by Terry Odell
“Things look busy,” he said. “Not unusual for people to want to take a look whenever something—positive or negative—happens. But it’s good for business, right?”
“It’ll be short-lived, I’m sure,” Angie said. “It was nothing but a smoke detector going off. I haven’t said anything about the break-in, and I told the staff not to mention it.”
Until the next issue of the Mapleton Bee, Gordon thought. Charlotte Strickland would be itching to get out a special edition, but he knew Editor-in-Chief Lipsky would never allow it. Gordon’s fire heroics hadn’t been important enough, thank goodness, so a simple false alarm would never fly, even if there was a burglary to go along with it.
“I’m swamped right now,” Angie said, “but the video’s in the office. I’m sure you know how it works better than I do.”
“Where should I be looking?” Gordon asked.
Angie shut off the mixer and wiped her hands. “I think Patti said table twelve. There’s a diagram on the desk.”
“And when did Patti leave? You said the man was arriving at the same time.”
“Morning shift ends at three,” Angie said. “She’d be tallying receipts, figuring her tips, making sure she left everything ready for the next shift. She’s pretty good about not closing out too early, so I doubt she left at the stroke of three.”
“Gotcha.” Gordon found the diagram and cued up the video. After orienting himself to the diner’s layout, he found table twelve, then backtracked to a two-o’clock timestamp, hit fast-forward, and watched the action play out at triple speed. Table twelve had been occupied by two women and two kids. The resolution wasn’t ideal, but Gordon thought he recognized the kids from his crossing guard duty. First graders or thereabouts. Both were engrossed in cell phones. Games, Gordon figured, not using them as phones. He knew from talking to the kids that a lot of them had disabled, hand-me-down phones that were only good for gaming.
What happened to the days when kids went out to play? Or at least talked to each other. Heck, even a little mischief-making would be better than having their worlds revolve around shooting monsters on a three-inch screen. However, their mothers appeared to be grateful for moments of adult conversation.
Not his place to judge. And why the hell was he thinking about parenting?
On task.
In the video, Erin had dropped a check on the table at one fifty-three. He fast-forwarded again, as the mothers took care of payment and convinced the kids that they had to put their games away. They left at two-thirteen. Erin bussed the table, and it stayed empty until two twenty-seven, when Erin showed a woman Gordon didn’t recognize to the table. Since it was a four-top, Gordon wondered why the woman had been seated there. Waiting on others?
Sure enough, a few minutes later, two other women joined her. They accepted coffee, but waved away menus. They chatted away, seemingly happy. At two fifty-eight, one of the women dropped some bills on the table, and they all left. Office workers on a coffee break, most likely.
Gordon backed up the video, realizing he hadn’t been paying enough attention to the rest of the comings and goings in the diner. Because Patti thought the man was arriving when she was leaving didn’t mean he hadn’t been there beforehand, perhaps sitting off in a corner, and then got up to use the restroom. Or peruse the bakery counter. Or pay his bill at the register.
Gordon scanned the video. No single males arrived during the time he’d been watching the women at table twelve. He caught the occasional glimpse of Patti going through receipts at the register and taking payments from other guests. She disappeared into the kitchen at three oh-seven and didn’t reappear. Gordon resumed watching the table.
But according to Angie, Patti had said he was at table twelve even though he was alone. Gordon remembered that the staff routinely turned the same tables rather than move into other areas of the dining room, so maybe table twelve was more convenient, even if it wasn’t being used to its full potential. He stopped worrying about why someone was sitting at a particular table and started concentrating on the who again.
The table remained empty. Okay, the guy might be good at disguising himself, but no way could one of those coffee break women have been Orrin Wardell.
In case he’d missed something, he switched to the feed from the rear camera, the one focused on the area near the restrooms, storage, and the door leading upstairs to Angie’s. Nothing unusual. The only single man through the space was Lou, the garage mechanic.
