayed in your lot overnight,” she pointed out.
“I’m always the last to leave and first to arrive and happened to notice it there.”
“Fair enough. We’ll need to see your video feed from Tuesday as soon as possible.” With the request, it struck that while they were at the Archers’ grave, another woman and her daughter were taken.
“I might need a warrant?” More question than statement, and Brad looked at them as if for permission.
“It depends on the store’s policy,” Amanda said. “But you should know that your video could help save two lives.”
Brad paled. “Let me call the owner.”
“Whatever makes you comfortable.” Amanda was pulling from a deep-seated patience and doing her best to be diplomatic. But her head and heart were screaming for things to move along faster. This close yet so far away. Any delay risked death.
While Brad made the call Amanda passed the time rehashing all the ugly possibilities.
It was Friday. Three days after the abduction. Did the killer adhere to some sort of timetable? If so, and it followed the pattern of the Archers, that meant Leanne and Gracie would be murdered today. Possibly while she and Trent were standing around here. She felt pressure closing in on her. “I can talk to the owner if it would help.”
Brad lowered the receiver on the landline. “He says it’s fine.”
“Great.” Amanda’s chest expanded with a full breath again. “We’d like to watch it right now. And take a copy of the entire day with us.” She was thinking again about the killer’s logistics. It was quite plausible that somewhere on that feed, they might find his vehicle. All they’d need would be a plate to track him. But how many vehicles passed through the lot in a day? Likely quite a few, and they had no means of truly narrowing it down. Then her thoughts gelled. If Jill and Charlotte Archer also went missing from this plaza’s parking lot, she and Trent could confine their interest in vehicles that showed on both days. Go from there. They might even end up seeing two abductions. “We’d be interested in getting Tuesday from the week before too.”
“Just follow me.” Brad led them to a smaller room with another computer station. He directed Amanda to sit and leaned over her shoulder and worked the mouse.
He clicked on a folder labeled with this past Tuesday’s date. “Do you know what time specifically you’re interested in?”
“Not exactly. Whereabouts was the Volvo parked? That’s the field of interest.”
He minimized the folder, letting the live feed populate the monitor on the right. He pointed to a spot toward the back of the lot. “It was right there.”
“Thanks. That’s a big help. I think we have it from here.” This surveillance system looked a lot like one she’d accessed in a coffee shop for a past case.
“Okay. I’ll leave you to it.” Brad left the room, and Trent stepped in behind Amanda to view the screen.
She hit the play button and forwarded in slow motion, locking her gaze on the parking space Brad had pointed out.
At 10:33 AM, the Volvo pulled into the spot, and the trunk was popped.
Leanne got out of the car, slightly hobbling, and met her daughter, Gracie, at the trunk and grabbed cloth bags from there before shutting the lid.
The video continued to play out, showing the Reillys headed toward the grocery store.
“Watch for anyone who might be noticing them,” she told Trent.
“You know I am.”
She scanned the people in the background and the far edges of the feed. No one was showing the mother and daughter any interest. It didn’t mean their killer wasn’t out there, just that he’d been wise enough to keep out of the camera’s line of sight. Well, that or he’d show up later. “You see anything?”
“Nope.”
“I’m going to forward until they come out. We know they were taken after they finished shopping.”
She forwarded in slow motion until she saw Leanne’s and Gracie’s backs to the camera. It was just over an hour after they’d entered the store. Leanne was pushing a cart and holding her daughter’s hand. Witnessing that small act of love had Amanda’s heart swelling. There was also something to the way Leanne tugged the girl close. Almost protective. Was she already uneasy for some reason?
Leanne let go of her daughter’s hand and opened the trunk with a key. She started loading the groceries into the back.
Nothing exciting until— “Look.” Amanda shimmied straighter in the chair and pointed to the screen.
A man entered from the right side—dark hair and casually dressed. He approached with his hands in his pockets, a nonthreatening stance.
“Could be the man who was talking with Jill outside Dumfries Elementary,” Trent said. “Right size and coloring, anyway. And isn’t that the same jacket?”
