“How late did you work?”
“We were off the clock at 4:30.”
“How big a hole did you have going at that point?”
“Pretty good size,” Borowicz said.
“What’s pretty good size?”
“Oh, we had the street dug up good, you know, you couldn’t go past. We had the road-closed sign up on the other side so people on Cromwell wouldn’t turn in. She was big and deep.”
“You’re saying no way anyone could get by.”
“Nah, unless they were drunk and wanted to drive through the yards and stuff. Why would anyone want to try that?”
Exactly, thought Mac. “Thanks, guy. Stay warm.”
“I fuckin’ wish,” replied Borowicz, heading back to work.
They walked back to the car. “What the heck was that all about?” Lich inquired.
“I’ll show you.” Mac backed up and turned back towards the GasUp station. “This morning I was looking at the big map of the city where they plotted out all the locations where the victims were found, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Rock and I were looking at it, and he made the comment that the guy always leaves himself multiple routes out. He goes in one way and probably out another.”
“So?”
“With Myrtle closed like that, the only way in and out of here is Hampden. We take Hampden in, one block it’s a dead end, and you can only go right on Myrtle. Now, if Myrtle isn’t closed …”
“He can go any number of ways.”
“Right. He can go straight ahead on Myrtle then right or left on Cromwell.”
“But, as far as I know, Riley had the gas station canvassed.”
“Right. And there was nothing,” Mac replied. “But let me show you something.”
Mac pulled back into the GasUp station, this time in front. They got out, and Mac said, “Look at that.” He pointed up at the camera he had been looking at earlier, under the canopy, pointing right out to the corner of Hampden and University. There was a large street light on the corner.
Lich, seeing it, turned to look at Mac with a little grin, “Long shot.”
“Humor me.”
The store manager was taking inventory in one of the aisles, making notes on his clipboard. His name was Harold, a short, curly-brown-haired guy dressed in a white shirt, orange tie, and khaki’s that had seen better days. He wore glasses with large, round, clear, plastic frames ten years out of style. Mac imagined the job didn’t pay enough for new ones. Mac and Lich identified themselves.
“A couple of your guys were in earlier. I gave them the names of our people who worked last night.”
“So, the store’s open twenty-four hours, right?” Mac asked.
“Yeah.”
“Are the security cameras always running?”
“Yeah, far as I know,” Harold replied.
“Did our guys ask about those?”
“No.”
“How come the one on the far left out there, underneath the overhead, is pointing out to the street like that?” Mac asked.
“Ohh, is that what this is about?” Harold replied, shaking his head, exasperated. “Guy who changes the gas pricing numbers hit it with a ladder the other day. I’ve warned him about that before, that he could hit it and sure ‘nuff, he did,” Harold stated, satisfied that he’d predicted it right. “I have a call in to get it fixed, but it might be a day or two.”
“Is it still operating?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Mind if we take a look?”
Harold waved them to the back of the store. “Would I have a choice?”
“No, but it’s all right for us to let you think you have one,” Lich quipped.
Harold took them into the security room. After a store clerk in northern Minnesota was abducted and murdered a few years back, convenience stores started putting in more cameras, and GasUp had gone the whole nine yards. Two monitors that showed eight cameras, four inside and the four outside. “Here’s the one you’re looking for,” Harold said, pointing to the upper left-hand corner of the right screen.
It was camera five, and it was looking right out at the corner. A truck pulled in front of the camera as they were watching. You could see most of the truck and the back end. You could even make out the plate. Of course, it was still daylight and that helped immensely, but the picture quality wasn’t bad for black and white. Mac felt his heart skip a beat.
“Harold … do you mind if I call you Harold?” Mac asked.
Harold didn’t mind.
“Do you record?”
“Oh, yes, we keep it back several weeks.”
“What do you record on? Video tape?”
“No, no, no,” Harold replied, shaking his head with some pride, “We actually have a pretty good system. We record onto these DVDs. You can store a lot more on them and if you need to review them, the quality isn’t bad.”
