If She Fled

by Blake Pierce

  DeMarco did indeed have a knack for working her way around a conversation. Without being too rude but applying just the right amount of urgency and force, she had a tech specialist with the company helping to patch the footage through to one of the precinct’s laptops. Less than fifteen minutes after making the call, they had a remote version of the Lowells’ security log-in screen on the laptop. The specialist helped them through it, explained how the system worked, and then directed them to that morning’s security footage.

  The camera was different than the one at the Hixes’ residence, as it was constantly on. The footage for the day started at 12:01 a.m. With the technician’s help, they were able to fast forward through the footage until the first movement of the day could be seen on the screen.

  “Right there, stop,” Kate said.

  The technician, on speaker mode through DeMarco’s cell phone, responded right away. “Got it. Right there….”

  Kate, DeMarco, and Bannerman watched the screen as a man came out of the house at 8:12. Having never seen David Lowell, Kate turned to Bannerman for verification. “Did you see the husband before he was placed in the ambulance?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “Okay,” Kate spoke up, making sure the technician heard her. “You can skip ahead.”

  They watched as the tech took over the screen again and skipped the footage ahead. After a few minutes (which equated to nearly an hour on the fast-forwarded footage), a shape appeared in the left-hand side of the screen, just before the screen went black. In fast-forward mode, the blackness was just a blip on the radar, but it was enough for the tech to stop the footage.

  “What happened?” DeMarco asked.

  “The feed was cut.”

  “Any idea how?”

  “Not just yet, but I can check the records to see. But honestly, to me, it looks like a manual termination. When the cameras have some sort of failure or malfunction, there is typically a little white flash before the screen goes black. I can check those records right now.”

  “Before you do, can you backtrack the footage to ten seconds before it went out?” Kate asked.

  “Sure thing.”

  The footage went backward, showing that same angle of sidewalk, yard, and stilted sky beyond. When the tech stopped and the playback was in regular speed, they all watched the left side of the screen. In actual speed, the shape that came into view was much more than just a shape: it was a figure.

  A man. He was wearing what looked to be some sort of uniform—a navy-blue uniform with some sort of logo on the left breast. His face wasn’t completely in the shot, but there was enough to make out several features; he appeared to be a younger man with scruff on his face that could not quite be called a beard. He was walking quickly toward the porch, but he was in the shot for no more than a second and a half before the screen went black.

  “Can we see that last three seconds again?” Kate asked. “And when it gets to that man, can you freeze it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The tech did as asked and five seconds later, they were looking at a still-frame image of the man. Kate was irritated that the angle of the camera did not show his entire face but there was enough there.

  “Thanks,” Kate said.

  “Of course. Give me a few seconds and I can maybe tell you why the screen went out.”

  While the tech put them on hold, Kate, DeMarco, and Bannerman studied the picture of the man. Kate stared at the uniform. It looked like the sort most UPS drivers wore but the logo on the shirt was definitely not UPS. It made her think of Mike Wallace and his Hexco uniform. This uniform was a bit more casual, though. The pants looked to be just dark jeans, the navy button-down shirt tucked into it.

  “Sheriff Bannerman, do you have any idea what that uniform might be?”

  Bannerman, already leaning in close, leaned in a bit more. “No, I don’t think so. If I could see that logo on the breast pocket of his shirt…”

  Apparently, the tech had overheard this. “I can do that for you,” she said proudly.

  They watched as she took control of the screen again, blew the image up, and positioned the logo on the shirt in the center of the screen.

  “Ah,” Bannerman said. “That’s a driver for Panther Shipping.”

  “What’s that?” Kate asked.

  “A small shipping company that has its HQ in Chicago but delivers all over most of the state. They’re bigger in the cities and towns within an hour or so of Chicago. Sort of a local and more secure method for shipping. A lot of local companies use them for heavier equipment. We used them just a few months ago when they were delivering some of the steel rods and columns for the new bunker we have for the patrol cars out back.”

  “So I wonder what they were delivering,” Kate wondered out loud.

  “Where are we on figuring out how the feed was killed?” Bannerman asked the tech.

  The tech sounded confused when she started speaking but by the time she had given the entire answer, she sounded as if she knew what had been going on.

  “I see right here that someone logged into the system on a mobile device to deactivate the camera. It was done on a device from within the house.”

  “And it was never turned back on?” Kate asked.

  “No ma’am.”

  “Thank you so much for your help.”

  “Of course. Call us back if you need any further assistance.”

  With the tech off of the phone, the three looked at one another, a disappointed sort of grin spreading across DeMarco’s face. “Well,” she said, “at least we know what he was delivering.”

  It was a poor joke, but Kate assumed she was right. Meredith Lowell had killed the feed, hoping to hide the fact that this man had visited. Apparently, she had not cut it off soon enough, though, granting them this brief shot of her visitor.

  And seeing as how Meredith had never gotten the chance to turn the Nest camera back on, it was very likely that the man still centered on the laptop screen was the killer.

