Blunt Force Trauma by Jeff Kerr

Author:Jeff Kerr [Kerr, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

33

The only time Santos remembered a vehicle being stored in the department garage was when Griff Turner raced to get his new Jeep Gladiator under cover during a sudden hailstorm. The garage mainly functioned as a place to search vehicles in connection with a crime. It was monitored by two video surveillance cameras, one in each bay. The feed was stored on a hard drive maintained by the county’s IT expert, Mandy Wilson. Santos had never met Wilson but had spoken to her on the phone countless times.

“Okay, I see that file. Now what?” Santos said into his phone.

“Double-click to open it up.”

Santos picked up on the impatience in her voice. “Come on, Mandy. We can’t all be computer experts.”

“You don’t have to be a computer expert to know how to open a file.”

Santos suppressed an urge to say something he’d regret. He needed her cooperation, not only to access the surveillance database but with other possible computer-related issues down the road. “It’s open.”

“Scroll down to find the date you’re interested in.”

He spun the mouse wheel. “Got it.”

“Double-click.”

He did.

“What do you see?”

“Let’s see … basement, conference room, lobby—”

“Farther down.”

“Here it is. Garage. Thanks, Mandy.”

“No problem.”

Santos ended the call. He saw a group of files on the screen labeled one through four. Assuming that each file represented a six-hour block of time and that the start time would be midnight, he opened the third one. A video player popped open. The time stamp read 12 00 00. He knew from experience that the system used military time. This file, therefore, started at noon. He clicked the play arrow.

An image of the empty garage appeared. Santos clicked on the fast-forward double arrow and watched until he saw the bay doors open. He fast-forwarded another few minutes and a tow truck appeared with Cash’s Ford Fiesta. The driver backed into the garage, lowered the Fiesta, unhooked it, and left. The door leading to the main building opened, and Frida Simmons stepped out. She walked over to the Fiesta and opened the trunk.

Frida spent a few minutes searching the vehicle. Then Vicky entered the garage. A nice girl but gullible. She and Frida held a brief conversation, after which Frida strode outside, clearly annoyed. Vicky disappeared back into the building.

The recording experienced a brief flicker, and then Frida was shown back inside the vehicle. “What the hell was that?” Santos muttered. He backed up the timeline and watched again. Frida went outside, the brief flicker, and, like magic, she was back in the Fiesta. Santos rewound the clip and watched again, this time paying attention to the time stamp. At the flicker, the numbers jumped from 12 21 36 to 12 25 42. Just over four minutes were missing.

He watched Frida continue her search. Soon, she extricated herself from the car, fetched a short dowel from a nearby workbench, and climbed back into the vehicle. Moments later, she reappeared, this time supporting an upside-down beer bottle on the dowel. A Bud Lite bottle. The reputed murder weapon.

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