and giving Parker a quick rundown, Evans had left them alone, with a simple, “If you need anything else, Parker can find me.”
The guard had then routed the archived footage feed to the small monitor in the lower left corner, closest to Jake.
“We have everything on hard drive,” Parker explained.
“That must take up a lot of space,” Jake said. Most systems he’d come across still relied on tape backups, or DVDs.
“It does. Each day gets its own set of disks.” It was obvious Parker was enjoying his role as police assistant. “We have sixty sets in all, so basically we keep footage for sixty days before the set gets used again. The way the system works is that there are six disk ports. One contains today’s disks, four contain the last four days’, and the last one contains the disks from two months ago that will be used tomorrow.”
“Got it,” Jake said. “So the days I need to look at are still connected to the system.”
“Yep.”
Parker showed him how to access the older footage, then Jake got to work.
The hotel had thirty-six different cameras throughout the property, mainly covering the lobby, elevators, outside exits, and employee-only areas.
Even just skimming through the last forty-eight hours, it would take him forever to go through all the different feeds. So his first task was to narrow things down.
Two of the lobby cameras acted as overviews, covering large portions of the space. What one didn’t see, the other did. Deciding to concentrate on those first, Jake brought up one of the feeds, and began whipping through it as fast as he could manage and still make out what was going on.
The biggest problem was he didn’t know who he was looking for. Had the person who’d dropped the matchbook been a guest? Someone just passing through the lobby? Someone who worked there? Man? Woman? Old? Young?
He hadn’t been at it long before he realized how ridiculous this was. What the hell did he actually expect to see? The murderer walking through the frame wearing a T-shirt that said I DID IT?
Unfortunately, he couldn’t just get up and walk out. That would raise more questions than his request to view the footage had. Enough, most likely, to provoke Evans or Conway to call the department and ask what was up.
Jake definitely didn’t need that.
Having no choice, he focused on the screen.
It took nearly an hour to get through one day of one camera. Not surprisingly, no one stood out to him. He increased the pace, and got through the second twenty-four hours in only thirty-two minutes.
He decided to skip the other lobby camera and move to the one covering the front entrance. In and out, in and out. People coming and going and returning and leaving again. On the screen the day grew later, then night descended, but the flow of people never stopped. In and out, in and out, in and—
Jake tapped Pause, then leaned over the desk, bringing him a few inches closer to the monitor on the wall.
“See something?” Parker asked.
Jake stared at the image. Two men had just come outside. A doorman — not the one who’d let Jake in earlier — was holding the door open for them. They were both dressed casually, dark pants and dark shirts. One was even wearing a dark gray sports coat. They didn’t look like they were together, but there was
The camera had captured a good shot of both men’s faces. Neither was remarkable. If he’d met either of them before, that might explain the feeling he was having, but he couldn’t place their faces, which meant this was the first time he had ever seen them. His memory was exceptional. He’d never forgotten a face before, and was sure he wasn’t forgetting one now.
“Hey, you all right?” Parker asked.
Jake pulled his eyes off the screen. “What?” he asked, confused.
“You were studying that pretty hard. I was just wondering if you’d seen something interesting.”
Jake quickly donned his neutral cop look. “Not sure. Maybe. Is there a way to print out images?”
“Sure,” Parker said. “We have a mavigraph. Gives you a nice glossy print. We’re not supposed to use it too often because it’s expensive, but I’m sure Mr. Evans wouldn’t mind.”
“Excellent.” Jake nodded at the screen. “Can I get a print of that?”
“You got it.”
Parker fiddled with a computer keyboard, then a few moments later a machine in the corner behind them began to hum.
“It takes a little while to print,” Parker said. “But it’s got the image now, so you can continue looking if you want.”
Jake nodded, then hit Play and watched the men walk out of frame. He stopped the footage, reversed it to just as they were coming out the door, and noted the time stamp. He then switched over to the feed from a lobby camera right on the other side of the entrance. Using the time code as reference, he went to the corresponding point.
On the screen he could see the backs of the men as they were passing through the door. He began scrolling the footage backwards. As he noted from the other angle, though the men were leaving at the same time, they didn’t seem to be together. He followed them to the extent of the camera’s range, then found the next camera they were on, then the next. The lighter-haired one had stopped in the lobby, and put his cell phone to his ear. The other, dark-haired one had walked backwards all the way to the elevator where he entered/exited the number two elevator.
Jake turned his focus on the man in the lobby, until he, too, walked to the elevators and went up, in his case riding in car number four. Jake switched to the interior footage from car four, and followed the man in reverse all the way up to the eighth floor. No feeds covered the upstairs hallways, so he couldn’t see which room the man went to.
“Here you go,” Parker said, setting something on the counter beside Jake’s elbow.
Looking down, Jake saw the promised glossy print of the two men outside the hotel entrance. There was a wide white border around the edges that almost gave it a retro feel.
“Thanks,” he said.
He returned his attention to the screen, then hit Play, watching in normal speed, forward motion this time. The light-haired man reentered the elevator on the eighth floor, then headed down. The car made three stops before it reached the lobby: on the sixth, fourth, and third floor.
Jake hit Pause again, scrolled back a few seconds, then let it play once more. When a man entered the car on the third floor, it looked like the light-haired man had given him a tiny nod. Jake played it a couple of times. The movement was so slight it was hard to tell.
The man who had just gotten on turned and faced the door. It could be they’d only recognized each other from when they were checking into the hotel. Then again, maybe it hadn’t been a nod at all. Just a tick, or even a glitch in the camera.
Jake continued forward.
It wasn’t until the dark-haired man entered the lobby from the number two elevator that Jake stopped again. He’d missed it before but now there was no mistaking it. The light-haired man and the dark-haired man had shared a look. Brief, yes, and most people who saw it would probably have dismissed it, but Jake saw it for what he was sure it was — a signal of some kind. The moment they looked away from each other, the light-haired man put his phone in his pocket and headed for the door. The dark-haired man had then headed in the same direction, a few feet behind him.
Then his fingers reached out and slammed the Pause key.
The dark-haired man had slowed next to a table, his hand hovering over a bowl filled with matchbooks.
A tingling feeling ran across Jake’s shoulders.
