Shakedown in Havana (Rising Tide Adventures Book 2), page 9
Fiona and I shrank a little farther down the hallway as the lockup officer came rushing past us, but he was more concerned with answering his lieutenant’s call to arms than looking around, so he didn’t notice us.
As soon as he was past, I gave Fiona a nod, and we hurried for evidence lockup, knowing time was not on our side. The door was locked when we arrived, but rather than a card reader, it was a regular tooth and tumbler lock, and I mouthed a curse. I could get through it, but it would take me longer than the card reader would take Fiona.
“Better hurry,” she said.
I dropped to my knees and took out my lock picks. Counterintuitive to the fact that I knew I needed to move fast, I forced myself to slow down and really listen to the lock. I knew that the more I rushed, the more mistakes I would make and the longer it would take than if I’d slowed down right from the start. Luckily, the lock was well-oiled and often used, so it wasn’t particularly sticky or troublesome. I had to start over once, but I got the lock open in a relatively short amount of time, and then I eased the door open as well to make sure its hinges wouldn’t squeak.
I motioned for Fiona to follow, and we slunk into the evidence lockup. The desk was blocked off from the small entry point by a wall of plexiglass, and there was a swinging gate through the counter walling off our path. Beyond the plexiglass, rows and rows of metal shelves filled with boxes marched away into the depths of the room, the other officer lost amongst them, though we could still see him on Fiona’s tablet.
The gate was unlocked, thankfully, and I swung it open slowly at first to test its hinges. Once I found they were well-oiled, I shoved it open the rest of the way, and Fiona and I passed through. I knew how to read the range of dates and labels on the ends of the shelves and followed them back to the one we wanted, which was near the front since it was a recent case. The other officer was off to our left, deeper in the room, and now I could hear him rustling around as he worked on whatever project had captured his attention. Which meant he would be able to hear us, too, if we made too much noise.
I stopped in front of the box labeled with the case file number for Michael’s murder and, after a quick glance at Fiona’s tablet to make sure the officer wasn’t about to walk up our aisle, I pulled the box out and lowered it to the floor, making sure nothing scraped. Fiona flipped the lid off, nodding eagerly when she saw the computer inside, still trapped in a clear evidence bag. We both still had gloves on, so her fingers were soft and silent as she pulled the laptop from the box and opened the bag it was in. Its cord was there, too, but she ignored it as she took the slim device out, settled cross-legged on the floor, and put it in her lap. Our eyes met, and I nodded for her to go for it, hoping she also read in my gaze that she needed to hurry.
She put the tablet between us where we could both watch the cameras as she took a second, thicker tablet from her backpack and plugged a cord into one of the ports on the side. Then she opened the laptop and pressed the mute button to make absolutely sure it wouldn’t sound off with any start-up chimes. The computer was on but not logged in, and it had about half a battery charge left, which would hopefully be more than enough for us to get what we wanted from it.
Fiona plugged the other end of her cord into the laptop and began to type away on her tablet, pulling up new windows on both it and the laptop. I kept watch as she focused on her hacking. The thumbnails for the separate cameras we were monitoring were small, and I alternated enlarging them as I checked on what was going on in the rest of the building. The officer in evidence lockup with us was still hard at work on his task, but up on the first floor, the officer we’d sent on a wild goose chase was walking into the bullpen and looking baffled by the lack of chaos going on there. He started making his way across the floor, no doubt on the way to the lieutenant’s office. I wished there was some way to get sound so I could listen in on their conversation.
Down in lockup with us, the officer looked up from his boxes with an odd expression on his face, and I realized that Fiona was typing something on the laptop, and the sound was carrying better than expected. The other officer was only a few rows over, and he had heard it. I watched on the screen as he turned in a circle in an effort to pinpoint where the sound was coming from.
I put my hand over Fiona’s fingers to stop her typing, then made a ‘stay here’ gesture with my other hand, palm to the floor. Fiona nodded, eyes flicking to the tablet screen to check the situation.
I took the tablet with me as I rose into a crouch and made my way toward the front desk, and from there, I cut to the left, several shelves past where the officer had mostly pinpointed the direction the typing had come from. On the screen, he started to make his way to the back end of the aisle, and as I reached a spot far enough away from him that I could still sneak away, I stopped and rattled the nearest shelf.
I watched him stop via the tablet, a perplexed expression on his face, but he changed direction as I wanted and walked up that same aisle to come to the front. I moved down the aisle I was in, soft and quiet, staying low so I’d be mostly invisible between the boxes. The officer and I were moving at almost the same pace, but he had a suspicious look on his face, his hand straying close to his holstered gun for a moment, though it didn’t stay there long.
I moved deeper into the evidence room, intending to lead him quite far from Fiona so I could then circle back to her, and we could get out of there while the officer was still distracted, assuming she’d gotten what we needed. I rattled another shelf in order to keep the officer coming after me, moving away from my position as soon as I made the noise. The officer moved a little faster to come to investigate, but I slipped away in plenty of time, and I rattled one more shelf, even farther back in the evidence lockup, before I changed direction and snuck back toward Fiona. I made it back to our aisle within a minute and scurried toward her, where she still sat on the floor, hunched over Michael’s laptop. She glanced up as I approached and nodded once. Then she unplugged her tablet, closed the laptop, and shoved it back in the evidence bag. She put it back in the bottom of the box, where we’d found it, then I snagged the box and put it back on the shelf, again, right where we’d found it.
