The sentry

THE PRINCE OF SOLITUDE
29

Pike changed locations several times during the night, drifting from Dru's house to positions where he had a view of likely areas where someone watching the house might hide. Pike found no one, and as the eastern sky lightened, he grew convinced the killer no longer watched Dru's house. This meant the killer had what he wanted or had tracked Wilson and Dru to another location. Either was bad, and left Pike hungry for a new trail.

At twenty minutes after nine that morning, Pike was crossing the Dell Avenue Bridge when Elvis Cole called.

"Laine came through. He messengered over a disk."

Charles Laine. Dru's neighbor with the surveillance system.

"Show anything?"

"It just arrived, but I need you here to look at it. I've never seen these people. I don't know what they look like."

Pike studied Dru's house across the water with a lack of enthusiasm. Cole was right, but Mendoza and Gomer were dead, so even if they lucked into a glimpse of the abduction, leaving to view a recording of questionable value now felt like a waste of time. Then another possibility occurred to him that left him more interested.

"How many hours of camera time do we have?"

"Seven days from whenever he burned the disk, which was sometime last night. Why?"

Pike told Cole about his conversation with Straw and explained his belief in the killer's professionalism. He had probably reconnoitered Dru's house as well as the takeout shop, and was likely the person who jimmied the kitchen window. This meant it was possible the killer had moved past the camera.

"Okay, get here, and let's see if this stuff is even usable. Laine told me we'll be able to see a little of the street, but we won't know what that means until we see it. We might see nothing but shadows."

The trip through the city took forty minutes, but shortly Pike pulled up outside Cole's A-frame and let himself into the kitchen.

Pike poured himself a cup of black coffee, grabbed a raisin bagel from Cole's stock, and followed his friend to a desk in the living room. They pulled over chairs from the dining table with Cole sitting in front of his Mac. Cole slipped in the disk, and the drive spun up with a soft whine. Neither of them spoke while they waited, as if their expectation wrapped each man in silence.

A few moments later, a disk player appeared showing four screen-capture images. They were from each of the four cameras monitoring Laine's home, one on either side of his house, one in the rear, and the front entry camera. Pike saw Cole relax when the images appeared.

"Here we go. The cameras record concurrently on different tracks. Laine said we can watch each track separately, and move back and forth like watching a DVD."

Cole clicked on the entry image, which expanded to fill the screen. The picture was a ghostly wash of grays and blacks with a time code at the bottom showing the image had been recorded at PM 11:13:42 the night before. Cole glanced over.

"Not bad. We can see a little of the street here in the background, and the clarity is pretty good."

It didn't look so good to Pike. The camera was parallel to the street to focus on visitors who were in a small alcove at Laine's front door. This left its field of view limited. The right third of the screen was the steel door. The center third was the alcove wall directly opposite the camera where a visitor would stand when they pressed the bell. The left third of the screen showed a narrow wedge of street in the camera's peripheral background. If they were going to see anything useful, it would be in this narrow wedge.

Pike said, "Murky. It's hard to see anything past the wall."

"Think positive. This was shot at about eleven-fifteen last night with infrared light. The background will brighten up during the day."

Cole crossed his arms and glanced over again.

"You want to look for the killer?"

"Yes."

"Okay, think about it. Seven days means we have one hundred sixty-eight hours here. Fast-forward runs about eight times the real-time speed, so it will take us twenty-four hours to watch what's here if we go back to the beginning. You really want to spend that much time looking for a guy we won't recognize?"

Pike thought he could narrow the time.

"We can start smaller. The day they went missing, I checked their house around ten and you were there about one. Whoever jimmied the window did it during those three hours. Three hours isn't so bad."

Cole nodded, but it was a slow nod, and Pike knew he was thinking. Cole thinking was a good thing because he came up with good ideas.

"Tell you what, let's start earlier that morning. If you're right about the killer casing their place, he might have made two or three passes before he entered the property. He also might have followed Wilson home from his shop, so we might catch him on the follow. You see?"

Pike nodded. Good ideas.

"Also, if we get a glimpse of the abduction, we might see what kind of vehicles were involved and get an idea what condition Dru and Wilson were in when they were taken. This might help us find them even though Mendoza and Gomer are dead."

"Start whenever you want."

Pike wanted to get on with it.

Cole used the skip-reverse button to jump back through the recording in one-hour increments until the morning of the abduction. As the still images moved backward in time from night into day, Pike was relieved to see the images gained clarity, depth, and color.

When the time counter showed AM05: 13:42 on the morning of the abduction, Cole clicked the play button, then increased the playback speed. Though dim in the early-morning light, the real-time image now grew sharper. The landscape remained frozen, but the ambient light changed and colors grew richer as the time counter advanced.

They saw the first sign of life at 5:36. A figure zipped past on the far left side of the screen, and vanished before Cole hit the pause button.

Cole said, "Jogger."

He reversed the recording, then replayed it in real time. A female jogger appeared out of the left edge of the screen with her back to the camera. Because the camera was parallel to the street, she looked as if she was coming from behind the left side of the camera on a slight left-to-right path, and was visible for only four seconds.

A second jogger appeared at 5:54, this time a young man with ropy Rasta hair who ran toward them on a path past the camera. Cole froze the image to study him.

Pike said, "Can you print his picture?"

"Sure. Think it's him?"

"We'll see."

Pike had no feeling about the man either way. He wanted pictures of all likely males who passed the house.

