Free Becoming Quinn by Brett Battles Page A

shrugged and said, “I don’t recognize them, but I get off at four every afternoon” let Jake know she’d realized the same thing. But she didn’t say anything.
    Rookie mistake , he thought. If you’re doing a business-to-business search, you either got the names of whoever might have been on duty at the time of the incident and contacted them directly, or did the search at the same time the incident occurred. But while they could get names, contacting them seemed like taking things one step too far.
    Already feeling defeated, they continued on. Two gas stations, a coffee shop and a donut place all had the same answer: “Sorry, haven’t seen them.”
    It was as they entered another convenience store that he realized he truly was an idiot.
    When the clerk gave him the same response the others had been giving, instead of saying, “Thanks,” and leaving, Jake said, “I see you have security cameras.”
    “Uh, yeah,” the clerk said.
    Berit had been turning to leave, but Jake’s comment stopped her.
    “Do you record, or are they just live feeds?”
    “Insurance wants us to record,” the clerk said.
    Jake tried to contain his optimism. “You keep the recordings on site?”
    The clerk motioned toward the rear of the store. “In the office.”
    “How far back?”
    “Supposed to keep two months’ worth,” the clerk said, looking a bit uncomfortable.
    “But you don’t?” Jake asked.
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Sir, how far back?”
    The clerk grimaced as if he were in pain. “Two weeks. The owner doesn’t like to waste the money on VHS tapes. Don’t tell him I told you, though, okay?”
    Jake tried to look stern, while inside he was feeling relief. “I’ll tell you what. We won’t say anything if you let us take a look at a couple of them.”
    “Sure. No problem.”
    “You have a monitor somewhere we can use?”
    “Let me show you,” the clerk said.
    Unlike at the Lawrence Hotel, Jake knew exactly the time range they needed to look at, so it was a simple matter of identifying the correct tape and fast-forwarding to the time in question. Unfortunately, the men had not stepped through the door in the hour and a half prior to the murder. But he didn’t let that get him down. He’d found a bandage for his flawed plan, so there was hope.
    He and Berit retraced their steps to the places they’d already checked, and in all but one, they were allowed a look at the security footage. Unfortunately, the men had not stopped at any of those places, either.
    Because they had to watch video everywhere they stopped, their progress was slower than Jake would have hoped, and soon it was approaching noon.
    “This is a waste of time. You know that, right?” Berit said as they pulled away from yet another gas station.
     Jake stared out the front window, saying nothing, but thinking the same thing. They probably should just give up, but that feeling that he was right was still nagging at him, telling him to keep going.
    “Just another thirty minutes?” he asked.
    She frowned, then rolled her eyes. “Thirty minutes. But that’s it.”
    “Thanks.”
    The next two businesses had no security footage at all. After that, they hit a coffee shop called Oscar’s Grind. As they walked in, Jake knew they could make only a couple more stops, at most, before the thirty minutes were up.
    Once more they went through their routine with the manager. Oscar’s had a camera system, but to save on storage space, the system was programmed to take still images every two seconds instead of shooting continuous video.
    “What night was that you wanted to look at?” the manager asked.
    They were in the back room, crowded around a small desk that held a monitor and a VHS player.
    “Saturday, between seven and nine,” Jake told him.
    The manager stuck the appropriate tape in the machine, and soon the monitor filled with an image of the coffee shop. The angle was from behind the cash register, looking over the counter. In the