“Which is why he’s in Cameroon right now.”
“Exactly. Every three months he does a two-week mission at one of our locations. This one is in Cameroon. The next one will be Haiti.”
“Worldly,” I said. I couldn’t help but wonder how many people on a fixed income had scraped together whatever they could in the name of spiritual fellowship, while he traveled around the world, likely in luxury, administering blessings to the needy.
“Reverend Thompson said you needed to see some of our surveillance footage from a couple of weeks ago,” he said.
“I do. I’m hoping you still have the video saved on your hard drive.”
“Of course we do,” he said with that million-kilowatt smile. “With our old hard drives, we could only save video for two weeks before the machine taped over it. But about a year ago, Bishop authorized an upgrade of the entire system. Not only can we save up to sixty days on one hard drive, but the new software triggers the system to dump the recorded video to another hard drive that lets us keep it indefinitely.”
He walked me over to a long table with several monitors connected to each other. He pushed a few buttons and tapped a couple of keys, and the live video of the outside streets popped up on the monitors. I took a seat next to him.
“Reverend Thompson said something about a body being found down next to the train tracks,” he said.
I told him about Chopper’s murder and the discovery. I didn’t get into the backstory. For the first time, the smile left his face.
“We have cameras surrounding the entire perimeter of the church,” he said. “A couple of years ago someone broke in, beat up one of the deacons, and stole a bunch of stuff out of the office.”
“I mostly need the camera that faces Seventieth Street,” I said.
“We have two,” he said. He punched a couple of keys, and the images changed on the monitors. “We have one that faces west going up to Halsted and one facing east toward the train tracks.”
The images were in color and perfectly clear. I gave him the day I wanted to see. He punched the time into the computer.
“What exactly are you looking for?” he asked.
“I need to see all the cars that went down Seventieth Street and turned into South Wallace.”
“That should be easy,” he said. “What time do you want to start?”
“Five o’clock that morning.” I didn’t have any real reason to start that early other than to give myself a comfortable cushion. Cast a wide net.
Rayshawn quickly cued up the cameras to the exact time and hit “Play.” Very little moved that early in the morning, as darkness still blanketed the neighborhood. About fifteen minutes in, a couple of rats crossed the street near the apartment building and crawled into the dumpster. An old Ford Econoline van drove east, underneath the viaduct, then out of sight.
“Can you speed up the film without losing the picture?” I asked.
“I can go as fast as you want,” he said, tapping the keyboard. “Tell me when it’s fast enough.”
I told him.
At seven o’clock the activity picked up. Plenty of cars crossed Seventieth heading north or south, but very few actually traveled down Seventieth. I asked him to speed it up a little more. The time code rolled faster at the bottom of the screen. The first hit came at 9:16 a.m. It was the rusted pickup truck I had seen turning out of South Wallace in the CPD video. The church’s camera caught it a couple of minutes earlier, rolling down Seventieth, slowing, then taking a left onto South Wallace.
“Stop right there,” I said. “I want to see that truck. Can you rewind it and slow it down?”
Rayshawn hit a few keys, and the truck slowly came into view. “I can zoom in if you want?” he said.
“Perfect,” I said.
He zoomed in. I could see everything—the license plate, metal springs in the truck’s bed sitting on old televisions, and other junk that had been scavenged and tied down.
“Can we see his face?” I asked.
“Not from this camera. We need the one that faces west toward Halsted. We’ll be able to see him coming toward us.”
Rayshawn made a couple of adjustments, and within seconds we watched the truck head-on come into view.
“I want to see if he has a passenger sitting next to him.”
He slowed the video; then he hit a few more buttons, and the driver’s face filled the screen. The old man wore a soiled baseball cap. His unruly beard and mustache looked like he hadn’t shaved in months. It was obvious a couple of his front teeth were missing. A big black dog sat next to him, looking out the window. He turned down South Wallace and out of the camera’s point of view.
The next hour was mostly quiet. A Pace transit bus stopped at the apartment building across the street, then turned right on Lowe and continued south out of view. Half an hour later, a car pulled out of the driveway of one of the small houses two blocks south of the church. It turned right onto Seventieth and continued heading east through the viaduct. A woman pushing a lime-green stroller appeared at the intersection of Union and Seventieth. The camera’s lens was so strong we could see the baby’s fingers sticking out of the pink jumpsuit. The woman continued north on Union and out of view.
My cell phone rang. It was Mechanic. I sent him an automatic reply to text me. I went back to the monitor.
Ten twenty-nine a.m. A black Suburban with tinted windows came into view. I told Rayshawn to slow the tape and let it run at normal speed. The Suburban headed east down Seventieth. It drove slowly, hitting its brake lights several times
