Unlucky 13

Chapter 62

Security systems in fast-food restaurants and parking lots rarely produce footage that’s HD, in focus, and Sundance Film Festival worthy. Chuck’s Prime’s Hayes Valley series was no exception.

I cued up the first disk, the footage that was shot inside Chuck’s on the day preceding the double belly bombs. The camera was set back and across from the cash register and trained on the cowpoke behind the counter. The camera angle also gave a partial view of the kitchen behind the counter, a sixty-degree-wedge view of the tables, and the front door.

I watched black-and-white images of people coming into the store for morning coffee, and then I hit fast-forward until I reached the three-hour mark, about the time Chuck’s began to fill for lunch.

I scrutinized the customers ordering, those picking up at the takeout line, and others who were dining in. Wait staff were doing their jobs and joking with customers. I didn’t see anything remarkable. It seemed to be a good day at Chuck’s Hayes Valley.

I studied the cooks and kitchen workers through the letter-box view of the kitchen and tried to imagine how one of them might plant mini-explosives in a hamburger patty.

It didn’t look all that hard to do.

Meanwhile, the mood inside our bullpen had changed from a high-functioning homicide squad into some kind of powerless mission control center agonizing over a derelict spacecraft. Throughout the afternoon, the day crew kept stopping by our desks to find out if Conklin and I had heard anything new about Brady. At day’s end, Cappy McNeil and his partner, Paul Chi, dragged chairs over and sat down. They had both worked with Brady, had friendships with Yuki, and were feeling frustrated and angry and helpless to the max.

Copy that.

Lacking any shred of good news, we batted around theories of how the hijacking might resolve with pirates dead and passengers safe. We put a hopeful face on it, but in fact none of us tossed confetti.

Before Chi and McNeil clocked out, Chi leaned over my desk and tapped a key that brightened my screen. Cappy gave me a pound cake he’d been intending to take home for dessert and kissed my cheek. A first.

After my old pals said good night, Conklin and I went back to hamburgers on parade.

I watched the relentless march of people on my screen, and after reviewing the entire fast-forwarded twelve hours of Day Minus One inside the restaurant, I changed out the disk and watched parking lot videos.

These were more of the same: slices of gray-and-white cinema verité: a bread truck arrival and departure, ditto a refrigerated delivery truck from Chuck’s main kitchen, bringing boxes to the back door. And I watched a few hundred cars park in Chuck’s lot and then depart onto Hayes Street.

Had I seen a killer and didn’t know it?

How could I know?

I went on to the next day’s disk, saw the two doomed college kids pick up their lunch from the takeout line, and noticed some of the same customers I’d seen before.

I made a note of the regulars, marking the time that they appeared on the tape, and I took screen captures for later comparison. Again I watched delivery trucks arrive and guys lugging cartons to the back door of the kitchen.

I watched the Hayes Valley kitchen crew dunk trash into the Dumpster outside the back door and lock up the store when the doors were closed for the day.

I got up and went to the ladies’, and when I came back, Conklin said, “I’m thinking Italian.”

“Fine idea.”