Mac and Lich exchanged a look and a little smile. “Still a long shot,” Lich said.
“Harold, my friend,” Mac said, and right now he was liking Harold a whole lot, “we need to borrow the DVDs for the last week. What do you say?”
“Would I have a choice?” Harold asked, a little smile coming across his face.
“No,” Mac replied.
“And in this case, I’m not gonna even let you think you have one,” Lich added.
They grabbed the DVDs and signed a form for Harold. He’d been helpful, and they wouldn’t want him to get in trouble with GasUp management. Mac could feel the adrenaline running through him as he bounded out the door to the car. Lich picked up on it, but cautioned, “Don’t get your hopes up, son.”
Mac knew he was right, but he didn’t care. “Have you read the file on this case yet?” Mac asked back.
“I read the Readers Digest version Riley gave us last night. Not much there.”
“That’s right. And you know what? They haven’t caught a break yet. Not one,” Mac replied. “Well, maybe they just caught one. Lord knows Riles could use it.”
Lich picked up on the feeling, “That he could, my friend. That he could.”
Mac wasted no time getting back downtown, taking University over to Robert Street into downtown, and pulled into the parking garage. He finally had some warmth returning to his body, having already put much of the twenty ounces of coffee away. Once inside the building, he began to feel human again. They headed for the detail conference room. Riles and Rockford were inside, looking at the map, putting pins in for where the victim lived, worked, and where they’d found the body. Mac assumed the others were working the phones or maybe had already gone back out. Riles saw them and had a slightly perturbed look on his face. “Where have you guys been?”
Mac explained what they’d found. He could see just a little color return to Riles’s face. “You’re not suggesting we’re going to see anything on there? I mean, I’d never get that fucking lucky in my lifetime.”
“What have you got to lose, Pat?”
“Only my hair, a clump of which I found in the shower drain this morning. Pretty soon I’ll look like Lich,” Riles replied ruefully and with his first smile of the day.
Chapter Seventeen
“Those ain’t pine trees.”
Mac, Lich, Riles, and Rockford spent a few hours putting together a list of vehicles from the neighborhood and then went to forensics to watch the video.
Riles was pumped. If they were right about the Ford Econoline and that Hampden was the only way back to the vacant lot, there was a chance they would see the van. Could they get anything else of use off the video? Well, that would be another story.
Mac had planned to spend the night with Sally. When he called, she understood and was excited. “Call me if you guys find anything,” she said. She had been assigned as legal counsel to the detail. Of course, she managed to torture Mac a bit, mentioning her disappointment that he wouldn’t see what she’d bought at Victoria’s Secret over the lunch hour. “That’s playing dirty,”
he said.
Linda Morgan stayed to help them, and popped the disk for the previous night into the computer and projected it onto a larger screen.
Rockford, in his best boxing announcer voice, said, “Let the tedium begin.”
And begin it did. Black and white video of a surveillance camera pointing out to a street corner—can’t get much better than that. They started the video at 10:00 p.m. store time, 8:00 p.m. their time, and let it run real time.
The GasUp station was plenty busy for the first couple of hours, with vehicles coming and going. Many turned on Hampden to get to the GasUp and many then left the station on the Hampden Street exit, turning right and then going either left or right on University from the corner. There were a few dark-colored vans that turned into the GasUp station. None of them looked promising. None of them were Ford Econolines. They took down license numbers anyway. When the vans would leave the station, if they turned left on University they could see the back of the van and, if the lights for the plate box on the back were on, they could just barely see the plate, although not the license number.
“A little enhancement on that and you might make it out,” Riley mentioned.
“Possibly,” Morgan replied. “It’ll be tough.”
About midnight on the video, 10:00 p.m. their time, the action started slowing down. They started slowing down as well. Lich was out, sitting in a plastic chair, his head tilted back and snoring. Rock was doing the head bobs of impending sleep. Mac was fine, being a night owl most of the time. Riles was with it as well, desperate for something to break. Yet a fifth pot of coffee was brewing in the corner.
