Chapter 50
LIKE MOST WORKING people, I relished Fridays, eager for the weekend ahead.
All Joe and I had planned for this weekend was family time.
We might go to the beach. We would of course traverse a park with Martha, though a visit to the beach too would make her deliriously happy.
We would let Julie pick where we’d eat dinner on Sunday evening.
Last night I had noticed that every time Joe opened the refrigerator, Martha practically galloped into the kitchen.
She didn’t do it when I opened the refrigerator or when Julie did.
It was a testament to Pavlov’s theory. Even using the same test species.
I pointed it out to Joe and he looked suitably chastened.
Now I sat at my cluttered desk in the Hall of Justice. I ignored the emails and memos in my inbox and jumped right to the department summary of incidents over the previous night.
Rich Conklin shuffled to his desk and plopped into the chair next to mine. “Anything going on?”
I looked up from the activity log and said, “A fatal stabbing in the Tenderloin.”
“Of course.”
“Randy Hicks has the lead on that one. There was a home invasion in Pacific Heights. Three male subjects got away with approximately $900,000 in jewelry.”
Conklin said, “That means $40,000 in jewelry. Wealthy victims inflate their losses for the insurance money.”
“Always the skeptic.” Then I came to the last item on the list. “There’s a missing persons report for a twenty-year-old named Amy Phelps, last seen Tuesday at the diner where she works.”
“Quiet quitting?”
“That’s the best-case scenario.”
It had me worried. Another young woman.
Rich and I needed to follow up on the tip we’d gotten from Allison Weaver about seeing Nicole at the mall. When I suggested we go to Stonestown to see if we could find any video of Nicole Snaff, Conklin was on board.
It didn’t take us long to find the security office, tucked away next to an empty storefront. The metal door simply said SECURITY in black block letters. We knocked and a middle-aged man with brown hair and a giant walrus mustache opened the door after a moment.
We badged him and explained who we were and what we needed.
To my surprise, he immediately ushered us into the cramped suite of offices.
There were three small rooms, two of which were nothing but video monitors covering virtually the entire mall.
The eerie glow from all the monitors made the rooms look like something out of a sci-fi film.
The security chief introduced himself as Bill Simpkins. His Boston accent made him sound like a caricature. But he seemed pretty dedicated.
“You will have to excuse me. I’m watching this guy in the food court.” He pointed to a monitor in the bottom corner of the bank. It showed a muscular man with a lot of tattoos standing at the edge of the food court. Most of the restaurants had not even opened yet.
Simpkins said, “He’s been hanging out there for almost thirty minutes. I go by the old adage, the higher the tattoo is on your body, the crazier you are.”
I looked at the monitor a little more closely. The man had tattoos all over his neck and face. That didn’t validate the security chief’s adage, but I knew what he meant.
I repeated what Allison Weaver had told us.
We were able to give the security chief a date, time, and the escalator Allie was on when she thought she saw Nicole Snaff.
Simpkins set us up on a computer. With a few keystrokes, we were looking at footage from a camera that captured the entire escalator.
Then he went back to watching the man at the food court.
Conklin said, “This is going to take a while. I might need to visit the food court myself.”
I was about to give him a funny response when I spotted Allie’s face on the monitor.
I mumbled, “No way.” That caught Conklin’s attention.
We both stared at the monitor. I saw Allie turn her head.
I followed her line of sight and immediately saw the girl she was looking at.
I paused the video and we focused on the girl who might’ve been Nicole Snaff.
There was definitely a resemblance. But was it really her?
We called over the security chief, who looked at the monitor too. Simpkins printed out a still photo. I stared at the photo. It could be Nicole.
I said to Simpkins, “This is a really good system.”
“The management bought it when times were better. Now they keep it running because it’s cheaper than hiring a lot of extra guards.”
My eyes returned to the monitor. I zoomed out and looked at everyone around the girl. It didn’t seem like she had been with anyone.
Then Simpkins rushed back to his other monitor. I looked over to see two people meeting the tattooed man. It was an elderly couple, and the three greeted one another with hugs. Conklin, the security chief, and I all realized simultaneously that the tattooed guy was meeting with his parents.
I held in my hand a printout of the girl I thought could be Nicole Snaff. It was just one more confusing piece of information dropped into my lap.