Free Capture by Roger Smith Page A

her skin whiter than he’s ever seen it, her eyes wild in her head. Is she taking her meds?
    Then, battling to keep his voice level, he says, “We need to make a decision about that.” He clears his throat. “I mean, do we bury her or cremate her?”
    Caroline’s eyes squeeze closed and when she opens them, just for a moment, he sees the woman he fell in love with. “Oh, Jesus, Nick, is this really happening? To our baby?”
    He goes to her and she lets him hold her, her voice muffled by his shoulder. “I can’t imagine Sunny in the ground. It’s just too hideously Edgar Allan Poe. Worms and claustrophobia.”
    “I feel the same. So we agree on cremation?”
    She breaks free of him and Exley sees blankness settle on her face like a mask. “Burn her. Burn her, for God’s sake. Just get it over and done with.”
     
     

Chapter 12
     
     
     
    Exley sits on Sunny’s bed listening to the muffled rattle of Caroline touch-typing from behind the closed bedroom door. A sound he hasn’t heard in a long while. He has his phone in one hand and Vernon Saul’s card in the other, trying to find the courage to call him and ask for his help.
    A low rumble drowns out Caroline’s keyboard as a car with a powerful engine surges to a halt outside the house, exhausts burping when the engine is cut. Walking toward the window, Exley catches a few bars of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” before Marvin Gaye is silenced.
    A brown man in jeans and a T-shirt emerges from the car—some kind of customized Honda—and it takes Exley a moment to recognize Vernon Saul out of uniform. The rent-a-cop limps toward the gate, as if he is responding to some telepathic summons. Exley waits for the buzzer but the big man disappears from view.
    Exley leaves the room and walks down the stairs, through the front door and goes down the pathway and out the gate. Vernon stands before a small metal door that opens onto a space recessed into the wall.
    “Mr. Exley,” Vernon says, looking his way.
    “Call me Nick, please.”
    “Nick. I’m just replacing the hard drive that stores the images from the surveillance cameras. The last one was full.” Vernon holds up a small black metal rectangle. “Sorry if I disturbed you.”
    “No, you haven’t disturbed me at all, Vernon. In fact I was about to call you.”
    The big man checks that the new hard drive is seated correctly and connects its terminals. Then he closes the door and locks it before replying. “Is there something I can do for you?”
    Exley stares at the hard drive in the man’s hand. “The cameras would have captured what happened last night, wouldn’t they?”
    Vernon shrugs. “Some of it, yes.”
    Exley feels sick as he understands those lenses caught him smoking weed while his child drowned. Witnessed his culpability.
    “Vernon, what happens to that drive?”
    The big man steps up to him. “Look, Nick, I haven’t been completely honest with you. The drive’s not full.” Exley battles with Vernon’s accent, trying to follow this. “I’m taking it because, well, because I know the data on here is sensitive. Tragic. And I also know that there are people out there who are… let’s just say they’re sick . They get their hands on this type of material and next thing it’s up on YouTube.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry if I’m upsetting you, but this is just the way the world is.”
    Exley can only nod.
    “So, I’m taking this down to Sniper headquarters and I’m personally going to erase it. You can rely on me.”
    Exley exhales his relief. “Vernon, you’re off duty now, aren’t you?”
    “Ja, I’m not working today.”
    “So you came all the way here, to do this?”
    Vernon shrugs. “Nick, I was there last night. I understand the depth of your pain. I can’t let nobody add to it.”
    Exley steps out of his own internal chaos for long enough to register that Vernon Saul stinks of sweat, that his clothes are creased and look slept in, and that his dark