Chapter 9 Diem
Diem
Diem
Ruby Kensington, Evergreen’s director, led me to a closet-sized room on the first floor, lecturing me the entire way. She was doing me a favor, she said, and ordinarily she would require proper protocol to be followed in situations like this, and did I know what proper protocol was, Mr. Krause?
I disliked her instantly and regretted not waiting for Tallus’s next day off to tackle this task.
“You know,” I informed her when she cut her judgmental gaze in my direction, peering over the top of her obnoxious glasses.
“The police don’t require a warrant if the party cooperates and allows them access to whatever it is they need.
Most people willingly help because they don’t want to impede an investigation.
In fact, they want nothing more than to facilitate an investigation.
A warrant is only necessary if someone isn’t cooperative and the police feel that acquiring the information is imperative to move the case forward. ”
Ruby stopped at a door marked Security. No unauthorized personnel, and propped her hands on her hips. I assumed the guts of the building’s security system lived on the other side.
Instead of letting me in, she peered down her long nose. “The police didn’t ask to view the footage, so I assumed it wasn’t necessary. When Donna suggested—”
“The police likely didn’t ask because they are up to their eyeballs in fraud cases and don’t have the manpower or hours to work on a case that won’t be solved.
The chances of tracking down the kid who pretended to be Mr. Scarrow’s grandson is unlikely.
Getting the money back?” I shook my head. “Won’t happen.”
Ruby shifted and crossed her arms in a way that boosted her ample bosom. She stood over a foot and a half shorter, and the action made the already over-exaggerated gap in her blouse swell, giving me a direct line of sight to things that would extend my therapy sessions long into the future.
I redirected my attention to a pair of nurses who chatted at the other end of the hallway. Why was this my life? Why couldn’t Tallus have been here to smooth Ruby’s ruffled edges instead of me? Why couldn’t she have done up one extra button on her blouse?
“If that’s the case, Mr. Krause,” she continued, unaware of my discomfort or the threat of exposure, “then why am I bothering to allow you access to these videos?”
“Because I’m not the police, and I have more time to spend on seemingly impossible tasks like hunting down this kid.
You can always say no. I’m sure my client won’t make a stink over the thirty thousand dollars he will no longer be inheriting from Dear Old Dad.
I’m sure it won’t get around, and people won’t start looking for more secure homes to relocate their elderly relatives. Ma’am,” I added for good measure.
I bit my tongue before I said more, knowing I’d already crossed a line.
Benaiah didn’t strike me as the type who would go to the newspapers or cause problems, but my fear tactic worked.
I didn’t imagine I had said anything Ruby Kensington hadn’t already considered.
Letting me view surveillance videos was no big deal in the grand scheme of things, especially if it kept Benaiah happy and Evergreen’s name out of the news.
Ruby, thankfully, lowered her arms and found a key, unlocking what amounted to a chamber no bigger than a broom closet. She motioned me inside, and I reluctantly obeyed, Echo on my heels.
The cramped space contained walls of shelves and stacks of equipment as old as some of the residents in the building.
Wires ran in a tangled mess in every direction.
More sat in coiled, knotted piles on the floor.
A drawer to a rusted filing cabinet sat open, spilling more cables and wires from within.
A trolley with an old-style TV gathered dust in a corner.
The drop-panel ceiling drooped, tinged yellow with age.
The light fixture flickered a few times before staying on, a dim bulb no brighter than a forty watt.
This wasn’t a fucking surveillance room. It was a technology graveyard.
The only thing remotely usable was a Dell laptop shoved in the corner on the only visible piece of counterspace.
“Here’s the thing,” Ruby said when I didn’t speak. “No one monitors our camera feeds. This isn’t a prison, but everything is recorded and filed digitally.”
She pointed at the lone laptop, beaming with unquestionable pride. “You’re lucky, Mr. Krause. Our system was recently updated in January. State-of-the-art now. Prior to the update, videos were only kept for a month before they were taped over.”
State-of-the-art? I stared at the Dell, her words not computing.
