Chapter 27
I’d forgotten the burger Ned had put on the grill for me. By the time I remembered and raced to take it off the grill, it was a puck, hard and black. I tried to pick off the burnt edges. It was nothing but burnt edges.
Come on, life. Could I not even have one thing?
I stared at the hard lump of former meat, fully regretting the plastic bag of unclaimed takeout I’d passed so casually back to Ned.
I scavenged through the kitchen cold storage. All the other burgers were frozen, but I discovered some bacon Ned had precooked for club sandwiches and stacked a heavy serving on a bun with lettuce, mayo. I took a big Shark Week chomp.
When was the last time I’d had real food? A dusty granola bar this morning, predawn, as I’d rewatched the video footage?
At the thought of Alex herding Joey out of the alley, the bite I’d taken turned heavy in my mouth. I had to spit it out.
I grabbed a plate and carried the rest of my sandwich back to the office. Unopened vendor bills still sat in a stack on the desk, alongside Michael Jordan’s misdirected second and last notices. If nothing had been touched since I’d last been in, then no bills had been paid, either.
I sat at the desk, hit the power button on the computer, and gnawed at my sandwich while the hard drive churned slowly to life and I could check for the stashed copy of Wednesday’s security video.
It was still where I’d hidden it—but there was no real way to hide a massive media file on this antique toaster of a computer. One click to sort the files by size …
I tried it, and sure enough, there were the two copies of the footage I’d stowed of Wednesday’s pub traffic, top of the list, slurping down all the storage space on the hard drive.
If Alex hadn’t been ignoring his business entirely, he might have noticed.
But if Detective Aycock showed up to take a closer look, it wouldn’t take any expert to find the files.
It wouldn’t take a second, and that clip of Joey being bounced toward his death—by Alex—would be all over the internet.
It would be all the proof against him anyone would need, if not in court, then in the court of social media.
I dragged first one file and then the other to the trash icon. My hand hovered over the menu option to empty it.
My attention snagged on the files left behind in the list. All the documents were still listed by size, large files at the top, and now that I’d pulled away the files I’d stowed, there was another king-file sitting atop the hill. Another video. I double-clicked on it to start it playing.
It was another file from the security system, the camera pointed down the street as always, the sidewalks empty. I checked the date. Friday. Today.
I navigated over and opened the security app. Sure, it was working just fine. Of course it was. The cameras weren’t really flakey at all, and Alex hadn’t shut down the system. He’d only dumped the backlog to delete Wednesday’s footage sometime yesterday, before I found Joey.
Now there was something to think about. He’d thrown out the files before Joey had been found. What did that mean?
When I thought about it, I realized that the video placed Joey with Alex at the alley on Wednesday—but Joey hadn’t been lying in the alley all that time.
I would have found him Thursday morning when I walked the dogs.
I’d searched, specifically, checking on the guy with the grocery cart. The alley had been clear.
That was a point in Alex’s favor, right? That Joey had been off somewhere in between?
Of course, I didn’t know with one hundred percent confidence where Joey had been up until Wednesday.
And that Thursday video, which would have given us a lot of useful comings and goings, was gone, baby, gone.
Alex had dumped all of it—unwittingly deleting the file that might have shown precisely who had hurt Joey.
I was the one holding on to a file that could raise questions. Did it matter that Alex was pushing Joey away from where he’d been found? Not in the slightest.
I pulled one of the copies of my stashed video out of the trash and started it running. Real time, paying attention.
Except the comings and goings were almost rote by now. If it had been mildly boring on second watch, now it was a real snooze. I sped it up a tick, then another. I couldn’t watch the entire day. It would take forever.
Technically, yes, it would take an entire day. Thanks. I know.
Here we went again: cars moving in and out of view, the bumper, the beer truck, the guy yelling about the beer truck, the meathead in the flat cap avoiding the guy yelling. Kyler. McPhee’s door opening and closing, familiar profiles coming and going.
Quin came out, hooking a left out of the camera’s view.
Now where was he off to? I paused the video, checked the time stamp, rewound it, watched again.
I opened up the only file the system had captured since Alex had dumped the queue—the video for today, and cranked it quad-speed to get to the daylight hours, past the morning commuters passing on the way to the L station, travel mugs of coffee in hands.
