And that was the sorry truth.
“The next of kin for Brenda Sutherland has been notified,” Pescoli announced as she walked into Alvarez’s office a little later in the day.
“I heard.” Alvarez had been at the computer all morning and through lunch, catching up on other work while going over all of the evidence for the ice-mummy murders one more time. The autopsy report on Brenda Sutherland wouldn’t be in for a few days, but she expected it would be about the same as the two other victims.
So far. Three victims so far. There was still Johnna Phillips who hadn’t been accounted for and there could be others as well, women who hadn’t yet been reported missing. Somehow they had to stop him. She rotated the kinks from her neck and couldn’t help but notice the faint strains of some familiar Christmas song just audible over the noise and clatter of the station. Phones rang, the printers chunked out information, the old heating system rumbled, conversation floated down the hallways and every so often there was a bark of laughter over the click of keystrokes. Still, above it all, a Christmas carol could be heard, if you listened hard enough.
“Darla’s going to give another press conference, right? With the FBI?”
“Later. Yeah. The FBI is planning to ask the public for help.” Pescoli was smiling a little.
“What?” Alvarez asked. “You know something ...” She felt a little trickle of excitement in her blood. “What?”
“We finally have the tape from a security camera mounted over the alley behind the music store. The film’s pretty grainy, but the computer geeks have cleaned it up. Nigel Timmons might be a pain in the ass, but he knows what he’s doing. They’ve got it in the task force room. I thought you’d want to take a look.”
“Is he on it?” Alvarez asked, shoving back her chair.
“Yep.”
“Who is he?”
“Don’t know. Thought you might want to take a look.”
“Hell, yeah, I do.” Already on her feet, Alvarez hurried down the hallway. Was it possible? Could they have the creep? Had he finally fouled up enough that they could ID him and arrest the maniac?
Adrenaline fired her blood as she walked into the task force room. On the largest television screen, a tape had been stopped, but Nigel Timmons, self-important as ever, was explaining how they’d improved the quality of the film.
“Just play it,” Pescoli said to the tech. His faux hawk was a little messy today, his eyes a tad bloodshot from his contacts, but he did as he was bid.
“We’ve actually spliced the tape of the alley with that from the traffic cams,” he said and Alvarez watched as, in grainy black-and-white, a pickup with a canopy came into view, its license plate obscured, and a big man climbed out of the driver’s side, then opened the back end of the truck, where he pulled out a dolly and placed a huge trash can upon it.
“Dear God,” Alvarez said as she realized she was watching the killer. He was dressed all in a dark color, black or navy blue, probably, wearing a ski coat and ski pants, gloves, ski mask and hat, nothing distinctive about any of the apparel. He was even wearing ski goggles, as if he knew that he might be filmed and, even in darkness, was disguising his eyes.
Jerkily, he rolled the trash can on the dolly out of the camera’s field of vision but was picked up again, on another camera, this one placed under the awning in the front of the store. Quickly, he moved the plywood carolers as far as the security chain would allow, deposited the ice statue, replaced the singers into their original position and hurried back down the alley pushing the dolly.
“He accomplishes this in less than four minutes,” Nigel said as the truck, obviously left idling, drove away from the screen.
“Just like that,” Pescoli said.
“Here are shots from the traffic cams.” Alvarez watched as a series of pictures that had been spliced together showed up.
“You got those plates, right?”
“Stolen,” Halden said. “Off an ’86 Chevy Nova hatchback and put on this truck, a Dodge. Already checked; the report was made six weeks ago. The guy noticed them after a night of drinking at a bar in Missoula. We know the date, he’s got a receipt f
or his drinks, so we’re checking there, but he was parked on a side street, no camera.”
The image on the television went back to the perpetrator pushing his trash can on the dolly.
“Didn’t anyone see him?”
“Three fifty-seven in the morning. In the middle of a blizzard. And get this, it was garbage pickup morning.”
“Not quite that early.”
“Right. The trucks don’t reach that part of town until between six and six thirty, so that was probably just random. Anyway, we’ll ask the public today, see if anyone was up looking out their window at that time, but it’s a long shot,” Chandler said, and Halden, holding a cup of coffee and staring at the screen, nodded.
“There is nothing identifying about this guy, aside from the fact that he’s probably about six foot one, maybe two.”