“Wait. Taped over?” I spotted multiple VCR players and crates filled with VHSs against the back wall. She didn’t mean…
My stomach dropped. January, she’d said. Was she telling me that up until January, they had recorded everything on VHS tapes? “But…”
How was this lucky? My window of interest was December.
“Right there.” She pointed at the overflowing crates. “December was the last month before we upgraded, so those tapes are still in existence and haven’t been erased. If we hadn’t changed our system, they would have been long gone.”
“Lucky.” I understood now, but I wasn’t fucking happy. Searching through actual VHS recordings would take forever.
“We have a lovely gentleman who takes care of the new system. He does maintenance and whatnot. He makes sure everything is running properly. Bobby used to come daily to change the tapes, but now he only comes once a week. Isn’t it marvelous?
Donna assures me you have enough sense not to muck things up, so I’m going to let you have access. ”
I had so much to say about her state-of-the-art system, but one case of fraud was enough, so I clamped my jaw shut and nodded.
The guy they hired to take care of this shit must have been as old as Moses himself to have not suggested they move into a more digital age sooner.
I suspected his fancy state-of-the-art system wasn’t as advanced as he’d let on, but that wasn’t my problem.
Ruby excused herself and left me alone. I patted the inside pocket of my jacket to ensure I had the pack of cigarettes I’d bought the previous afternoon. Thank fucking god they were there. I suspected they would be a lifeline today.
“Ready, girl?” I asked Echo. She glanced around, and I imagined she wasn’t any more pleased than I was to be working in such a claustrophobic space. I scratched her ear. “We’ll make do. Come on. I’ll clear a spot so you can snooze while I work.
Before diving into the mess, I set an alarm on my phone so I wouldn’t miss my lunch with Doyle.
I’d had my last drink at dinner on Sunday evening and was feeling it.
Cold sweats. Shakes. Elevated irritability.
A mild headache that wouldn’t go away. An ever-present itch under my skin I couldn’t scratch.
I ached for a drink but had managed to win the battle so far.
Although my fracturing foundation did not bode well for long-term sobriety.
Cigarettes were my only crutch, and with the task ahead, I would need them.
I got situated and familiarized myself with Evergreen’s antiquated surveillance system, peering longingly at the laptop, knowing it would have been much simpler to browse digital files.
Analog closed-circuit television systems had been popular in the nineties, and Evergreen seemed to be crawling out of that era two decades too late.
With analog systems, cameras all over the building transmitted video signals through coaxial cables to the recording device.
In this case, a VCR. All the dusty wiring climbing the walls and spilling from drawers made sense now.
Why Bobby hadn’t bothered removing them was beyond me.
I was familiar enough with antiquated systems because I’d run into them in the past. Multiple cameras from all over the building would record in time-lapse mode, either so many frames per minute or triggering with motion sensors to conserve tape.
Doing so sacrificed quality, so whatever I found would likely be grainy and useless.
Using a multiplexer or quad splitter gave the ability to combine the feeds from multiple cameras onto one VHS, drastically saving space.
I glanced at the crates. Christ, this was bad.
Why did I have to deal with thirty-year-old technology?
Saving onto hard disk drives was a transition that came into effect in the mid-nineties.
Even that would have been a world better than scouring fucking videotapes.
It was like a greater power was testing my patience.
The crates were marked with date ranges that covered the four weeks of December, but the tapes inside weren’t labeled.
Each individual tape covered approximately eight elapsed hours of footage—if the tape was a T-160 and if it was set to record in Extended Play, which reduced the quality of the video another degree.
Best-case scenario, I was looking at approximately three tapes a day.
Thirty-one days in the month. Ninety-three fucking tapes.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and exhaled, trying to find a positive. Dr. Peterson always coaxed me to find positives in stressful situations.
“It could have been an infidelity case,” I muttered.
According to the logs, Faux Kael visited Evergreen on December second, ninth, and sixteenth. The first three Tuesdays in December. That in itself was a noteworthy detail I stored in the back of my mind.
It took twenty minutes to dig a functioning VCR from the equipment graveyard.
The boob tube television propped on the trolley, the one that reminded me of those special days in high school when the teacher let us watch movies in class, seemed to work.
I rooted through a mountain of cables, located the ones I needed, and hooked everything up.