“From what she said, he thought it might be stuff at a pharmacy. I don’t think it was the first time she’d done it. We were called out on this pretty fast. Agents don’t have a lot of time to prepare.”
“So she’d gone to get things before?” said Lancaster. “Maybe from the same place?”
“Right. Just travel stuff, probably,” said Bogart, staring out the window, his mind evidently a long way away.
Decker sat back, closed his eyes, and thought for a moment. “There’s an all-night pharmacy two blocks over from the Century. That’s where I would go to pick up stuff I’d need while traveling. And it has video cameras in the parking lot.”
“Well, let’s go see if it shows anything,” said Bogart.
The drive only took about twenty minutes at that time of the morning and with Bogart exceeding all posted speed limits. It was not yet 4 a.m. and thus Burlington was still very much asleep. Traffic was scant, pedestrians nonexistent.
There were two people in the open-all-night pharmacy. One was behind bulletproof glass with the cash register, the other was stocking deodorant on a shelf. Both had been on duty since 8 p.m. Bogart showed the photograph of Lafferty and asked if either employee had seen her.
“I haven’t seen her tonight. But she came in the night before.”
Decker said, “Which means she might not have made it here.”
They asked for and were given the DVD from the surveillance cameras for the parking lot.
“She would have walked here,” said Decker. “It’s too close to drive.”
“And none of our vehicles are missing,” said Bogart.
They loaded the DVD into a laptop Bogart had in the SUV. There was a time stamp on the feed and Bogart fast-forwarded to right before 9:30. The frames ran as they all huddled around the screen watching intently. When they got to 9:58, Decker saw it.
“That’s her.”
Lafferty had emerged from an alley next to the pharmacy. She had taken two steps when she was abruptly pulled back into the alley.
“Run it again and slow it down,” said Decker.
Bogart did so, playing through the scene five more times and enlarging the images as much as he could on the small screen.
Decker stared at the screen intently, every pixel being memorized and placed in his head. “Can’t see who it is.”
“We can try to enlarge the shots,” said Bogart. “My guys can work wonders.”
“He knew the camera was there,” said Decker. “Just like at the school. He didn’t want to be seen. At least certain parts of him.”
“How did he overpower her so quickly?” said Bogart. “Lafferty was no weakling.”
Decker said, “There was a gloved hand at her throat. There might have been something in it. She seemed to go stiff pretty quickly. I think he injected her with a paralytic.”
“Blood test on her body will confirm that,” said Lancaster.
“So nine-fifty-eight she was taken,” said Decker.
“But her TOD was around midnight,” noted Lancaster.
“Which means they had her for two hours before they killed her,” completed Decker.
Bogart looked strained. “You said she was mutilated. Do you think they did anything else to her?”
Decker shook his head. “My wife was not raped. But she was mutilated. In that same…area,” he added.
“So what is this about?” asked Bogart. “Why do that? It makes no sense.”
“When I asked Leopold if he’d done anything else to my wife he didn’t answer. Now, the mutilation was never made public. He could only know about it if he was there, which we know he wasn’t. But someone who was there could have told him about it. But since he didn’t answer, I don’t know if he didn’t know or just didn’t want to tell me. Either way, he’s still a suspect.”
Bogart rubbed his face. “What else?”
“They had her for two hours. Probably some of that time she was conscious before they killed her.”
“What would they do to her?” asked Lancaster.
Decker shook his head. “Not guy. Guys.”
“What makes you say that?” asked a startled Lancaster as Bogart stared at him. “The shooter appears to be a loner. You said that.”
“And I was wrong,” Decker said decisively.
“But what specifically makes you think there could be more than one man involved?” asked Bogart.
“Because no one can be in two places at the same time.”