Two hours later, 2:00 a.m. GasUp station time, Lich got up and said he was going home. He would see them in the morning. Rockford woke up as well. He rubbed his eyes and yawned. He stared at his watch.
“Rock, if you want to go, go,” Riles said. “We’ll let you know if we see anything.”
Rock nodded, staggered up out of his chair, put on his coat, and left without saying a word.
Thereafter, the action on the video was almost nonexistent. There was an occasional car that turned onto Hampden and went by the GasUp station. At 2:47 a.m. on the video, 12:47 a.m. their time, a minivan turned onto Hampden and went by the camera. Mac checked their notes. “Didn’t we have someone who said they got home between 2:45 and 3:00?”
“Yeah, what was her name? Something funky. Oh, yeah, Lemonjello Hardy.”
“Lemonjello?” Mac replied quizzically.
“Yeah, spelled just like lemon Jell-O, but run together,” Riles replied with a tired smile.
“Unbelievable.”
“Nope. What’s unbelievable is that she has a sister that lives with her, guess what her name is?”
“What?”
“Orangejello.”
“No way,” Linda replied. Mac just shook his head. First Dick Lick and now the jellos. What next? Someone names their daughter ESPN?
At 3:25 a.m. GasUp Station time, another vehicle looking like a van went by. “Anyone coming home around this time?” Mac asked.
Riles yawned and consulted his notes. “Yeah,” he took a sip of coffee and flipped a page in his notes. “Mike Moriarity, dropped off by Kevin McReynolds, who drives a Ford pickup with a topper.”
Morgan replayed the DVD and got close to the screen to look at the truck as it went by. It looked like that’s who it was. Playing the DVD another minute or two confirmed it as the truck came back out and turned left onto University.
Virtually nothing passed after that. At 2:50 a.m. Riles got up and hit the head. Mac, who had started to nod off a little, sat up and rubbed his eyes. He put his coffee up to his lips when he saw it go by. “Linda, run that back.”
Morgan yawned first, and then did as ordered. Mac got up and stood in front of the big screen. The van turned left onto Hampden from University. The headlights were square. The headlights on an Econoline were square. This van had a snout nose on it. An Econoline has a snout-nosed front. He couldn’t see the plate at all. The left side of the front bumper looked to be caved in. The time in the lower left hand corner was 4:33 a.m.
Riles came back into the room, “What?”
“Anybody dropped off around 4:30 a.m.?”
Riles flipped through his notes, then shook his head. “Nope.”
Mac pointed to Morgan. “Again.”
Morgan replayed the video. Riles stood next to Mac and watched the van go by. “That’s a fucking Econoline!”
“You sure?” Mac asked.
“Oh, yeah. I’ve studied those damned vans for weeks. That’s an Econoline.”
They let the DVD run, checking their watches. It seemed like an eternity. The van came back out at 4:42 a.m., nine minutes later. It came into the screen and turned left onto University Avenue. They could see the back and the license plate holder was partially lit, but they couldn’t make out the plate. Morgan took it back and ran it again. But it was too far away, and they couldn’t make it out other than the tiny white speck of a box on the dark big screen. She rewound it a third time, and they practically put their faces up to the screen. No dice.
Riley went nuts, pacing around the room, waving his arms, “Fuck, fuck, fuck! That’s our asshole, guys. That’s our asshole.” He kept pacing and waving. “We gotta find someone or something. See if we can enhance that.”
Morgan shook her head, “That’s going to require a lot of work and equipment we don’t have.”
“Who does?” Riles asked.
“The BCA,” Morgan replied. “Jupiter Jones is the man we need.”
“Jupiter,” Mac added, nodding and smiling. “He’s definitely what we need.”
• • • • •
Jupiter Jones was a longtime friend of Mac. He had met Jupiter in a computer science class at the University of Minnesota. While Mac went on to major in business and criminal justice, Jupe kept up on the computer studies. He was a computer genius.
