Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [775]
He watched Jared, smiling at the others as he climbed into the back seat. How ridiculous. How could he even be thinking about his stupid book? Except that Jared had commented about it, mentioning specifically about Andrew’s fictional killer taking one of his victim’s thumbs. Jared had paid attention and seemed fascinated by the book. But he was in and out of the house so quickly. And there hadn’t been a gunshot. Christ! Things were bad enough, he didn’t need to make them worse in his mind.
“So, Andrew,” Jared said as Andrew started back down the long driveway, the gravel sounding like bullets firing against the metal. “We have matching caps now. I thought I’d help myself since I know for a fact that farmer’s not gonna need it anymore.”
Andrew met Jared’s eyes in the rearview mirror, those dark, smiling, hollow eyes, and he knew. And Jared wanted him to know that this was his way of making him a part of all this, a part of his evil.
PART 4
Wrong Turn
CHAPTER 43
11:15 a.m.
Hall of Justice
Grace shoved the second videotape into the VCR. She had decided to review the security tapes from the convenience-store robberies before she talked to Max Kramer again. The investigation was at a standstill, but she didn’t like the idea of needing Max Kramer or his so-called witness. Bottom line, she didn’t trust the guy.
The tapes had been reviewed over and over again. There wasn’t much to see on any of them, anyway. The robber always wore a black mask over the bottom half of his face, a stocking cap, gloves, a dark-colored long-sleeve T-shirt and jeans. The picture wasn’t as static riddled as the bank film, but not much better. The cameras in all three stores shot down at an angle from behind the counter and included the cash register and a slice of the store, a couple of aisles and usually the back freezer case.
She had already watched each of them once and was going through them again from the beginning. She hit Play. Damn! She’d gone back too far. She kept doing it with the first tape, as well, expecting there to be more. She recognized her mistake because there had been customers in the store each time right before the robberies. But the robber always waited. He had to be outside, watching, anticipating.
Grace reached to fast-forward past the array of customers coming in and out of the camera’s view. But she paused it instead.
That was odd. Had she picked up the first tape again by mistake? She stopped and ejected it. No, this was the second one. She pushed it back in, rewound it and hit Play.
She watched the back of the store where a young man—probably a teenager, it was difficult to judge from the grainy picture—walked in front of the freezer case. She hit Pause and left the image frozen with him suspended in midstride. She found the videotape marked #1 and slipped it into the small TV/VCR combo on the shelf below. She rewound it, making sure she went back far enough then she pushed Play and watched and waited.
There he was.
She hit Pause. She stood back and examined the two screens. It had to be the same kid, same spiked hair, same loose gait and baggy jeans and the same bright white high-top tennis shoes. It was the shoes that she’d noticed first. What teenager, especially a boy, was able to keep his shoes so white? Could it be a coincidence that he was in both stores just minutes before the robberies?
She opened her file folder and shuffled through to find the stores’ addresses. One was on the north side. The other in West Omaha. The third in the northwest section.
She pulled out the third video. Two could be a coincidence. She replaced one of the others with this one, rewound and hit Play.
Nothing.
She rewound farther back and tried again. The store was busy. This must have been the afternoon robbery. The others had been at night. But this last one the robber must have gotten cocky and struck in the afternoon, in broad daylight.
Grace watched closely. She didn’t see him. No walk-through in front