I motioned toward the door out of lockup, but as we started for it, I heard it swish open and then click shut a few seconds later. Fiona and I froze and looked down at the tablet. In my focus on leading the officer away, I’d forgotten to keep an eye on the other camera feeds.
The first officer was back, and he didn’t look particularly happy.
10
Our aisle looked directly at the back of the desk chair, and when the officer came through the counter gate and moved to sit, he would probably see us crouched there, so we spun on our heels and hastened toward the back of the aisle, nipping around the corner just in time.
“Tim, you still in here?” the desk officer called, sounding miffed but not necessarily suspicious, I hoped.
“Back here,” the other officer, Tim, called between the shelves. On the camera feed, he was still near the back of the evidence lockup, and Fiona and I moved a little farther to the right so we’d have something of a buffer if and when he came forward.
“Someone’s playing pranks,” the desk officer said as Tim started walking toward him, seeming to abandon his investigations of my machinations. “I got a call from the lieutenant that the bullpen was dissolving into chaos, and I had to get my butt up there, but the lieutenant had no idea what I was talking about when I went into his office. I looked like a total idiot! Do you think it’s Reynolds? He’s been hazing me all week.”
“Someone’s playing pranks down here, too. That or I’m going crazy,” Tim said. He walked up an aisle seven down from us until he reached the front and joined the desk officer there. Fiona and I glanced at each other. If they were both up there, how were we going to get out?
“What do you mean?” the desk officer asked.
“I’ve been hearing weird sounds,” Tim explained. “At first, it was like there was typing coming from nearby, you know, and then I was hearing the shelves rattling throughout the lockup.”
“Huh,” the desk officer said, putting his hands on his hips. “Let’s split up and take another look around. Maybe it’s just the vents or something.”
“I’ll go left if you want to go right,” Tim said. “Call if you find anything.”
I motioned for Fiona to go backward, and we headed for the end of the aisle, where we hid ourselves behind the ends of the shelves as the police officers spread out. I watched the tablet until the desk officer was past our position, and then we ducked into the next aisle and hurriedly made our way to the front again. Fiona and I crossed the empty space between the shelves and the desk, then pushed the gate in the counter open as silently as we could. I kept low as I stepped through, using the counter to hide my body, while Fiona inched to the door out of evidence lockup and opened that for us as well. This time, its hinges were squeaked, but we were out and on our way toward the stairs before either officers could hear or investigate.
As we ghosted quickly but quietly toward the stairwell, I snagged my phone from my pocket and texted Dylan that we were on our way out. He replied that we’d better hurry—he’d just heard that the patrol was on its way back after finding no sign of an altercation.
I checked the cameras on the upper floor by the bullpen, where there was the most activity. Said activity seemed to be picking up, like the officers were putting the pieces together and knew that something strange was afoot.
Fiona and I hit the stairwell and hustled to the first floor, but we still had the presence of mind to pause at the top and listen out the door rather than flinging it open and barreling out. It was a good thing we did because an officer swept by when I had the door open an inch, and I froze with it there to make sure she didn’t notice it move in either direction. She rushed on without paying us any mind, and once she was gone, Fiona and I ducked out into the hall.
Fiona pointed in the direction of the side door we’d entered through, and we picked up the pace once more, watching the officers on the tablet spread out as they began their search for anything off. No doubt some of them were headed to the cameras, and if they looked closely, they’d figure out the feeds had been looped. As soon as we were clear of the parking lot, Fiona could remove the loop.
I pulled the side exit open and ushered Fiona out, and as we stepped out into the parking lot, awash with orange lights from the overheads, we threw caution for the wind and broke out into a run, darting between the vehicles. I glanced over my shoulder at the precinct and found myself grinning slightly, pleased that we appeared to have gotten away with it.
As we hit the edge of the parking lot, I passed Fiona her tablet back, and as soon as we were within the shadows of the buildings across the street, she removed the loop from the cameras, though she left the feeds open so we could continue to watch until we were well and truly away. In the shadows, it was easy enough to weave our way down the few short blocks that separated us from where we’d left Dylan in the car. Relief surged through me when I spotted it parked where we’d left it—not that I’d expected Dylan to go anywhere. Fiona and I crossed the street at a run, yanked the doors open, and threw ourselves inside. As soon as we were in and the doors were closed, Dylan hit the gas and yanked us out of our parking spot. Then we were off into the night, away from the precinct like we’d never been there in the first place.
11
We waited until the morning to meet up again and debrief about the night before. I picked up pastries and coffees on my way to our little house, and when I showed up, both Fiona and Dylan had done the exact same thing, and we now had a massive surplus of treats.
“Great minds,” I said as I set my offerings down on a kitchen counter.