“Shit. I think you’re right.” She pulled out her phone and brought up the photograph of their mystery man and held her screen toward Trent. “I’ll be.”
“So the same guy…?”
“Might be. We don’t see his face. He could just as easily be Lance Crane, honestly. Ever since we brought his name up again, he’s been on my mind. But look at Leanne’s body language,” she said to Trent. “She tensed and drew back from him.”
“And just so subtly moved so her daughter was behind her more.”
Amanda nodded. “She’s certainly uneasy. Her shoulders are back, her head slightly angled. I’d guess he said something to her.”
“If only we knew what.”
No expert lip-reader could do it from the back of a person’s head—and that’s the view they had. Amanda watched the interaction play out. A few seconds later, Leanne was smiling and gesturing. Relaxed.
“She knows him,” Trent concluded.
“Huh.”
The man was closer to Leanne now, and Gracie peeked out around her mother’s legs and was smiling at him.
“He’s charming,” Trent shared his observations, mirroring her own.
“Yep. He’s able to set the women at ease and get their guards down.” It pained Amanda to watch. She wanted to scream for Leanne and Gracie to run, but her warnings would come far too late. “I do suspect, though, that Leanne and Gracie knew him, or at least were familiar with him.”
Leanne was laughing now, but Amanda’s gaze drifted to her hands, and ever so smoothly Leanne tossed her phone into the grocery bag. Next she was closing the trunk and she and her daughter were walking away with the man.
“What the…?” Trent said.
“Is she running away with him?” Amanda shook her head in answer to her own question and paused the video. “But that makes little sense given her initial reaction, which was hesitancy and fear.”
“She might have wanted to avoid answering her husband’s calls for an hour or so while she spent time with the man… whoever he is.”
“Possible. It would seem Leanne and Gracie went with the man willingly. Who is he to them? If Leanne had sensed any danger, wouldn’t she have brought her phone with her? Obviously we won’t need to check it for the man’s prints now, but was she leaving her husband for that guy?”
“Hmm. I don’t know about that. Why bother shopping if that’s the case? Why not just rendezvous in the lot and leave with him?”
“Okay, keep talking.”
“Just before she ditched her phone, she was laughing. Didn’t seem forced, but what if he told her to in order to make it seem genuine—like he knew about the camera—and leaving the phone had been at his direction?”
“Her laughing would give the impression that Leanne took her daughter and left her husband willingly. It would give any cop watching the video pause—it could be an affair or abduction. But as we said, the affair angle doesn’t feel right with the timing. On another note, he might not have known she left her phone behind.” Amanda faced the monitor again and hit play. The trio exited off the right side of the screen.
“Is he aware of where the cameras are placed and trying to avoid them?”
“Too soon to leap there. Besides, it looks like the grocery store just has the one outside. Suppose other units in the plaza could have their own. Either way, we need to show this man to Brad Stevens and see if he knows him.”
“Here, do you recognize this guy from the back of his head?”
“Very funny. He might recognize the man’s build and clothing. We can also show him the man’s face from the Dumfries Elementary video.”
“Let’s watch from two Tuesdays ago and then get him?” Trent raised his brows as if asking.
“Let’s.” She opened the folder and started the feed. They weren’t armed with where Jill Archer had parked, just the make and model of her vehicle.
Jill’s Chevy sedan entered the lot around ten thirty and went off-screen to the right.
“We know she took Charlotte to the doctor’s office, and they are at that end of the plaza,” Amanda said. “We need to see if there are any other cameras on the lot that will show that section.”
“Yeah, considering that’s also the direction the Reillys went with the man. Did the man have actual business at the plaza besides selecting his next victims? Could he have been here for the clinic even? As you said, it’s at the end of the plaza.”
“We’ll go talk to the people at the doctor’s office again. Show them our mystery guy’s picture.” She hated the room for error as the man from outside the school might not be the one they’d just seen on the video with the Reillys. They had similar build and wore the same jacket, but they didn’t have an image of the latter man’s face.
“Let’s do it. Right now. We’ll come back for the video.”