The Whole Truth

CHAPTER 83

FRANK, ROYCE, SHAW, AND KATIE sat in a room and looked at the video stream pouring over the large screen. Now Katie understood what Shaw had been talking about.

“There’re video cameras mounted on poles all along the highway here,” Shaw had explained. “They’re as much to address accidents and traffic backups as they are about Big Brother watching, but they’re very useful for what we want to do.”

On another screen was the video Shaw had taken of Katie talking to Pender with the LED clock readout also clearly visible.

“Okay,” Shaw said. “Start the highway video at the same time as the film that I shot of Katie and the clock.”

The videos started up and the time ticked away. At midnight there was still traffic on the Dulles Toll Road. D.C. was just that kind of place. But it wasn’t bumper to bumper.

“There’s the starting position of the cell signal burn,” Frank pointed out on the screen.

“Looks like the cars are going about sixty-five,” Shaw estimated. “So a minute a mile.” He looked at the video of Katie and the LED clock.

He told Royce, “As soon as Frank told me they’d picked up the signal on the highway and that the guy was moving, I had Katie do the ‘pull the car off the road’ maneuver. That was three minutes and three seconds into the conversation.”

Royce nodded. “So about three miles of drive time.”

“I thought I could hear the squeal of tires on the cell phone when I told him,” Katie said. “And a horn too.”

“We’re coming up on that time slice now,” Shaw noted. He paused. “Five, four, three, two.”

He broke off and everyone stared at the video of the highway.

“There!” Royce snapped. He was pointing to the far left lane where a black Mercedes swerved into the middle lane, nearly hitting a pickup truck.

Frank spoke into a headset. “Zoom in on the black Mercedes that almost took out that truck. And then freeze it.”

A few moments later the image of the Mercedes grew in size until it nearly took up the entire screen. Unfortunately, the angle wasn’t great; the driver, though clearly a man – something they already knew – wasn’t completely visible.

“White guy,” Shaw observed. “Thin, a little gray in the hair, but the doorjamb is hiding his face. Looks like he’s on the phone.”

“So are probably ninety percent of the people on that road,” Katie said.

Frank gave instructions to the tech and they tried it from different angles but without much success.

Shaw said, “Keep the film rolling. He pulled off after Katie spoke to him. We might get a good look at him or his license plate.”

Unfortunately, that did not turn out to be the case. The Mercedes had pulled off, leaving at the next exit, but any more images had been blocked by other traffic. They couldn’t see the man or the license plate once he left the highway.

“It’s a black Mercedes S500,” Frank said. “That narrows it down some. We’ll assume it’s registered in D.C., Maryland, or Virginia and start looking at motor vehicle records.”

Katie said, “This is a very affluent area. I think you’re going to find more S500s than you think. And you’re just assuming it’s from the area. It could be from any state, because we couldn’t see the license plate. You might be talking hundreds or thousands of people.”

“She’s right,” Royce said.

“We might have an easier way,” Shaw said. “It’s a toll road.”

Frank snapped his fingers. “They’ll have a camera there to record people who don’t pay. And if they don’t, dollars to donuts he’s got an electronic toll-paying device. That’ll give us a record.”

“How can you be so sure he pays his tolls electronically?” Royce asked.

“An S500 costs over a hundred grand. You spend that much on a ride, you’re not gonna be digging through your fancy pockets for quarters.”

Royce said, “But isn’t there a chance that the car swerved to avoid an accident? And isn’t connected to this at all?”

“And then shoots off the highway at the same time Katie tells the guy to on the phone? No, it’s him,” said Shaw. “You heard the tires squeal and a horn blare and the time sequence was dead-on with the film I shot.”

“We can check with the toll people and get a record for that booth at” – Frank glanced at the clock – “Four minutes past midnight.” He looked back at the highway film. “That’s the Wiehle Avenue exit off the Toll Road.”

“We get this guy and it’s all over,” Royce said. “We arrest him, extradite him back to London, and bloody well put him and his cohorts away forever.”

“Right,” Frank agreed.

Katie glanced nervously at Shaw. He was looking away from them, his expression stony.

I don’t see it that way, thought Shaw.