He got up and went to the kitchen. “Are you sure it was table twelve?” he asked Angie.
“That’s what Patti said.”
“Then are you sure she said he was coming in as she was leaving for the day? Maybe she left for something else earlier on.”
“Maybe.” Angie grabbed some mitts and pulled a pan of brownies out of the oven, set it on a rack and faced him. “It was loud in here, I was super busy, and the reception from her cell wasn’t that great. I might have misunderstood.”
“Can I have her number? I’ll call and ask her directly.”
“Sure. It’s on the bulletin board above the desk.”
Gordon found Patti’s home number as well as her cell. He tried the former, figuring if she were home, a land line’s reception would be better.
After talking with Patti, he discovered his hunch had been right. She’d seen the man come in when she took a break to run to the bank. She’d been in a hurry because she only had a few minutes, and at the time, it didn’t register that the man she almost bumped into could have been the one they’d been looking for.
“What made you think it was him?” Gordon asked. “From what you said before, you didn’t get much of a look at him the day the alarm went off.” Too often, people who wanted to see something projected that image onto completely different targets.
“I can’t put my finger on it,” Patti said. “I just did. He had a newspaper. I’d been thinking about him ever since that day, trying to put together whatever I could remember. Of course, I could be wrong, but I thought I ought to let Angie know, just in case.”
Gordon feared it was simply a man carrying a newspaper who set off the bells for Patti. Still, he wasn’t going to say it. Instead, he offered a few words of praise. “That was smart. Always good to err on the side of caution. Fewer people get hurt that way.”
“Oh my goodness. Do you think he’s going to hurt someone?”
“No. I didn’t mean it that way. That’s a generalization, nothing to do with this. But what I’d like to know is whether you remember what time you saw him come into the diner?”
“Oh, sure. I was on my lunch break. It’s half an hour, so I skipped eating because I had to get to the bank. My break’s always at ten-thirty when I work the early shift, which I was doing today.”
That put a different spin on the timeframe. But things still weren’t making sense. “One more question, Patti. If you were leaving, how did you know he was at table twelve? You said you were on your way out. Did you see him go inside? See him being seated?”
A pause, and when she spoke again, her voice was quiet. Apologetic. Embarrassed, even.
“No. I guess my brain was putting things together without bothering to verify they’d gone through my eyes first. When I left for my break, twelve was the only open table in Erin’s section, so I assumed that’s where he’d be seated, and when Angie asked, I told her table twelve. But no, I didn’t see him there.”
“He wasn’t there when you got back from the bank?”
“I don’t think so. Like I said, I didn’t realize he might be your man until after work, when I was halfway home, which was hours later. But twelve isn’t one of my tables, and it’s on the other end of the diner from mine, so I can’t be positive. I think I’d have noticed him if he’d been there when I went on duty. And if I had, I’d have told someone right then. I’m sorry. I guess I’m not a very good witness.”
“Don’t worry. I have the video, and I can figure this all out. You weren’t looking for him, so
no need to apologize. You’ve been a big help.”
Miscommunication all around. Patti filling in blanks, Angie not paying attention to what Patti was saying, not asking the right questions. And why should she? That was his job.
Gordon went to the video, rewinding it to ten o’clock, to be safe. Before he started studying it, he took out the two images he had of Orrin Wardell and tried to fix them in his brain so he’d have a mental image for comparison.
Then it hit him. If Patti was right, and she and the man had almost collided, all he had to do was watch for her leaving to spot his guy. Gordon sped through the video until he caught Patti shrugging into her coat and heading for the door. He stopped the replay, then advanced it a few frames at a time. In slow motion, Patti stepped toward the door. He nudged the video a little faster. There. She’d reached the door. No man in sight. Opened it. Stepped outside. Out of camera range. Damn.
But the guy should be the next man to enter the diner, even if he wasn’t going to be at table twelve. But in the next few minutes, nobody came inside, and table twelve remained empty.
