“Ah, that will help. Good work. I’ll add it in, see if anything changes.” They hung up, and Mike’s email dinged.
“Finally,” she said. “Video feed from Elaine’s building is here. Why would they keep the tapes off-site? Took us forever to get it.”
Nicholas sat beside her as she opened the feed on her laptop. It had been taken from the camera in the building’s lobby, and the time stamp read 10:14 a.m.
They saw a tall, thin man wearing a black jacket and slacks with a hank of white hair under a black watch cap. He walked with confidence, looking neither right nor left, but away from the camera, so they couldn’t see his face. He had a key to the building’s door. He let himself in, and as the heavy glass swung closed and he passed the camera, they saw the small backpack on his left shoulder.
“That’s the man who attacked us in the garage, Mike, I’m sure of it.”
The video fast-forwarded to 12:10 p.m. They watched the man exit. He was wearing a Yankees baseball cap now, and his jacket was apparently reversible; it was now a light gray. As he walked out the door he again tilted his face down so the camera couldn’t catch any details. All they could see was a thin knife-blade nose and a small smile playing on his lips. He turned and they had a full-on shot of the lower portion of his jaw, but only for a fraction of a second, and then he strolled out of the frame. The video stopped.
Mike said, “He looks awfully happy for someone who just committed a double murder.”
“He looked happy last night, too, when he was trying to kill us. Play it again.”
She rewound the tape. “He’s a professional. He’s aware of the cameras, knows exactly what to do to avoid them. I don’t know if there’s enough to run him through the facial-recognition database.”
“Zachery’s email says they’re trying.” She played it again. “Who is he working for? He doesn’t look Russian, does he?”
“Not really, no. Are the cameras on the street able to capture where he goes? Does he have a car, or does he walk away?”
She scanned the email. “This is all we have. I’m sure they’ll send us more if they find something else.”
“Play it once more. Watch the backpack he’s carrying.”
She looked closely.
Nicholas said, “See, as he exits? Look how much farther down his torso the bottom of the bag is. He’s carrying something heavy, something he didn’t have when he went in.”
“Elaine’s laptop?”
“Most likely. Can you ask Gray to see if he can identify what sort of backpack it is? It may give us something.”
“Nicholas, you’re grasping at straws.”
“It’s better than nothing.”
He was angry now. It was bad enough imagining what happened, but to see Elaine’s murderer, a smile on his face, almost as if he were whistling, casually strut out of the building without a care in the world? It burned him. And poor Elaine had followed him out several minutes later, stumbled to the river, and fell to her death.
Mike laid her hand on his arm. “We’ll get him. You know we will.”
He realized his hands were fisted, and he relaxed them. “I hate being in the dark, and I don’t like being played for a fool. We’re still ten steps behind these buggers, and it’s starting to tick me off.”
55
Brighton Beach, New York
Friday, noon
It was nearly noon, gray and overcast, windy, no sun at all. After three hours of sitting here watching Anatoly’s fancy Mediterranean-style mansion, Agent Ben Houston still hadn’t seen any movement—no one turning on lights against the gloom, no one coming out to get the paper, walk a dog, drive somewhere, nothing, which meant Anatoly still had to be at home.