Chapter 6
SIX
The security guard had keys to the mall and led Amanda and Trent to a forgotten corner of the shopping center. Once there he swung a door open, and the lights inside came on.
“Welcome to the inner sanctum of the mall’s security,” he announced, as he entered with Amanda and Trent following.
Monitors lined a wall showing video feeds from different areas of the mall. Two desks faced them with a few chairs. There was also a bank of lockers, and a noisy clock on the wall that rattled off every second with a resonant thunk.
“All the surveillance cameras feed back to the server in this room,” Danny pointed out. “Well, except for the cameras in individual stores. Those are their responsibility. Sit wherever you would like.” The security guard gestured to the options and plopped himself behind a desk.
Amanda sat next to him, and Trent to the side of her.
“All right, so you’re interested in what we call Entrance A. The one near the Cheesecake Factory?”
Hearing the name of the restaurant for the second time this evening, her mind drifted to their Oreo Dream Extreme… Not that a serving of the chocolaty treat would solve anything for Amanda right now. “That’s right.”
“What time do you want to look at?” Danny popped his eyes at her as his hands hovered over the keyboard ready to leap into action.
Amanda thought of Brooke’s text to her mother. “Let’s start with Saturday sometime between two and three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Sure thing. I can play it at a faster speed and slow it down if we see something. That way it won’t take as long.”
“I like the way you think.” Amanda’s breathing became shallow.
Call it instinct or intuition, but they were about to see something telling.
She couldn’t imagine anything short of a forced abduction having Valerie Archer leaving her personal belongings in the car.
And as a mother, she couldn’t imagine abandoning her ill child.
The video played out on-screen, but it wasn’t until the time stamp read 2:50 PM that the orange Charger came into view. Amanda shifted forward on her chair. “There she is.”
Danny adjusted the playback to regular speed, and they watched as she parked.
Only a few minutes later, a black Ford Transit cargo van parked in the spot next to her, blocking out the view of the Charger. It was reversing out a short while later.
“Okay, that’s strange. Why pull in and then leave right away?” Amanda said.
“They changed their mind about shopping,” Trent suggested.
Amanda’s stomach tightened. Something was off. “Can you go back and follow the van in the moments before it pulled up next to the Charger?”
“Yeah, of course.” Danny did just that, and it wasn’t long before Amanda was asking him to pause the feed again.
It was two thirty, and the black cargo van was parked in a handicapped spot close to the entrance doors.
People were coming and going from the mall, but Amanda’s focus was on a teenage girl who was leaving.
Given the camera angle she could only see her from behind, and she might be getting carried away, but her instinct was screaming at her.
“That could be Brooke.” She’d only seen the teen’s photograph that was attached to her learner’s permit.
Amanda might be leaping to see what she wanted to.
Teens looked so much alike. As independent as they liked to think they were, so many of them dressed and styled their hair the same. “Resume playback in slow motion.”
The footage moved forward, and the teenager walked close to the van. She was alone, but there was a slight hesitation to her steps, and she looked over her shoulder as she got into the back of the van.
“Can you zoom in?” Trent asked. “I’d like to see if we can make out anyone in the back.”
Danny did so, but it was of little use. The interior of the vehicle was black, as if it were night, not late afternoon on a sunny summer day.
He started the playback again, and the door was slid shut the moment the teen cleared the doorway.
Amanda popped up from her chair. “Trent, a minute?”
“Yeah.”
Danny stopped the video while Amanda and Trent excused themselves into a corner of the room.
“It can’t be a coincidence that a teen girl gets into the back of a van and, a short while later, the same one pulls up next to Valerie Archer. That had to have been Brooke.”
“I believe so. She appeared tentative.”
“I picked up on that too.” Amanda wished they had an angle that afforded them a view of Valerie and the Charger when the van stopped next to her.
But there was one thing they could try. She turned to the security guard.
“Danny, could you zoom in on the Charger after the van leaves the neighboring spot?” She walked back to her chair but didn’t sit down.
Danny forwarded the footage to the desired point and zoomed in.
“She’s gone,” Trent said.
“Yep. So that was Brooke getting into the van moments before. Then they circled over to get Valerie. They were waiting and watching out for her. And Valerie’s not going to refuse to get in if she sees her daughter in the back.
