The Millionaires - Brad Meltzer [97]
“What the hell was that?” Gallo asked.
“What’re you talking about?”
“On the sheet! Play that back!”
“Hold on a second…”
“Now!” Gallo roared.
Frantically pressing buttons on the camera, DeSanctis froze the picture and punched Rewind. Onscreen, it scrolled in reverse, and Maggie’s sheet zoomed back toward her window.
“Right there!” Gallo shouted. “Hit Play!”
The tape whirred back to normal speed. With the camera on the dashboard, Gallo and DeSanctis leaned in close. For the second time, they watched as Maggie readjusted the sheet. Her left hand clipped on the clothespin. Her right was underneath, holding it all in place. In one quick movement, Maggie pulled her hand out and sent the sheet across the alley—and just like before, there was a fuzzy white dot right below where the clothespin was clipped.
“There!” Gallo said, pausing the picture. He pointed right at the white dot. “What’s that?”
“I-I have no idea,” DeSanctis said. “Maybe her arm touched the blanket…”
“Of course her arm touched the blanket—she had it under there for a full minute, moron—but that dot’s still the only thing that’s lit up!”
DeSanctis leaned in even closer. “You think she had something under there?”
“You tell me—you’re the expert in this nonsense—what could possibly hold a heat signature for that long?”
Squinting at the screen, he shook his head. “If she was hiding it in her hand… if her palms were sweaty… it could be anything—plastic… a piece of clothing… even some folded-up paper would—”
DeSanctis stopped.
Gallo looked skyward. Four stories up, Maggie Caruso’s white sheet flapped in the night air. Across the alley, the window directly opposite Maggie’s was black. Without a word, DeSanctis stopped the tape and raised the thermal imager. And as the dark green picture came into focus, there was something new inside the window—a faint, milky gray silhouette of an older woman staring out at the clothesline. Watching. And patiently waiting.
“Son of a bitch!” Gallo shouted, punching the roof of the car. The dome light blinked on and off at the impact. “How the hell did we miss that?”
“Should I—?”
“Find the neighbor!” he continued to yell. “I want to know who she is, how long she’s known them, and most important, I want a list of every call that’s gone in and out of that house in the last forty-eight hours!”
* * * *
“If she was hiding it in her hand… if her palms were sweaty… it could be anything—plastic… a piece of clothing… even some folded-up paper would—”
There was a long pause as DeSanctis’s voice faded. Joey glanced up the block, where both agents were staring up at—
“Son of a bitch!” Gallo thundered as a high-pitched feedback screech squealed through Joey’s receiver. Wincing from the sound, she turned the volume down. As she turned it back up, the only thing left was static.
“Oh, c’mon,” she moaned, slapping the side of the receiver. Nothing but static. She hit the Power button and restarted the system. Static and more static. “No, no, no…” she begged, madly twisting knobs to retune the frequency. “Please… not now…” Reaching the end of the dial, she looked back up the block. Gallo pounded the steering wheel with his fist, screaming something at DeSanctis. Red brake lights lit up and Gallo abruptly started the car.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Joey mumbled.
Tires groaned as they spun angrily against a patch of filthy snow. Finding traction, the car swerved wildly into the street, almost smacking into a brown Plymouth halfway up the block. And as Joey watched the red brake lights turn the corner and disappear, she knew right there and then that it was just the start of an even longer night.
42
Welcome to Suckville—Population: Two,” Charlie says dryly, knee-deep in the sea of cardboard file boxes.
“Can you please stop complaining