Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Gary handed Barry Davis a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll.
Barry’s eyes widened. “Aw, for me? I was only kidding about you bribing me.” Then he narrowed them. “Okay, what are you after?”
Dan laughed. “I told you he’d see straight through you.”
“If we needed to improve the resolution of some CCTV footage, how would we go about it? Who should we give it to?”
Barry set down the cup. “Is it crucial?”
“Could be. It’s a little difficult to identify some suspects right now.” Rachel had told him that morning she’d already had a tech guy working on it, with little to show for his efforts.
“Then, if you want my advice, take it to SecureCo.”
“Who—or what—are they?”
“It’s a company based in Boston. Surveillance is their business, if you catch my drift.
They’re into all kinds of stuff like that, but their tech is out of this world.
One of my buddies works for them. Keeps trying to get me to cross over to the dark side.
” He grinned. “And if anyone can do it, they can.”
“Why do you say that?” Dan inquired.
Barry chuckled. “Because they’re the company who provided the CCTV software and hardware used by Boston City Council. They do a lot of other stuff too.” He glanced at Dan. “If you ever need to hire a bodyguard, they’re the place to go, according to what I’ve heard.”
“I don’t need one. I have Gary.”
The ring of confidence in Dan’s voice was a balm to quell the lingering memory of that dream. It had still been with Gary when he woke that morning; a hot shower had helped to dispel it.
The warmth in Dan’s eyes was even more effective.
“Thanks for the recommendation,” Gary said.
Barry beamed. “Thank you for the coffee and the roll. You can call on me again if this is what I get out of it.” His smile faltered. “By the way, I’ve started work on your list. Early days, but I’ve made a little headway with part one of the task.”
“And?” Gary’s heart lurched.
“I began by looking into similar deaths. I was kinda surprised by my findings, to be truthful.”
“Why?”
“There are several cases that bear a strong resemblance to that one, but they happened in Massachusetts and Maine over a period stretching back to Brad’s murder.”
“You’ve already found several cases? My God, you’re fast,” Dan gasped.
Barry rolled one shoulder in a casual shrug. “I’ve got a rep to uphold, right?”
“When was the most recent one?” Gary asked.
“Earlier this year.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
“They’re still going on?” It felt as though all his strength had seeped from him in seconds.
Barry nodded, his face grave. “Yup. All unsolved. I’ll keep going—I’m not done yet—and then I’ll get to work on part two. That bit is trickier. That I won’t be able to accomplish anytime soon.”
Gary squeezed his shoulder. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And if you get to meet any of SecureCo’s techs, say hi to Logan for me.”
“He’s the buddy?”
Barry nodded. “Him and me, we go way back.”
Gary thanked him again, and they headed for their office. Gary couldn’t speak. The thought that Brad’s killer might be continuing to murder people in such a barbaric fashion made his stomach clench. He fought the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him.
I never thought there’d be more of them.
But how many more remained to be seen.
Such thoughts would only distract him, and Gary had work to do.
“What are you doing now?” Dan asked as Gary sat at his desk.
“Copying the video footage Rachel sent me.” Dan chuckled, and Gary gave him an inquiring glance. “What’s so funny?”
“The idea of the detective who keeps a steam-powered laptop in his basement being able to copy something onto a memory card.”
Gary fixed him with a hard stare. “Keep that up and there’ll be no more riding for you.”
Dan’s eyes glinted. “Wouldn’t that be cutting your nose to spite your face?” Before Gary could come up with a quick-witted comeback, he let out a sigh. “I know it’s another long shot, but all I want is to be able to say with certainty that Eddie Ray was there.”
All Gary wanted was to sign off on their original cold case, but the deaths of Ray and Wilmer had taken them off on a tangent. His gut told him there had to be a connection between their deaths and that of Leo Deakins, and he agreed with Dan—some things about this shooting did not add up.
So let’s see if the folks at SecureCo can shine a little light onto this mess.
The receptionist gave them a bright smile. “Good morning. Mr. Chambers isn’t in his office right now, but he’s asked that I show you the way, and he’ll join you shortly.”
She led them up a flight of stairs and along a narrow hallway until they reached the door bearing his name. Once inside, she pointed to the deep leather armchairs.
“Please, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be back with some coffee.” Then she was off, presumably in search of a coffee machine.
Gary didn’t sit in one of the chairs facing the desk but wandered around the square room, peering at the framed photos and certificates on the wall. One man appeared in all the photos, and he had to assume that was Nathan Chambers. Then he came to a stop in front of one photo.
“Dan? Take a look at this.”
Dan joined him. “Is… is that the president?”
Gary nodded. He recognized some familiar faces among those pictured with Chambers: politicians, senators, high-ranking military officers.
“Admiring my wall of fame?”
Gary turned. Nathan Chambers was tall, with chestnut-brown hair and hazel eyes. He wore a suit that appeared simple yet elegant. Gary estimated him to be in his mid-to-late thirties.
He held out his hand. “Mr. Chambers? I’m Detective Gary Mitchell, Boston PD. And this is Dan Porter, a consultant for the department.” Gary inclined his head toward the wall. “This is very impressive.”
