The Innocent (Will Robie 1)

He led him to one corner and indicated a blank screen.

“Here’s what we have so far.”

The agent punched some keys and the file uploaded to the screen.

Robie sat in a swivel chair, folded his arms across his chest, and waited.

“Have you looked at it yet?” Robie asked.

“First time for me too.”

Robie felt his pulse quicken.

This might truly be enlightening for everybody, he thought.

The door opened and he saw Vance. She closed it behind her and walked over to them.

“Am I in time for the show?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” said the other agent respectfully.

She sat down next to Robie, their knees nearly touching. She focused on the screen that was now coming to life.

The bus came into view. It traveled a few hundred yards. Robie was relieved to see that the camera shot was not on the side of the bus with the door. A few seconds later the bus exploded.

Robie tensed again. With the bus destroyed, there would be nothing to block the camera’s view across the street, where Robie and Julie’s pixeled figures were now rolling and eventually coming to rest. In a few seconds they would both rise and then…

The screen went bl

ack.

Robie looked at the agent controlling this process. “What happened?”

“Blast must’ve knocked out the camera. That can happen. It’s not like bank cameras are built for that stuff.”

He tapped more buttons on his keyboard and finally called a tech over. The tech executed more keystrokes and five minutes later they still had nothing.

Robie sat through two more video feeds that were very much like the first two. Opposite side of the bus and the cameras went down after the explosion.

“Any cameras around the bus depot showing the passengers getting on?” asked Robie. He had searched his memory but could not recall any such surveillance.

“Not that we can find right now,” said Vance. “But it’s early days yet. And we’re trying to locate more footage. Particularly from the other side of the street. And everybody has cell phones and most cell phones have camera and video features, so we’re trying to find anyone who was there last night who might have seen or even photographed or filmed something in the aftermath. Though if they did it probably would be on all the news shows or YouTube by now. I’m going to have my guys go check for more surveillance cameras along the bus route this afternoon, after we get this crime scene under better control.”

Which means I have to find it first, Robie thought.

CHAPTER

48

ROBIE STOOD NEAR what was, for him, ground zero.

The remains of the bus were being sifted through by a dozen forensics techs, with an FBI evidence truck waiting nearby to take these items away to the lab. Just like at Donnelly’s, roadblocks were everywhere, holding back the reporters who wanted to see and know everything right now.

He looked left and right, up and down. Vance was correct; nothing obvious that he could see. The bank video across the street was already in the database but thankfully also had been knocked out by the blast. He gazed upward. Surveillance camera about ten feet off the ground at the corner of one intersection. It was pointing downward and had gotten a shot of the bus as well. If it had been pointed a bit differently, it might have captured on film both him and Julie as they escaped.

Like football, a game of inches. Some things were just beyond your control. Then you counted on luck.

But how much more luck can I count on?

His attention turned to the troublesome part of the street, the side he and Julie had been on. He started to walk. With the angle of coverage a camera might have on the street, he gauged what his box of concern should be and added ten percent on each end just to be safe. He covered this ground methodically.

He quickly registered on a camera posted on the wall about twenty feet to the left of where the bus had gone down. It seemed to be pointing directly at the spot of the explosion. He looked at the business located there.

Bail bondsman. Of course. In this neighborhood the owner probably had a ready group of customers. He looked through the plate glass window with rusted iron bars in a crisscross pattern fronting it.

The sign to the right of the door said, “Ring Bell.”

Robie rang the bell.

A voice came out of a small white box set to the door.

“Yeah?”

“Federal agent. Need to talk to you.”

“So talk.”

“Face-to-face.”

Robie heard footsteps approaching. A short, wide man in his fifties with more white hair in a mustache over his lip than on his head looked out at him through the window.

“Let me see your badge.”

Robie pressed it against the glass.

“DCIS?”

“Part of DOD. Military.”

“What do you want with me?”

“Open the door.”

The man pulled the heavy door open. He was dressed in black slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. Above his loafers Robie saw pink skin.

Robie stepped through and closed the door behind him.

“So what do you want?” the man asked again.

“The bus that blew up across the street?”

“What about it?”

“You have a surveillance camera.”

“Right, so?”

“FBI been by to see you about it yet?”

“No.”

“I’m going to have to confiscate the film or DVD or whatever you use to house the images captured by the camera.”

“That would be nothing.”

“What?”

“That camera hasn’t worked for a year. Why do you think I had to come to the window to see who it was at the door, smart guy?”

“So why leave it up?”

“As a deterrent, why else? This is not exactly a safe area.”

“I’ll still need to see for myself.”

“Why?”

“Smart guys like to cover all the bases.”

However, it turned out the man was telling the truth. The system had evidently been broken a long time, and when he examined the camera Robie saw that the cable running to it inside the building wasn’t even connected.

Robie left and continued his walk.

He had nearly gotten to the end of the sector he’d outlined when he saw the homeless guy from the night the bus had exploded, the one who’d been dancing around yelling about wanting some s’mores to grill on the bonfire of metal and flesh. It looked like he and his fellow homeless had been evicted from the crime scene and were huddled on the other side of the police barriers. There were three of them, each with their trash bags filled, no doubt, with everything they possessed.

The homeless guy looked like he’d been on the streets for a long time. His clothes and body were filthy. His fingernails were long and blackened and his teeth rotted. Robie could see that the reporters were giving the three a wide berth. He wondered if it had occurred to any of the journalists that the people of the streets might have seen something that night. Even so, Robie wondered how successful the reporters might have been in getting any reliable information out of them.

And then he wondered if the FBI had attempted to interview them. Vance’s folks might not have even known they were there that night. Might not know that they could possess valuable information. And also some