Every Breath You Take
Page 44
Chapter 28
Shortly after the detectives returned from their meeting with Janssen, DiCicco and Harris came into the squad room.
"What've you got?" Caruso asked as he turned to them. "Was it the Skinner girl's car?"
"Yes. The licence plate matched," DiCicco replied. "Like the reporting officer said, the car was unlocked. There was a bag with a few groceries in the hatch part at the back. There was a receipt in the bag dated at eight fifty-two p.m. Saturday night, just a few minutes before closing."
"Was her car parked out in the middle of the parking lot? If she was taken there, I'm surprised nobody would have seen anything at that time on a Saturday night."
"No, she was parked in the row of spaces right along the east face of the building," Harris said, picking up the story. "I've been in that store on Saturday evenings before-it's pretty dead. Those parking spots where her car was are pretty close to the door, but I know the lighting situation in that parking lot stinks. I checked and there are no lights mounted on that wall, just further out in the parking lot. It would have been pretty dark there."
"And I suppose there are no security cameras out there?"
"Not a one. We even checked at the Wendy's across the street to see if they had anything that might have pointed in that direction, but they had nothing that came anywhere near there."
"What about inside? Our guy might have taken her in the parking lot, but he might have been in the store at some point."
"No security cameras inside either," DiCicco said. "We talked to the manager and he said the company might be closing this store down entirely, so they haven't bothered updating anything in it for quite a while now."
"Shit, it's like this guy is always one step ahead of us," Caruso said as he pinched his brow.
"We did talk to the lone cashier that was on duty Saturday night." Harris paused as he looked down at his notes. "A Darlene Wolfe. With so few customers, they only have one register open on Saturday nights. She was working that night, and happened to have the day shift today. She remembered the girl when I showed her the picture, but she couldn't remember what she bought. She said there were a couple of other customers near the end of the night, both male and female, but she couldn't give us much more than that go on. When we showed her the picture of Drummond to see if she recognized him, she had to put on her glasses to even see the picture. She's kind of older, and when I asked her about her glasses, she kind of laughed and joked that the automatic scanner does the job for her."
"Anyways," Harris continued, "she looked at the picture of Drummond and just shook her head, saying she didn't have a clue. You know, he might have just been waiting in the parking lot, and not even have been in the store."
"I know," Caruso said, looking over at the picture of Alicia Skinner now posted on the murder board, a similar picture to the one they already had posted of Yvonne Redmond. "But we had to check it out. Good work, guys."
"Sir," Chin said, getting Caruso's attention. "I'm thinking it might be a good idea to put a map of the city up and identify the locations where these various things are happening."
"You're right, Elizabeth. We should have done that by now."
Chin must have been anticipating what he'd say because she reached over next to her desk and pulled out a fair-sized rolled-up map of the city. She put it up on a cork bulletin board on the wall near the murder board. She started sticking in push pins: red ones showing the locations of where the two girls' bodies had been found, blue ones showing the locations of the house on Broughdale, Drummond's house, Bartolucci's apartment, as well as Alicia Skinner's. She stuck yellow pins in the location of the university library, and the Valu Mart on Oxford Street.
"That's good," Caruso said. He motioned to Pepper and Chin. "All right, you guys go and see what the professor has to say. And Pepper, remember what I said about making him sweat."
"Yes sir."