Craig the clerk stared out the window at the three of us huddled by the trash can. For some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off the guy. Maybe it was the way his mouth hung open. I broke off my stare. Standing in front of me, Pennington looked like a kid who’d found his daddy’s porn collection. His ear-to-ear grin made me think he had Novak’s location printed out.
“What is it?” Cervantes said.
“We’ve got surveillance footage.” Pennington produced a VHS tape.
“Really?” I said. “VHS?”
Pennington shrugged. “Not everyone’s up to speed on the latest technology here in the backwards south, Yankee.”
Yankee? Where the hell had that come from?
“Tapes still work. The footage is still admissible by law.” He held it up in front of my face. “And this is pulling from four different feeds.” Pennington pointed at the corner of the building. “There, the main store area, the office, and out back. We might not only get Novak’s face on camera, but the van, license plate—”
“And maybe proof Cassie is still alive,” I said, blinking him back in focus. “You guys got a VCR at the office?”
Cervantes nodded as he pulled his keys from his pocket. “Sure do.”
Pennington called in to have a forensics unit sent to the gas station. It was doubtful anything had been left behind, but if they turned up even one small piece of evidence, it’d be worth it.
We hung around until one of the uniformed officers from the crash site showed up. While waiting, Pennington taped up the gas pump where the van had been, but left the store open. The clerk had told him at least a dozen other patrons had been inside since he had seen the van. It was as contaminated a scene as you could find.
The drive back to Savannah took half as long as the ride out of town. Maybe that was because I knew where we were going and the tension we felt toward each other had shifted to a mix of anxiety and hope over what the security footage contained. It helped that Cervantes pushed the needle past one hundred miles per hour and left it there the entire time we were on the highway. It was driving I could respect.
We entered the station from the back, the same way I’d gone in with Cassie on a couple of occasions. The familiar smell of stale coffee and Lysol hit me and I felt a slight pang of yearning to be back home.
They already had a VCR hooked up to a large display in one of the meeting rooms. There were four conference tables pushed together to form a large rectangle, and probably twenty chairs stretching around the table. I grabbed one and wheeled it closer to the screen. Cervantes sat to my right. Pennington cut the lights and shut the door, then took a seat on my left. He slipped the tape into the VCR and cut on the screen with a remote.
The large air vents in the drop ceiling piped frigid air into the room at around twenty miles per hour. It didn’t take long before the effects of being in the heat and humidity all morning wore off.
Cervantes leaned closer to me. “It’s every damn meeting room.”
“What?” I said.
He jutted his chin toward the ceiling. “The air vents. Freezing in the summer, and hot as hell in the winter.”
“Good thing it’s fall.” I studied Cervantes for a few moments wondering if the current extreme personality shift would last long.
“You ain’t lying,” Pennington said. His demeanor shifted as he pointed to the screen. “Here we go.”
The image on the screen was split into four boxes. The top left showed the empty office. Next to it was an angle that covered most of the inside of the store, shot from the front doors. Bottom left was of the pumps and parking lot. And bottom right was out back.
A brindle pit bull sauntered through the field behind the gas station, stopping every few steps to cock his head and listen. Then he moved offscreen and didn’t return.
Pennington hit the fast-forward button and the scene raced by. A couple cars pulled up, got gas, and drove off. The drivers never set foot in the store. Craig the clerk paced behind his counter and played at his laptop. A couple times he came out from hiding and stood in front of the doors, looking the road up and down. At one point, he grabbed a stool and carried it to the back corner. He climbed atop the stool, pushed away a ceiling panel, and stuck his arm into the darkness.
“I knew that son of a bitch was crooked,” I said.
“Petty shit,” Pennington said. “Nothing to be concerned about. If we notice anything unusual around the time the van shows up, we can use Craig’s dealings to get him to talk.”
Several minutes passed as we watched the sped-up version of that morning’s events. Then a primer gray Ford panel van appeared.
Pennington slammed his thumb into the remote so quickly he ended up stopping the tape. He cursed, restarted playback and apologized.
The van pulled alongside the same pump we had used. A man wearing a hat stepped out. He tossed something into the trash.
“Dammit,” Cervantes said.
“You had the right idea,” I said.
“Don’t forget it.”
I waved him off and returned one hundred percent of my focus to the screen. Sunlight reflected off the van’s windshield, making it difficult to monitor any activity within. I doubted there’d be much, though. No way Novak would leave her alone out there if she was conscious.
After pumping a few gallons of gas, the man walked into the store. He moved slowly and casually, without purpose. Didn’t look like a man who held a kidnapped woman in the back of his vehicle.
We all shifted our gaze to the box on the top right of the screen. Craig the clerk glanced up from his laptop and nodded at the man as he entered, then veered toward the counter. All we had was a shot of his back so far. After saying something to Craig, the guy went to the back of the store, where the refrigerated coolers were. He reached inside one and pulled a tall can of something out. The film was getting grainy.
“Bet they just record over the same tape,” I said.
Pennington nodded. “Not like much happens out there. System is in place in case they need to recoup some insurance money, or catch someone shooting buckshot at the window late at night.”
The guy walked down the back row, head down. All we wanted was the confirmation that it was Novak and the son of a bitch was making us wait for it. Finally, he turned toward the camera.
Pennington paused the tape. The image of the guy was one big blur. Pennington clicked through frame by frame, forwards and back, until we had the clearest shot. And it was still shit.
“You know that’s him,” I said.
Cervantes rose and paced to the back of the room. He threw his hand out. “You think that’s admissible? Come on, that could be any number of guys.”
“He’s right,” Pennington said. “This tape isn’t going to do much to help us when we’re up against ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’”
The feed resumed at normal speed. There wasn’t another shot of Novak’s face. We followed him out of the store, watching his back all the way to the van. He climbed inside. The sun had risen a little higher. The glare wasn’t as strong as it had been. He could be seen climbing between the front seats into the back.
“What was it he purchased?” I said.
Pennington rewound the tape. “Looks like some energy drink and a bag of chips.”
“Some lunch, huh.”
We watched him exit the store again.
“A few landmarks there,” I said. “Forensics guys can figure out his height, approximate size, then match that up with what we know about Novak.”
Neither detective responded. We watched the rest of the tape in silence. He spent two minutes in the back of the van before leaving the scene. He pulled forward and made a sweeping U-turn.
Pennington jammed the pause button down. “Either of you make out that plate?”
The three of us huddled as close to the screen as we could in an attempt to make out the tiny set of letters and numbers on the back of the van. It was pointless.
“Too damn grainy,” Cervantes said. “We’ll never figure that out.”
“Don’t say never,” I said.
“Hey, if you got it, tell the rest of us,” Cervantes said.
“No, I don’t. But I know someone who can get it.”
“Who?” Pennington stopped the playback and ejected the tape.
I sat on the edge of the conference table, cracking my knuckles on the hard surface one at a time. “A guy back in Philly. One of the best in the country at this kind of thing. We can overnight it to him.”
Holding the tape up, Pennington shook his head. “No chance this gets out of our sight.”
“Then what the hell do you want to do with it? Wipe your ass?”
Pennington chuckled. “You’re taking it to him personally, Tanner.”