“Stop!” I say fifteen seconds later as the black vehicle first rolls on-screen. He tags the first frame and then tags another frame after Leonardo parks. With the parameters for the beginning and end of the frame separation identified, Dex clicks a button and starts the extraction. Within seconds the segment of video is dissected into almost six hundred separate still-frame images showing angles of the front, side, and rear.
Dex is already lost in the hunt, almost oblivious to my presence. His hands work the keyboard and the mouse at a furious pace as he views one photo after another, enlarging some, sharpening others. He selects a dozen of the best images, including shots of the front, side, and rear of Leonardo’s car, and then opens the forensic vehicle analysis database.
“See here,” he says, drawing my attention to the rear of the vehicle with his index finger, “the little flash. That’s the third brake light. That’s what I call a ‘window-high’ position because it’s at the inside top edge of the back window. You’ll also notice the license plate is not down on the bumper, but up between the taillights; that’s a ‘center-high’ position. The picture quality is about average for surveillance video—”
“Which means it sucks,” I say.
“Which means it sucks,” he replies. “Still, there’s plenty to crunch through the database.” He moves his finger to a dark spot behind the rear door. “There’s some kind of reflection here, looks like a window behind the door—hard to be certain with the car being black. Let’s take a look from another angle.”
Pulling two side shots and a front angle to the top of the image stack, he immediately taps the screen and with an I-told-you-so tone says, “There it is! See the reflection? There’s definitely a window behind the rear door. That narrows our search considerably.”
“How so?”
“It’s just not that common, particularly with the newer cars. Let’s run it and see what we get.” Pulling up a query screen, he selects each of the identified criteria, then adds two more, pointing out that the taillights are configured in a “horizontal sweep” and have “bleed,” a term he uses to identify taillights that extend into the trunk. After checking boxes next to each criterion, he hits the query button and the database instantly returns thirty results with links to photos for each one.
“Volvos, Audis, Hondas, and Hyundais, but none appear to have what I’m looking for,” Dex hums as he clicks methodically through the pictures. “Oh, wait. Here we go.” Tapping the screen several times, he points at the array of images on display. “That’s it. No doubt whatsoever. It’s a first-generation Saturn L-series sedan, which was manufactured for model years 2000 through 2005 … though it looks like this one is a 2000-through-2002 model.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Look at the front. The L-series got a face-lift for 2003 that included a much larger grille and a redesigned front fascia. That,” he adds emphatically, “is the pre-face-lift model.”
“So we’re looking for a black 2000 to 2002 Saturn L-series sedan.” I roll the information around in my head a minute, digesting it, turning it inside out. “Too old to be a rental,” I say to myself; the words come out as a mumble. “That’s good. Good.” I’m pacing now, something I do when I’m thinking. It drives Jimmy up the wall. Sometimes I do it just for fun.
Dex is at my back when the thought comes to me and I snap around so quickly I trip over my own feet and have to catch myself on the corner of a file cabinet. When my mother called me graceful while growing up, she didn’t mean it as a compliment.
And tripping over my own feet was the least of my concerns as a teen; the real damage came from walking into walls, poles, mailboxes, and doors, particularly in public, and worse when it happened in front of classmates, which was often.
For years I blamed it on puberty and its corresponding growth spurts, but I had to give up that excuse in my early twenties and finally admit that I get distracted. Often. Of course, it doesn’t help that layer upon layer of shine covers everything I see. I can turn some of it off for short spurts, but it’s hard to turn it all off without my glasses.
Righting myself with as much dignity as I can muster, I plant myself in front of Dex’s desk. “You have access to DAPS, don’t you?”
He just smiles and swivels one of the monitors in my direction. The Washington State Driver and Plate Search database, also known as DAPS, is on the screen. “I pulled up every Saturn in Whatcom County with current registration,” he says. “It should be printing right about now.” As if on cue, the printer hums to life and quickly kicks out several pages of data.
“I’m also going to print a statewide list,” Dex says, “in case your theory about him being from out-of-county is true.”
Dex knows the Jess Parker homicide as well as I do, probably better. He wasn’t at the sheriff’s office at the time of the murder, but quickly got up to speed when he was hired a few years after, organizing the vast four-thousand-page case report into a searchable database that scored every single document, tip, or follow-up report by relevance. He did the same for the 137 identified suspects, most of whom have since been eliminated from the list, either because their DNA didn’t match, they had strong, verified alibis, or, in one case, they were dead at the time of the homicide.
Dead is always a good alibi.
Dex is as frustrated by the case as I am. And I know he’s suspicious of my claims that Leonardo has been visiting the mall. He’s not a tracker, but I can tell from our conversations that he’s done some research since Leonardo’s first shopping trip a number of years ago. He knows that human tracking doesn’t work on asphalt, or on the frequently polished floors of Bellis Fair Mall. To his credit, he doesn’t ask too many questions.