Jupiter and a math wizard friend of his had started a little computer software business after college. Jupiter developed an intelligence program that helped businesses determine what their customers bought, when they bought it and how much they would spend. His math wizard friend was able to add mathematical equations to the program. Within five years of his graduation, Jupe’s little company had grown to one hundred fifty employees. However, running the business required long hours and business acumen he didn’t have or really care to develop. He sold the company for sixty million dollars, which he and his partner split. After taking care of many of their employees with severance packages, they each walked away with twenty million. Jupe didn’t need to work.
What Jupiter had done since he sold his business was explore what could be done with computers and video. He had started another small business that developed programs to convert video into numerous uses, but it didn’t eat up a lot of his time. So, to keep busy, he also worked freelance for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, helping when computer and video skills were needed. Now was such a case.
Mac looked at his watch, 3:40 a.m. “Jupiter’s going to love this,” he said as he dialed him up. Jupiter answered on the third ring.
“Whoever this is,” a sleep-slurred voice said, “it better be good.”
“Still wearing Tough Skins?”
Silence on the other end for a moment. “Mac?”
“Jupe, I need a big favor. I need it right now, and I think you can help me.”
“With what?”
“Identifying a serial killer.”
• • • • •
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) was located on Maryland Avenue, just north of downtown St. Paul. Jupiter, who lived half an hour away, arrived to find Mac and Riles waiting in the lobby with coffee and a bag of donuts. A smallish man with messy, blondish hair and round glasses, he looked like the computer geek he was.
“This’ll challenge all of your skills, Jupe,” Mac said.
“Hmpf,” Jupe snorted. “We’ll see about
that,” he replied cockily as he unlocked the door into a computer and video lab. Jupe slung a bag off of his shoulder.
“What’s in there?” Riles asked, pointing at the bag.
“Some of my own equipment. From what you said on the phone, we might need to independently upgrade the state’s equipment to flesh this out.” He gave a knowing wink.
Mac handed Jupiter the DVD, and Jupiter put it into his computer drive. He pulled the image up and watched the key section a few times. He kept playing it back and forth.
“Well. It’s awfully grainy, but I might be able to clean it up some.”
“How quickly, Jupe?”
“It’ll take some time.”
“How much?” Mac pressed.
“Not sure, buddy. Gimme me six, maybe eight hours, and we’ll have a better idea. It’s very grainy, and it is from a long, long, long way away. As I look at it, you can only really make out the right side of the plate.”
They looked at the video. Jupiter pointed, “See, there’s a little shading there. I don’t think you’ll get the left side of the plate. But I might be able to get something off the right side.”
“Thanks, Jupe,” Mac said yawning.
“You boys are free to sack out here,” Jupe pointed to some cots stacked in a corner.
“Thanks, man, I owe ya.”
“You kidding, Mac? I live for this shit.”
Jupiter sat down and started to go to work. Mac and Riles looked at one another and their watches—5:25 a.m. They lifted down a couple cots from the corner.
“The state, always providing plush accommodations,” Riles muttered.
• • • • •
Mac woke up startled, momentarily trying to get his bearings. “Oh, yeah, I’m at the BCA,” he groaned, yawning and scratching his head. He looked at his watch 12:05 p.m. Holy cow, he’d slept a while. He woke up to find the computer screen showing a program running but no Jupiter. Pat was still sleeping, and Mac let him keep going. Sleep had been hard to come by for Riles as of late.
Just then Jupe came back in, carrying a tray of coffee and some sandwiches. Mac grabbed one of each, and Jupe quietly explained how he had been breaking down the frame that had the best view of the van’s plate. He had then been working the area of the picture where they could see the license plate. He was refining the picture, trying to get the most out of the pixels. The last picture showed the plate, and Jupe had been right. They would only be able to see the right side of the plate, which was usually numbers. Right now it was still very blurry, three black, squarish blobs on the screen.
First Deadly Conspiracy Box Set Page 24
