Cammy attends the police-band radio, seeking some word about the situation with the river-hammered Mercedes grinding against the supports of the bridge.
At his computer, Jason leaves the real-time shot of the bridge and returns to the NSA archives. He moves to a camera upriver at the Interstate 405 overpass and reverses video, traveling back in time, alert for the moment when the swept-away S600 appears on its north-to-south journey.
Rolling her chair to Jason’s side, Cammy reports, “From what I hear, the first responders say there’s no one in the Mercedes.”
Jason is not so sure. “Unless Larkin’s body is in the trunk.”
“My man!” Cammy declares. “You are always a step ahead.”
“My job. But on second thought, I doubt she’d kidnap him and right away kill him.”
“Why not?”
“If her purpose was to kill him, she’d have done it in the alleyway behind his office.”
“There it is!” Cammy cries, pointing at the screen and then clapping her hands with delight at the sight of the riverborne Mercedes being turned and churned by currents.
Because Jason is reversing video, the black sedan rocks and wallows upriver toward the 405 bridge, which it apparently passed under earlier.
By this strategy, he moves north and further back in time, to cameras offering a river view wherever he can find them, to Del Amo Boulevard, to Highway 91, to Artesia Boulevard, Alondra Boulevard, Rosecrans Avenue. Again and again, he finds the S600 at different points on its rollicking progress.
“Call Marshall Ackerman at Volunteers for a Better Tomorrow,” Jason says, referencing the nonprofit that employs him and has some important connection with the NSA. “Tell him that Jane Hawk evidently abducted Larkin, she ditched his car in the river, and I’ll soon be able to tell him where she was when she ditched it.”
“Why would that matter?” Cammy wondered.
“Because, sugar, she might still be there with Larkin.”