“Thank you.” They shook. “So what can I do to help the Boston Police Department?”
Gary gave him a précis of the situation and what they required. “We thought you might have the technology here to make the images clearer. Our tech guys did their best, but that didn’t get us anywhere.”
“And we need to get a good look at the faces of the two men,” Dan added.
Gary held out the memory card. “Here’s the footage.”
“I don’t need that,” Chambers informed him. “All we need is the address, date, and time stamp. We can access everything directly from the cloud.” He smiled. “So come with me and we’ll see what we can do for you.”
They followed him out of the office and along the hallway, past closed doors.
“Your website says you provide bodyguards?” Gary asked.
Chambers nodded. “We train them too. You’ll find our people all over the country, in some tough situations.” He stopped at a door and pushed it open. “This is our audio-visual lab.”
The room was white, with several long desks at which sat men and women in lab coats. Nathan went to the nearest staff member.
“This is Claudia. She’s the best tech I’ve got. Tell her what to look for, and then she can have a play with it once she’s found it.”
Gary rattled off Wilmer’s address, along with the date and time. Claudia tapped on her keyboard, and it wasn’t long before the images appeared on her monitor.
“That’s them,” Gary told her.
Chambers leaned in for a closer look. “See if you can increase the resolution. Specifically, they want to identify the two guys.”
“The lighting’s pretty poor,” Claudia observed. “Not sure I can do a lot with this.” She tapped on her keyboard, then moved her mouse over its pad. They watched in silence as she adjusted light meters, tried to eliminate shadows, and zoomed in on the faces of the two men.
Gary was no expert, but even he could see there was little improvement.
“We’re not done yet,” Chambers told him. “We’ll run it through facial recognition software and see if it pulls up any names.”
“We’ve already done that,” Gary replied. “And I doubt your database is any better than ours.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Chambers sounded confident. “If they’re in our system, we’ll find them. But you don’t need to wait around. I’ll call you as soon as we have anything.”
“It’ll take that long?” Gary had imagined it could be done in seconds.
“It’ll take as long as it takes.” Chambers arched his eyebrows. “You wouldn’t expect to get a DNA test result in a few hours, would you?” Then he smiled. “Claudia’s my best. Like I said, if they’re in there, she’ll find them.”
There was nothing to do but leave.
“It’s not like you to be impatient,” Dan commented as they walked back to the car.
“It’s not impatience, not really.”
“Then what is it?”
Gary came to a halt and glanced back at the building that housed SecureCo.
“I can’t put into words exactly what I’m feeling, but….”
It was nothing concrete, merely a sense of something not being quite right.
There were days when Gary wished he had Dan’s gift.
As soon as they were through the main doors to the precinct, Gary’s phone buzzed. He answered it. “Hey, Rachel. What’s up?”
“Can you stop by my desk? I want to regroup and see where we are.”
“Sure.” They headed for Homicide and found Rachel talking with Niall. He gave them a friendly nod before walking toward the hallway.
Rachel sat at her desk and gestured to the plastic chairs against the wall. They pulled up two of them and joined her. “Niall has finished at Wilmer’s place.”
“Was anything else stolen, apart from the car?” Gary had a feeling he already knew what the answer would be.
She smiled. “Funny you should ask that. You know, something about this case feels—”
“Off? Strange? Disjointed? All of the above?”
She leaned back. “When we look at what lies on the surface, it’s pretty obvious what happened. A known housebreaker and accomplice break into a house. The owner comes home, they shoot him, and leave in his car.”
“There’s a but coming.” Dan grinned. “I can feel it. And that’s not the psychic in me talking.”
“There was no laptop or PC found at the house,” Rachel said. “He was a journalist, so I’d expect to find those, so maybe the second accomplice took them. Except—”
“Except you didn’t notice them on the video footage,” Gary concluded. “I didn’t either.”
“It’s not just that. There was money found at the scene. So they break in to find keys but leave cash? And no phones were found.”
“What about voice recorders?” Dan asked.
She frowned. “Who uses those these days? Surely he’d record interviews on his phone.”
“Wishful thinking on my part, seeing as his phone was missing.”
Gary glanced at him. Wishful thinking, my ass.
“Well, we didn’t find one.”
“Did you interview Wilmer’s neighbors?” Dan asked.
“Yes. They heard the shot, by the way, and called the police. Said he had regular patterns… went out the same time every weekday, got home the same time.”
“A creature of habit, huh?” Dan froze, and Gary knew something had occurred to him. “When he got home that night… that was his usual time?”
“Yes.”
Dan fell silent, and Gary suddenly got where he was coming from. His heartbeat quickened. “So either our two dead guys had really bad timing and he walked in on them, or—”
“Or they knew exactly what time he’d be there,” Rachel said.
“And they were waiting for him,” Gary concluded. He widened his eyes. “Waiting to kill him.”
They stared at each other, their mouths open. And then they spoke in unison, which should have been hysterical but for the words that fell simultaneously from their lips.
“We’ve been looking at the wrong dead guy.”