At about mid-morning, I let the video play regular time again, but of course nothing much would have happened at McPhee’s until I’d accidentally opened it.
It was just a Friday. People came and went along Milwaukee Avenue, walking down the street, holding hands or swinging a kid between them toward school, or tugging on their business backpack on their way to the Blue Line, headphones in, tugging at wedgies. Going about their tired, basic lives.
What was my problem? I would kill for a normal life right now, no worries, no—
On the screen, Alex suddenly appeared.
I checked the time stamp again. Too early for opening the pub, but then he hadn’t opened today, anyway.
I tried to time out his arrival with my departure.
I would have already talked to Oona about finding Joey dead and seen her off on her dog walk.
About the time Alex was coming into the pub, I was already in Sicily’s SUV on the way to see how my life should have gone, but hadn’t.
And to have a gun stuck in my face. Today really had been a rather full day.
On the screen, Alex came back out and locked the door behind him but just stood there, looking toward the alley. A small movement there turned out to be police tape fluttering in the wind.
So he’d called to give the kitchen the day off, but he’d come into the pub anyway. But not to do any work. Not to catch up on bills. I flicked the stack of unopened mail. Not to delete more footage, because here I was watching it.
Alex turned his head south, quickly, in reaction to something. Someone was coming. I didn’t like the look on his face. Alex’s expressions had a narrow range, and I could usually read them down to the milli-twitch.
I waited, holding my breath.
Someone hoping the pub was open? No—it was the police.
Not Detective Aycock, though. These were uniformed dudes, two of them. I watched Alex’s shoulders tighten as they spoke. What were they saying to him? Finally, he reopened the pub and let them inside.
Video of the empty street played for a few minutes, then I hit fast-forward and scanned for something, anything moving. The door swung open again and the two officers appeared. I slowed the footage and watched Alex follow them out and lock the door behind him.
I was relieved he was not in cuffs, at least.
A few more words were exchanged and then Alex watched them walk away.
I was just about to stop the video when Bear and Lemon were suddenly in the frame, bouncing off Alex with abandon.
Dogs really knew how to make an entrance, didn’t they?
Bear and Lemon wound their leash around Alex’s legs, Lemon grinning up at him.
Nearby, Bear went into high, pointy-eared alert at something outside of the frame.
Then Oona appeared and untangled everyone.
Okay. I didn’t need to watch the two of them confer over me and how was I doing, with the sympathetic head tilts of a—
My mind had supplied the phrase parent-teacher conference, but I didn’t want it in there. I hit fast-forward and turned back to my sandwich.
What if I just let the feed run at full fast-forward until we got to now? And kept going? Crack the space-time continuum and see the future? Handy, right? To see how it would all turn out.
Once the video time code had almost reached noon, I brought down the speed again.
And bang, at standard opening time in the time code, there was Quin tugging at the vestibule door, surprised to find McPhee’s locked. He went to the window and shaded his eyes, glanced toward the camera, then headed away, out of view.
I paused the video to think.
Silent Jim had a point about Quin. In between situations or not, every day, this guy arrived at McPhee’s like he was punching a clock. He sipped a beer down until it was warm, chattering at Alex and anybody who wandered into his orbit, neighborly, friendly.
Gross.
Had his mother not loved him enough?
Oh, yeah, I know. Did you know that landing a wire-monkey mama could go either way? All sharp edges, obviously—yo, over here!—or you could turn out a squish of a person, absorbing everyone’s every mood, waiting to be blamed for them. Cringing against slights, apologizing for being in the room.
I didn’t think that was what this Jim, Quin, was. But he was … something. Someone.
I stopped the video. In the corner of the screen sat the little trash icon. It would be so easy to dump it all, just take our chances.
I’d just watched Alex be Alex, surviving a police visit, surviving the onslaught of Oona’s slobbery mutts with patience. But if I watched Wednesday’s footage again, I’d see Alex scrape Joey along a brick wall.
I could not reconcile the two.
Finally I dragged one of the files back out and hid it, deep, in the weeds of an old e-folder. Deep.
I had time to decide, right? Before the wrong person found the files?
Problem was, I wasn’t sure who the wrong person was anymore.