He watched until the timestamp showed eleven, when Patti came back. No lone males. At the eleven thirty mark, the lunch crowd started arriving. Gordon moved through the video at a crawl, comparing every male customer to the sketches in front of him. Damn it to hell, there was nobody who came close.
Chapter 51
Gordon pressed the stop button and rubbed his eyes. Patti had meant well, he knew, but he’d spent—he checked his watch—a good hour, with nothing to show for it. Other than Orrin Wardell hadn’t been at Daily Bread. It was after five. If Wardell was still in the vicinity of Mapleton, Gordon’s time would be better spent running down the list of accommodations Laurie was gathering.
Angie gave him a quick goodbye. “Two more events this week, and I’m behind schedule.”
“I’m busy myself,” Gordon said. He gave one more slow perusal of the diner’s customers, but nobody he could peg as Wardell, not even with the broadest stretch of his imagination, had appeared while Gordon was studying video.
He went to his office, where Laurie had left him the list he’d asked for. A check of his email gave him the other variations on potential disguises for Orrin Wardell. With and without glasses. Short hair. Long hair. No hair.
He called to thank her.
“Not a problem,” she said. “Those are easy—all computer generated. But if your guy is good at theatrical makeup, he could do all sorts of things. Fake scars, temporary tats, you name it. One of the few things he can’t control much is his height. And ears. They’re almost impossible to change much, but if you don’t know what his ears look like in his unadorned state, it’ll be hard to use them as a reference.”
He printed out what she’d sent, then took them to Lloyd Titchener, tonight’s duty officer. The tank of a man jerked to attention. Still hadn’t made the switch from military to small town police force. “Easy, Titch. Make copies and hand these to all patrol staff when they come in.”
Damn, computers in vehicles would make this so much more efficient. He thought of the unfinished grant application on his desktop. And how, as chief, that was more of what his job entailed. “Hang on,” he said, and went to his desk to fetch the accommodations list.
When he returned, Vicky McDermott, one of his patrol officers, was studying the faces. “I’ll bet this guy’s own mother wouldn’t recognize him in some of these shots.”
“No argument from me,” Gordon said. “I don’t want unnecessary stops of everyone you don’t recognize, but be alert.”
“Got it, Chief. I can make copies.” She turned to leave.
“Wait. Make copies of this, too,” Gordon said. He handed her the list. While she was gone, he explained to Titch that he wanted unobtrusive calls to the various establishments. “Nothing to alarm anyone. Low key. Get with Connie in Dispatch and assign places in conjunction with normal patrol duties. And if anyone gets a hit, call me immediately.”
Much as he wanted to be in the thick of things, he had boring chief stuff to deal with. “But I’ll hit the Richardsons’,” he said. “It’s on my way home.”
McDermott returned, a stack of papers in her hands. “One question, Chief. What’s this guy driving?”
Crap. “Excellent question. And I have no answer. His rental, if the troopers have hauled it up yet, is on its way to an impound lot until forensics is done with it.”
“I’ll put someone on calling the rental agencies,” Titch said.
“Start with Enterprise,” Gordon suggested. “They deliver, and he used them before.”
“You think they’ll rent to him again after he wiped out one of their cars?” McDermott asked.
Gordon shrugged. “Who knows? Word might not have gotten to the local outlets yet.”
“On it, Chief.” Titch stiffened, executed a pivot that would make any soldier proud, and marched away.
Gordon left them, comfortable that everything was in good hands. And, he thought, his staff might appreciate a break from their usual routine patrol duties, which on a typical Mapleton night, didn’t amount to much.
He went to his office and gathered all the paperwork he had on the case, then made copies. He could study them from home. Maybe if he looked at it in a different environment, something new would occur to him. He stood in front of the white board, trying to commit it to memory. Which, of course, wasn’t necessary. He wondered if falling in the tree well or breathing smoke had muddled his thought processes. He took several pictures of the white board, then grabbed everything and left for home.