” It seemed likely Brooke’s text to her mother was to lure her to the mall.
That her abductor had put her up to it, so they could also take Valerie.
Amanda’s phone rang, cutting into her thoughts, and she answered at seeing Officer Brandt’s name.
“It’s Leo. I just found Brooke’s phone in a dumpster.”
“And you’re sure it’s hers?”
“I gave it a bit of a charge, and the lock-screen photo is of her and two other teenage girls. I’ll send you a photo of the screen.”
“Great job. Bag it and tag it, and please get it over to Detective Briggs in Digital Forensics.”
“Will do.” Leo was gone, and a second after, Amanda’s phone pinged with a text message.
She filled Trent in on the call and opened the text. It was the image of Brooke’s lock screen. From the broad smiles on the girls’ faces, they were tight friends. She shared this with Trent.
“Is there anything else you need from me?” Danny asked, splitting his gaze between the two of them.
“Yes, we’ll need the license number on that black van,” Amanda said.
“Let me see what I can do.” Danny spent the next several minutes zooming in on the front and rear plates with no luck. “I’m going to say they have covers that block them out.”
“You and me both.” A smart move from one perspective, stupid from another. It would attract attention, and they risked being pulled over, but it was likely they removed them once out of sight of the mall’s cameras. “Could you send a copy of this video to me?”
“Sure, though I’d prefer to clear that by my boss. He told me to show you whatever you wanted. We didn’t get into handing over the footage.”
“As soon as you can.” She plucked out her business card and handed it to him. “For now, could we track that teen’s movements backward to inside the mall?”
“You got it. Just holler if you want me to stop at any time.” Danny proceeded to switch from camera to camera, tracking Brooke back through the mall. Not long before she stepped outside, she stood by a garbage can with her phone in hand. She tapped something into it before tossing it into the bin.
“See her shoulders, and the way she’s looking around?” Trent asked her.
“Whoever is behind this made contact before here. Danny…?” she prompted.
He nodded. “I’ll keep going back.”
A few minutes before Brooke ditched her phone, she was with a couple of girls who appeared irritated by something she told them. “Pause.” She brought up the photo on her phone of Brooke’s lock screen, and held it for Trent to refer to again.
“It’s the same girls,” Trent said. “So she was at the mall with them, but her leaving seemed unexpected. It looks like it caught the girls off guard.”
Amanda nodded. Whatever had Brooke leaving had ruined whatever the girls had planned. “Please keep going backward,” she told Danny.
Minutes before talking with her friends, Brooke had stepped into the restroom alone.
“Could someone have gotten to her in there?” Trent suggested.
“It’s possible or through her phone.” Amanda turned to Danny.
“Thank you for all your help. Please send over all the videos we just watched as soon as possible. If your boss has a problem with you doing that, have him call me.” Watching who went in and out of the restroom wouldn’t be of any use right now.
They had no idea who they were looking for anyway.
And that was even assuming they were right that someone got to her inside.
It might help to have the video to refer to once they had more information to go on though.
“Will do. I just hope everything turns out all right.”
“Us too,” Trent told him as he led the way out of the security office.
As they walked to the car, she turned to him. “If only there were some way to track the van after it left the mall’s parking lot.”
“That would be great.”
It was unfortunate that the Virginia Department of Transportation didn’t record footage. The cameras were only there to monitor the flow of traffic. “We aren’t left without a clue altogether though.”
“The last location of the husband’s phone?”
“What I was thinking. Not that it gets us far.”
“So these people in the van… I think it’s safe to assume there’s at least two. A driver and someone in the back. They pick up the daughter and mother, the husband before or after that, and head out of town.”
“Or just the daughter and mother were taken, if the husband’s behind this.
” There wasn’t any reason to dismiss him as a person of interest yet.
Not in her mind. “There’s no more dancing around this, though.
We saw it with our own eyes. Valerie and Brooke Archer were abducted.
We’ll need to get a BOLO issued on Paul Archer and his vehicle. ”
“No argument from me there.”
“Get us over to the Archer residence, and I’ll call Malone to bring him up to speed.”
Trent winced. “At one thirty in the morning? You have a death wish?”
“He told me to keep him posted. I’m just doing what he asked.” She had thick skin, though she was about to find out just how tough it was.