Black Friday

CHAPTER 26

"We already have our company investigator reviewing the tapes," the small man named Jerry Yarden told Maggie as he led her through a back hallway.

Maggie couldn't believe it. The security company was reviewing its own tapes? She stopped herself from asking whose authority and what protocol gave them that go-ahead? She'd learned years ago that questioning the locals risked offending them. The result only made her job tougher. It was better if they believed she was on their side. Most people already believed that federal law enforcement would sooner point fingers and place blame than present solutions and share credit.

"I understand someone in security noticed the young men before the bombs went off?"

"Oh yeah, we noticed. Three identical red backpacks." He glanced back at her over his shoulder, not slowing his rapid, almost erratic pace. "You betcha we noticed."

Yarden was Maggie's height, small-framed but long-limbed, arms pumping and swinging loosely as he walked. He reminded Maggie of a propeller with a thatch of red unruly hair.

"How did you know they were red?"

"Excuse me?"

"Your surveillance cameras are black-and-white, right?"

"Oh sure. We started following them up on the floor," Yarden explained. "We're trained to watch what people bring into the mall with them. We see something suspicious, we follow on the floor. You know, large purses, shopping bags with return items, backpacks, even baby strollers. We had a woman last month sneaking cashmere sweaters under her baby. You'd be surprised what people do."

Maggie smiled to herself. Actually she wouldn't be surprised.

His Midwest manners kept track of her, politely leading the way and holding doors open. Now he pointed to a door at the end of the hall.

"We thought they were shoplifters," he said. "None of us expected those backpacks to have bombs in them."

He beat her by four lengths to the end of the hallway, yanked the door and again held it open for her, his feet spread apart and both arms engaged like the door was a ton of lead. She pushed aside the fact that she could probably bench-press Yarden's weight let alone hold open the door for herself. Instead she thanked him and stepped inside.

He led her through a maze of offices and back to another door. When he opened this one she immediately noticed the room was dim and lit from only the wall of monitors, four rows of ten across with a long control panel of keypads, switches and color-coded buttons.

Sitting at the panel with his back to them was the lone investigator, square-shouldered, dark hair. There was something familiar about the man. Before he swiveled around Maggie recognized Nick Morrelli.

He, however, was not prepared. He did a double take, looking from Yarden to Maggie and back to Maggie.

"Fancy seeing you here," he said with his trademark smile, the one that employed dimples and white teeth in the glow of the computer monitors.

"Hi Nick."

"You two know each other?" Yarden seemed disappointed.

"We've worked together before," Maggie answered, leaving it at that and watching to see if Nick would be compelled to add more. "So you've left the D.A.'s office? You're an investigator now?"

"For United Allied Security."

"Yes, the mall's security company. Do the local authorities know you've been reviewing the videotapes?" Maggie asked Nick but looked back at Yarden who avoided her eyes. Finally Yarden nodded, his head the only part of him in motion now, arms glued to his sides. He reminded her of a bobble-head.

"Yeah, no problem there," Yarden said, still nodding. "They've got their hands full, you know?"

She noticed his cadence grew faster with a slightly higher pitch in relation to his amount of guilt. Even the tips of his ears grew red.

"We're only here to help," Nick told her but Maggie knew from experience that Morrelli's loyalties were sometimes divided, and often resulted in something close to personal quicksand.

Four years ago Nick Morrelli had been county sheriff of a small Nebraska community that was held hostage by a killer—a killer who was targeting young boys. To solve the case Morrelli had struggled to abandon a lifetime of loyalty to his father, the previous sheriff, in order to save his nephew. Maggie and Nick's paths had crossed several times over the years but most recently last summer when, once again, Maggie had been sent to Nebraska to profile another killer. This time Nick's loyalty to a childhood friend had almost jeopardized the case.

"Well then, so you two know each other," Yarden said, anxious to break the silence and ease the tension. "That should make this easier, right?" The little man spun a chair around and held it for Maggie. "Ms. O'Dell—"

"Agent O'Dell," Nick corrected.

"Oh yeah, right. Agent O'Dell."

She sat in the proffered seat, next to Nick, giving him only a glance and focusing her attention instead on the wall of monitors. They had been cueing the tapes, stopping them at important intervals. Over a half dozen of the screens were already freeze-framed.

"As you can see, all we've been doing is tagging segments that might be relevant." Nick waved a hand at the screens. "Isn't that right, Jerry?"

"Right. There's an awful lot of tape to look at. We're just trying to narrow it down. We're not discarding anything. We're just looking and tagging."

Maggie almost felt sorry for the nervous little man. She could hardly tell him to relax, that it was Nick Morrelli she didn't fully trust and not Mr. Yarden whom she had only met moments ago.

"Agent O'Dell will need to see the carriers," Yarden said quickly, grabbing the opportunity to move on. He took the seat on the other side of Maggie. "The tapes are grainy at best." Even before he scooted his chair forward his fingers were flying over the control panel. "We work on a three-second system. That is the camera takes a shot every three seconds. It's not continuous, so it might seem a bit jerky if you're not used to it."

"Do you have a Z97 filter or HDzoom pack?"

Yarden's fingers stopped in midflight and he looked at her with obvious admiration. Not only did she understand the three-second system but also the new state-of-the-art technology.

"We don't have anything quite as sophisticated," Yarden said, glancing over to Nick as if he was to blame, being the company's highest authority on the premises.

"The company is considering updates," Nick said almost too quickly.

Maggie heard a bit of defensiveness in Nick's tone. She ignored it and focused instead on Yarden who was cueing up segments for her to view on monitor after monitor.

"This is one of them." He pointed at the first screen.

Maggie leaned forward. Nick didn't. Had he already seen these? Of course, he had. She wondered how long Morrelli and Yarden had been at it.

From the grainy quality of the video all Maggie could decipher was that the man was average height, clean-cut. He was wearing jeans, a jacket with maybe a logo on the shoulder, and tennis shoes. There was nothing extraordinary about him.

She felt the two men watching her, gauging her reaction, waiting.

Yarden added more views, cueing monitor after monitor until there was a line of grainy freeze-framed images of two different young men with the same backpack walking separately through the crowded mall. Only one instance showed the two of them together.

"I thought there were three?"

"Oh yeah, there were three all right." Yarden's fingers started poking the keys again. "The third one came in with a young woman and another man." He brought up the segment. "We followed him to the food court. Then we…we sort of lost him. We don't have many camera angles on that area and no cameras actually in the food court."

"What about the woman and the other man? Were they involved?"

When Yarden didn't answer Maggie sat back and glanced over at him. He and Nick were exchanging another look. Yarden's ruddy complexion had gone pale. Nick started searching the monitors.

"What is it?" Maggie asked.

"We think one of the bombs went off in the women's restroom," Nick told her as his eyes darted from screen to screen. "You may have just answered our question as to how that could have happened."