They saw no one else until 6:22 A.M. when the silver Tercel raced past at fast-forward speed.

Pike said, "That's them."

Cole reversed the recording, then brought it forward frame by frame until they had the best possible view of the driver. The frozen image was grainy, but Wilson Smith's face and features were clear enough. He was alone in the car.

"Wilson. This is when he's on his way to the shop."

Cole printed the image, then resumed play at the faster speed.

The activity on the alley grew with the morning hour. They stopped the image every time a figure sped by, then rewound and advanced in real time. The silver Tercel reappeared at 6:55, emerging from the left edge of the screen as Wilson returned home. The angle made it impossible to see Wilson behind the wheel, but no one else appeared to be in the car.

Between 7:00 A.M. and 8:00 A.M., they stopped the recording eighteen times and printed seven photographs, but none of the twenty-two people they saw appeared to be more than ordinary people out for a walk or a jog. Two cars passed the field of view as residents left their homes between 7:20 and 7:45. Neither was the silver Tercel, but Pike and Cole were encouraged in both cases because the outbound drivers were clearly visible.

Pike watched with a dull hope Cole was right, and he would see them leave before Mendoza arrived, but Jared came past the wall at 8:07 A.M. He quickly grew larger until he disappeared past the camera.

Pike said, "Okay. Sometime between now and when Jared returns is when Mendoza and Gomer arrive."

Cole nodded without looking away from the screen.

Two women with small dogs walked past, then another man jogged. At 8:42, another figure passed quickly from left to right, and Cole stopped the image.

"That's Jared. He's back."

Jared was carrying a plastic grocery bag. The moo.

Cole glanced at Pike, then shook his head.

"Real time, Mendoza and Gomer are at their house right now. This is when Jared saw them."

"They used the pedestrian bridge."

"Yeah. And if your killer used the bridge and stayed at the end of the alley, we're not going to see him, either."

"Play it out."

Cole let the image advance in real time, and, at 8:53, the Tercel crept into view. Pike leaned forward when it appeared even as Cole paused the image, rolled it back, and brought it forward one frame at a time.

As the image grew, Pike saw three people in the car. Wilson was driving. Dru was in the passenger seat, and another figure was in the back. This confirmed the bad guys had used the footbridge to enter, and forced the victims to drive them out. It was a good plan considering the narrow dead-end street with so many potential witnesses.

Pike said, "Mendoza is in back, but I only see three people."

"Could have left by the bridge, the way he came. Is that Dru in front?"

"Yes."

Cole printed her picture, then walked the frames forward.

Six frames later, the angle had changed enough to reveal a fourth person in the vehicle.

Cole said, "Here we go."

The second man sat directly behind Wilson, though he was still difficult to see. Cole advanced the image two more frames, and the second man's face emerged from behind Wilson's head.

Pike studied the blurry face, then leaned closer to the screen.

"Bring it one more."

Cole advanced the image.

"One more."

Pike felt a spike of surprise, then the surprise melted into the calm he felt when he steadied the crosshairs on a target. Cole was watching when Pike looked up.

"What's wrong?"

"This isn't Gomer. It's Miguel Azzara."

"I thought he didn't know anything about this."

"He lied."

Cole glanced at Azzara.

"Two people are dead, two more are missing, and here's El Jefe in on the abduction. This is bigger than a couple of bangers being pissed off because they got arrested. You think these guys found out about Straw's investigation?"

"Don't know."

"Maybe Azzara was worried Wilson could hurt him. Maybe Mendoza and Gomer were killed because he thought they were cooperating with the Feds."

Pike didn't know, but it was no longer important. Azzara gave him a target, and if Pike could see his target he could hit it.

Cole was printing Azzara's picture when his phone rang, and he told Pike the caller was Lucy Chenier. Cole took the phone outside onto his deck for the call, and Pike resumed watching the recording.

Pike watched at high speed, but the image still moved in slow motion because he thought about Azzara, and how he could find him. More joggers came and went, but most were female and the few men didn't appear to be likely candidates for experienced knife killers. Pike saw himself arrive, and leave, but no one else appeared on the street. Pike had skimmed through one hour and twenty minutes of the three-hour window when Cole returned from the deck, looking unhappy.

Pike paused the recording.

"What?"

"That was Lucy's investigator. The guy I told you about, Terry Babinette."

Pike waited, knowing from Cole's expression the news wasn't good.

"After the storm, the city put up websites so people could post the names of friends and family members who evacuated or were missing. All Terry had to work with were their names, so this isn't definitive, okay?"

"Say it."

"The names Drusilla Rayne and Wilson Smith are on a list of the dead. Drusilla Rayne was a forty-two-year-old Caucasian who died indigent at Charity Hospital three days before the storm. Wilson Smith was a seventy-six-year-old African-American male who died of a heart attack while being evacuated to Natchez, Mississippi. No known relatives for either. That's it."

Pike felt achy and numb. The man and the woman he knew as Wilson Smith and Dru Rayne had taken their names from the dead, and probably used the deceaseds' social security numbers to assume their identities.

Pike didn't know what to say, and now Cole looked uncomfortable.

"You want to look at more video?"

"No point."

"What do you want to do?"

Pike glanced at the frozen screen, then stood.

"Azzara has them. I'm going to take a shower, then I'm going to find Azzara."

Pike left Cole at the computer and walked back to the guest room.