“That’s exactly what Dylan said,” Fiona replied. “I said we should have a competition for who brought the best pastries.”
“We’d all just vote for ourselves,” Dylan pointed out.
I took a coffee and a bear claw and ambled over to Fiona’s desk, where she already had a series of photos I didn’t recognize pulled up on one of the computer monitors. “Have you gone through the data we got off Michael’s laptop?” I asked.
“Started to,” she said. “I at least got everything moved off my tablet onto my desktop. I took a brief look at everything on the day of his murder. There were some texts between him and Sarah where she accuses him of cheating and says she never wants to see him again, and there are also these three photos.”
She gestured at the desktop monitor she’d enlarged them on, and I leaned in for a closer look. All three were pretty blurry, and I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking at. In the photos, a man in a dark jacket stood in front of an open car trunk. In the first, he was putting something inside, the second, he was straightening up, and in the third, he appeared to have noticed Michael taking photos and looked in his direction, but Michael’s hand had obviously been shaking badly, and the photo was nowhere near in focus. The angle was such that we couldn’t see what the man had been putting in the truck, but I did notice that the timestamp was pretty much immediately before Michael died.
“The photos are too blurry to run through any facial recognition software as they are,” Fiona said. “I’ll have to enhance them before I can do anything else.”
“I can read the sign in the back okay,” Dylan said, pointing to the storefront directly behind the blurry man and his car. “Redline Corner Store. I think I’ve been there once or twice.”
“You notice anything weird about it those times?” I asked.
Dylan shook his head. “No, but I think I’d had a few to drink each time and was looking for a snack, so I doubt I was paying much attention.”
“While Fiona works on the photos, you and I should head over to the store,” I said. “Maybe someone knows Michael or saw what happened when these photos were taken. It’ll help us put Michael’s final hours together better.”
Dylan nodded, then glanced at Fiona. “There’s nothing incriminating in there on either Kale or Sarah?”
“There are the texts saying Sarah never wanted to see Michael again,” Fiona said. “I wonder how much she told the police. I wonder if she even admitted that she found out Michael was cheating. She might not have if it made her look like a suspect. As for Kale, nothing. I’m assuming they’ve got each other blocked. Whatever happened between them happened in person.”
“Maybe I’ll try to chat with Felicity again and ask about the Sarah stuff,” I said. “After we check out the corner store, though. Something happened there immediately before Michael died. We need to know what.”
“I’ll be here when you get back,” Fiona said with a wave. “Hopefully, I’ll have an ID of this guy for you by then.”
Dylan and I said goodbye, then took coffee and pastries with us as we departed the little house. We got in my car, and I pulled up directions to the corner store before I cruised away from the curb, the air conditioning working hard to keep up with the day’s humidity.
I drummed my thumb against the wheel as I drove. Was the man in the photos some new player or suspect we had to consider, or something unrelated that could only throw us off? It was significant that the photos were taken right before he died, and there was something about their shakiness that made me think they were taken in a hurry or a panic. Maybe we’d been wrong, and this wasn’t a crime of passion committed by someone Michael knew, but more of a wrong place at the wrong time situation, and a stranger had decided to eliminate him. But what could he have seen that would warrant such swift and violent action against him? I supposed we’d learn more once we got to the corner store.
The Redline Corner Store wasn’t far from Michael’s apartment, which I noticed as I pulled up and found us somewhere to park. The street it was on was relatively busy, both with car and foot traffic, as was the store, as a few different people walked through the doors in either direction. The store was one of those that had a couple of apartments above it, all their blinds drawn.
When we got out of the car, Dylan and I watched the store for a moment. I noted the security camera out front almost immediately and pointed it out to Dylan.
“I bet it would have picked up Michael and that man,” Dylan said. “The angle looks right. Maybe they’ll let us see the footage.”
“Fingers crossed,” I said.
We waited for a few cars to pass before we crossed the street and approached the front door. I glanced at the camera again now that I was closer, then looked over my shoulder to eyeball where Michael had probably been standing. He’d probably been on or by the sidewalk right near where my car was parked, and Dylan was right that the security camera probably would have caught him. Or if not him, then at least the man in his photos.
A bell jingled merrily overhead as we entered the store, brushed by the wash of air conditioning. The store was small and sterile, with a white floor reflecting the white lights overhead. Shelves of food marched down the floor, and two of the walls were freezers full of drinks, ice cream, and frozen food. There was a booze section as well, and I glanced over the selection with an impressed eye. For such a small store, they had an interesting selection. There were two men working the cash registers, one of them tall and broad-shouldered while the other was thinner and stood with a bored stoop, a bad peach fuzz mustache on his lip that was not working for him.
There was a small line, so we stood at the end and waited for our turn at the counter. I had a photo of Michael ready on my phone, along with one of the blurry images Fiona had texted us, but I didn’t think its quality was such that anyone would be able to recognize the man in it.
The line inched upward as the cashiers worked at a glacial speed, and I distracted myself by studying every inch of the shop. I noticed two more security cameras—one behind the counter and another in the opposite corner of the store—and there was also a door behind the counter that had a padlock on it.