  “Can you print this picture out for me?” Kate asked, getting to her feet. “I’d like to have it in my possession when I pay a visit to Panther Shipping.”

  ***

  The Panther Shipping delivery depot was located just outside of Chicago’s city limits. It was a respectable building, with a large office with glass-paneled walls on the right, connected to eight loading bays to the left. Two of the bays were occupied when Kate and DeMarco arrived. A large paved lot that surrounded the right side of the building currently housed eleven trucks; multiple empty parking spaces on that end indicated that Panther possessed at least fifteen more trucks. Most of the ones in the lot were larger delivery vans, though there were two eighteen-wheelers with trailers behind them.

  Inside, the place was decked out in all sorts of pictures of drivers and awards hanging in the central office. They walked to the reception window, where an older lady greeted them with a smile.

  “Can I help you ladies?” she asked.

  “Yes, please,” Kate said. She politely slid her badge and ID across the counter and said, “We have a picture of one of your drivers that was taken with a security camera at a private residence this morning. We’d like to have the man IDed—by a manager if there is one on duty.”

  The older woman looked alarmed but nodded and wasted no time. She reached instantly for the phone on her desk. “Of course! Just one moment.”

  She turned away and started speaking to someone on the other end in a hushed tone. Less than thirty seconds later, she turned back to them. Her smile was gone now, her face all business. “Mr. Morris is coming out right this moment,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  Apparently, the people at Panther Shipping took these things very seriously; Kate and DeMarco had not even had a proper moment to sit down before a man dressed in a button-down shirt and khakis came from around the corner. A bit of a beer belly hung over his belted waist and he looked cautiously at them through thin reading glasses.
>
  He got closer to them before he asked: “Are you the agents?”

  “We are,” DeMarco said.

  “My name is Henry Morris, the regional manager. Please come with me to my office,” he said. He was basically pleasing, hoping they could cover this in private, without an easy-to-overhear conversation or without anyone pulling out IDs or badges.

  “Lead the way,” Kate said.

  Relief washed over his face as he led them out of the central office and down an attached hallway. More pictures of drivers, trucks, and hanging awards lined the hallways. The office Morris led them into was of a modest size but quite tidy. A large whiteboard hung on the right wall, lined with what looked like delivery schedules, times, and the names of several drivers.

  Kate respected the fact that after he closed the door, Morris did not sit down behind the desk. He stayed on his feet, standing by the whiteboard. He looked nervous, making Kate assume he had never had many dealings with the law.

  “Pamela tells me you had a question about one of our drivers?” he said.

  “We do,” Kate said. She reached into her inside jacket pocket and removed the picture that Bannerman had printed out for them. “We need to know who this man is.”

  Morris looked at it for just a moment before he answered. “That’s Ashley Watts. He’s been a driver with us for about two years now. Has he done something wrong?”

  “It looks like he might have,” Kate said. “And for his own interests as well as those of your company, I’d like to speak with him before I give you any details. Is he still on delivery?”

  Morris glanced at his watch and shook his head. “No. He should have come back about an hour or so ago. He’s still here, though. He’s one of our backup drivers for any deliveries that come in late.”

  “Could you get him in here, please?”

  “I can indeed,” he said. It was then that he finally sat down behind his desk. He picked up the receiver on the phone, punched in two numbers to page a department, and then said: “Hey, thanks. Could you send Ashley to my office? And quickly, please.”

  When he hung up, he looked up at Kate and DeMarco with that same worry on his face. “I do hope there’s nothing serious here. We’ve been in business for over ten years now and the most trouble our drivers have ever been in were speeding tickets—and there have only been four total.”

  “Hopefully it will remain that way when we leave here,” Kate said. But she thought of seeing the man on the Nest feed—a man they now knew as being named Ashley Watts—and didn’t think that would be the case.

  The three of them remained in silence until there was a knock on the door about a minute and a half later.

  “Come on in,” Morris said.

  The man who entered was unmistakably the man from Meredith Lowell’s Nest camera feed. When he came into the office, he even presented the same side of his face that had been seen on the frozen picture. He looked around the office, clearly perplexed at seeing the two women, and started to close the door behind him.

  “Actually, Mr. Morris,” DeMarco said, “would you mind giving us your office for a few minutes?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. When he walked toward the door he still looked worried, but very happy that he was given permission to leave. When he closed the door behind him, he did so quietly, as if he were trying his best not to disturb them.

  “You’re Ashley Watts, correct?” Kate asked.

  “I am. And you are?”

  He had an air of confidence about him that Kate could tell he was doing his best to keep in check. She watched it falter significantly as she showed him her ID. “I’m Agent Wise and this is Agent DeMarco, with the FBI. We have some questions about your morning deliveries.”

  Watts instantly turned red in the face. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot and nodded slowly. Kate knew the look, as she had seen it numerous times in the past. It was the look of someone who had been busted and was trying to decide if they should just accept it or try to worm their way out of it.

  “Looks like you might know what we’re talking about already,” DeMarco said. “Want to go ahead and tell us why you think we’re here?”

