“The cover had a young girl about Nadine’s age chained to a chair and the Joker was standing behind her, but all you could really see was his face. It was an awesome cover and it stuck in my mind because of that girl.”
Angie bought his explanation, no problem. She had a hard time not jumping out of her skin, though. “You wouldn’t happen to have the receipt, would you?”
Musgrave pursed his lips and fished out a wallet thick as a Bible from his back pocket. He looked a little embarrassed at its girth. “I collect paper like lint. I don’t really toss anything until I can’t sit comfortably anymore. Silly habit.”
For the next minute or so, he leafed through weeks of his life documented in the form of scrap paper. He unfolded every receipt he had stuffed in his wallet since goodness knows when and eventually handed Angie a slip of paper marked with faded blue ink. Angie confirmed it was a receipt from Atlas Comics, and the item purchased was indeed a Batman comic book. She glanced at the printed date . . . and saw it was dated six weeks ago.
“Is there surveillance footage near those stores I could look at?” It was hard to contain the excitement in her voice.
Musgrave turned to Vincent, who said, “Yeah, it’s all online. We purge the data every six months for storage reasons.”
“Could I see the footage, please?” Angie kept her expression as still as possible. She was trying to manage her own expectations. If this lead didn’t pan out, the disappointment would hit hard.
Vincent left the room and returned carrying a laptop computer. It did not take long to open the security camera system’s interface in a web browser.
“A few years back we would have had a tape library to sift through,” Vincent said. “Now it’s all digitized and easy to find footage. Mostly we use it for shoplifting cases, but we’ve certainly caught a number of other crimes on camera.” He returned his focus to the laptop screen.
Angie got up so she could peer over his shoulder. Mike did the same. Part of the interface was a map marking the various locations of installed cameras.
“Okay . . . okay. So, we’re looking for the camera near Heydari Design and Jois Fragrance. That would be . . . ah yeah, here. SF-R2R. That’s second floor, rear, second to the right.” Vincent tapped the location of the camera and entered the date March 18th. Today was the 29th day of April.
Angie said, “It would be sometime before six o’clock because that’s when Sean bought the Batman comic.”
Vincent shot Musgrave a slightly disapproving look. “Your shifts go to seven.”
Musgrave shrugged off the rebuke. “I didn’t want it to sell out. Anyway, it would be late afternoon because I bought it pretty soon after I saw her. That’s why it was so fresh in my mind and stuck there.”
“So let’s watch from four to six. See what we see,” Mike said.
Vincent queued it up. The black and white recording played in a window the size of a YouTube video. Taken from a high angle. the image resolution wasn’t great and the playback a bit grainy, but the quality was good enough to make out faces.
“Can you speed it up?” Angie asked. The anticipation was too much.
After fifteen minutes at four times normal speed, Mike shouted, “Stop!”
Vincent froze the playback. There she was. Nadine Jessup, dressed in a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a low-cut top with a backpack slung across her shoulders.
Angie’s heartbeat picked up. No feeling quite matched the adrenaline rush from closing in on a runaway. Her skin prickled and tingled. The excitement was palpable on her tongue, down her neck and arms, an energy all its own. She noted the time on the video playback. 5:15 in the afternoon. “Advance it slowly, please.”
Vincent clicked a button on the interface.
Nadine moved in slow motion. After a few a moments, a man carrying a bag from Heydari Design appeared in the frame.
Angie studied him carefully. Tall, handsome, balding, but in a way that suited him. He wore a nice-looking suit, Oxford shirt underneath. The black and white video meant she couldn’t tell the color of either. He had a conversation with Nadine, but the angle was wrong for lip reading. Angie knew people who could do it if she had a better quality video. They must have been talking about shopping because the man took out a scarf from his Heydari bag. The man and Nadine chatted for a moment, presumably about the scarf, before the man put it back in the bag.
The conversation continued. What could they be saying to each other, Angie wondered. The man took something out of his wallet—it looked like a business card—and handed it to Nadine, who took it a little apprehensively.