On his way, he stopped at the Richardsons’ Bed and Breakfast. Standing on their porch, he asked Flo and Lyla, the owners, if they’d had any new male tenants over the last few days. He showed them the pictures, restricting them to Wardell as Wardell, and as the Carhartt cowboy. They said they hadn’t, but promised to let the department know if anyone meeting Wardell’s description checked in.
“We can pass the word along to all the other local innkeepers,” Lyla said. “We’ve got a network set up.”
Gordon wondered if that might end up being too much like the telephone game he’d played as a kid. One person whispered something to the next, and so on down the line, and by the time it got to the last person, the message bore no resemblance to the original.
“Keep it basic,” he said. “Single male, mid-to-late-thirties. Five-ten, give or take. Medium build.” As Gordon spoke, he realized how easy it would be to add or subtract a few inches, add a few pounds. The boots Wardell had worn as Carhartt Cowboy added height, and bulky clothing disguised his frame.
But as Gordon left, he had a feeling the Richardsons’ Innkeeper Grapevine might provide results long before his patrol officers had a chance to make the rounds. Of course, his officers had pictures. Although, since he’d left the sketches with Lyla, he wouldn’t put it past her to take a snap with her phone and relay it down the line.
Solomon would love this. Fit right in with his theory that keeping the citizenry informed made it harder for the bad guys to get away with their wrongdoing.
He drove home, keeping an eye out in case anyone might be following him. Nobody’d called him with an update on whether Wardell had new wheels of the rental kind, so it was pretty much an exercise in futility. Until he hit his neighborhood turnoff, he was on a main road, and countless vehicles had reason to be using it. When he turned onto the street into his development, he was alone. After hanging the final right turn onto his block, he slowed. Every house was dark.
Gordon kept driving. Normal night lighting on the next block. He circled it. Lights on all the way around. Circled his block. All dark. Candle or lantern light shone from a few of the homes. Firelight flickered in another. As he continued, the inevitable warning from the Bark Brothers heralded his presence.
Okay, a blackout involving his block. Downed power lines? A blown transformer? Shouldn’t be weather related—all they’d had today was cold. No rain, snow, or ice. But that coincidenc
e thing nagged. Wardell? Targeting him, but not wanting to call attention to it by having Gordon’s house the only one without power?
But how would Wardell know where he lived? Gordon’s phone was unlisted, and like many cops, his address didn’t show up in any online searches. Hell, he’d hardly been home since he got back from vacation, so who could have followed him? And if the power had been out long enough for people to find candles and lanterns, it stood to reason they’d already complained to the electric company.
Wardell hadn’t struck him as being smart enough to pull something like this off. But who knew? He drove on until he was in the land of light, parked under a street lamp, and called Dispatch.
“Let me check,” Connie said. “Usually people call us to complain, but I haven’t seen anything yet. Tessa might have routed everyone to the electric company.”
Gordon waited until Connie came on the line. “Happened about thirty minutes ago. Crews are on their way. No cause reported yet.”
“Are they willing to hazard a guess?” he asked. Thirty minutes meant his alarm system would still be running on its battery backup, so if someone thought cutting the power meant they’d bypass the alarm, they’d have been in for a big surprise when it went off.
“They’re going to be looking for squirrels,” she said. “They’ve had six calls this month in reference to power outages in that part of town, and squirrels caused four of them. But they’re not going to say anything until they get there.”
Gordon disconnected and drove to his place. Of course the garage remote wouldn’t work without electricity, so he parked in the driveway, gathered all his paperwork, then changed his mind and decided to leave it in the car until he cleared his house. This wasn’t the first power outage in the neighborhood. Sometimes a single block, sometimes more widespread, although they generally lasted under a minute. And the power company had blamed squirrels for those, too. However, it was another coincidence, and he didn’t like it, not one damn bit. How convenient that the power would go out on his block when he was in the middle of an investigation. An investigation where someone might want to get back at him.