  Still red in the face, Watts looked at them skeptically. He reminded Kate of a kid who visited the principal, unsure if he was there to be awarded or punished. “Well, I can maybe think of something some might view as bad, but I certainly don’t think it would warrant a visit from the FBI.”

  Kate handed him the same picture she had handed Henry Morris just a few moments ago. Watts looked confused at first but then realization started to sink into his features.

  “This from the security camera at the Lowell house?” he asked.

  “It is,” Kate answered. “Does that not surprise you?”

  “I don’t know. Meredith…she’s supposed to cut the feed off when I come over.”

  “So you’ve been by there before…for non-delivery purposes?”

  “I have. But…still. I get that affairs are bad. But why is the FBI involved?”

  “Because,” Kate said, “sometime in the three and a half hours between her husband leaving for work and arriving back home just before noon, Meredith Lowell was killed.”

  She could have kept going but decided to stop there; she wanted to catch his reaction to that bombshell of news. He started to grin, as though thinking it was some sort of a joke, but then his face went absolutely blank. He blinked a few times, then said one simple word.

  “What?”

  “She was murdered this morning, and this picture of you entering her home is the last thing the Nest camera captured.”

  “Well, but…yeah…but…” He stopped here, his expression growing grave as he started to realize what was being insinuated. When he started speaking again, it was clear that he was having to focus on each and every word. “We’d hooked up at least a dozen times. She told me she’d always kill the feed on that thing if I was coming over…said her husband never checked it anyway. I don’t know if maybe she forgot or what this time…”

  “How long were you in her home this morning?” Kate asked.

  “I don’t know. It um…well, it was never really for very long. When we were done, she wasn’t one for wanting me to hang around. She’s married, you know? She wanted me out of there as soon as possible.”

  “So sex, clean up, and leave?” DeMarco asked.

  “Basically. Sometimes we wouldn’t even make it to the bed or the couch. A few times it was right there in the foyer, against the wall or the door.”

  “And what about this morning?” Kate asked.

  “In the den. On the couch.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  “So let’s say that’s accurate,” Kate said. “Then why did she not turn the security camera back on after you left?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she forgot. She…I mean…shit! She’s really dead?”

  “She is,” Kate said. “And so far as we know, you’re the last person she saw. You understand why that makes you a suspect, right?”

  “I guess, but…but that’s insane.”

  “Do you have proof that you didn’t hang around longer than those few minutes?”

  “I can show you all of the timestamps on the packages I delivered after that. Hell, there was one house just up the street from her.”

  “How can you show us?”

  “I can use my scanner to show you. It’s back in my locker, if you’ll let me go get it.”

  “That’s fine,” Kate said. “Of course, you understand if we accompany you?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  Kate wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw what looked like the beginnings of tears forming in the corners of his eyes. This did nothing to sway her. And honestly, even if Watts’s scanner showed that he had been scanning packages within half an hour of David Lowell leaving for work, it would not clear Watts in her mind. He could have had sex with her, killed her, and then
left the house all in the space of five minutes. It was possible.

  Besides…there was her intuition to consider. And one of the hard to believe things she had come to accept about sexual relationships was that when there were affairs, it was incredibly rare for a male lover to kill the woman; almost ninety percent of the time, it was the husband.

  As Watts led them to the back of the building and then to the left toward the loading bay, they passed by a pacing Mr. Morris, gripping a cup of coffee as if it were a life preserver. He looked worried, very concerned about the state of his driver and his company.

  And honestly, Kate didn’t blame him. The media was already all over these murders. If they caught wind that a Panther Shipping driver was in any way involved—even if it was just an affair with one of the victims—it would be terrible for business.

  She could sympathize…because if she didn’t wrap this case soon, it could be equally terrible for her career and the reputation she had spent thirty years building.

  ***

  Kate and DeMarco sat in the small break room just outside of the loading bays of Panther Shipping. Through the large window that looked out into the large adjoined loading area, they could see Morris and Watts speaking. They were huddled closely together, giving wary glances to anyone who happened to pass by.

  Kate was looking at the printout Watts had handed them after coming straight from his scanner. It looked like a very thin grocery store receipt, showing all of the stops Watts had made that morning. There was, of course, no listed stop for the Lowell residence, but there was one several houses up, punched in exactly nineteen minutes after Meredith Lowell had cut off the security camera at her house. The list was forty-six stops long—five of which had come before his stop by the Lowell residence.

  “I don’t see how this proves anything,” DeMarco said. “Nineteen minutes is more than enough time to have sex and then strangle someone.”

  “I agree with that part,” Kate said, “but I still don’t think Ashley Watts is the killer.”

  “Care to explain?”

  “Well, he said they’ve hooked up several times before. A simple look back through the Lowells’ Nest footage can confirm that—even if only to show that it was turned off before he arrived. So I doubt he’s lying about the affair. And from my experience, it is rarely the lover that kills the married party in an affair; it’s usually the jilted spouse.”