Kate froze, struggling to not show her shock. She was about to face one of the hardest times of her career. She didn’t say anything at the time, as she stared at the dead pedophile, sitting in the driver’s seat of his registered vehicle, the Forensics team working around the body even now. “Do we have a time of death?” she asked the coroner.
He shook his head. “He’s been dead at least six to eight hours. So, somewhere between midnight and four a.m. would be close.”
She nodded slowly. “That’s a small window. We need to find out how long the vehicle was parked here.” With that, she headed into the coffee shop and asked the staff. Most of them had come back on at six this morning, and the vehicle had already been there. One of the new staffers coming on for his shift had called in the scene.
With the names of those who had closed the night before, Kate stood outside and started phoning them. A couple she woke up, and some were angry, although their tone changed once she explained what the problem was.
One had seen the vehicle there, but he wasn’t sure that anybody had been inside it. He’d left at 1:30 a.m., and the only reason he had noticed it was because he’d parked out back too. He couldn’t give any specific identification on the vehicle, just that a small truck was in the parking lot when he left, and it was a dark color. Which matched the description of this one perfectly. “Did you see anybody around it? Anybody coming to or from it?”
“No,” he said. “Should be camera footage though.”
“We’re getting that,” she said. After she hung up, she sought out the manager and asked, “Do you have security cameras?”
He nodded and handed her a phone number. “I already requested that it be prepared for you. This number is for the security company. They should have the video feeds ready.”
“Do you have any access?”
“No,” he said. “If there’s anything suspicious, we contact them.”
“Good enough,” she said. She headed back outside to call them. When she heard somebody at the end of the line, she identified herself, the business name involved, and the property address. “I’m looking for any activity around the parking lot in the back,” she said.
“We can scan through it here, or do you want the feeds sent to you?”
“I need the feeds,” she said instantly. “And I need them now. I’ll be in my office in about twenty minutes.”
“Sure. Give me your email address, and we’ll send it to you immediately,” he said.
When she hung up the phone, she walked to where Rodney was, glad to see the coroner here too. “I have the security feeds coming to my email, so I’m heading to the office to go over them.”
Rodney nodded. “Let’s hope we have some forensics evidence on this one.”
She stopped, turned to look back at the deceased male, and asked the nearby cops, “Anybody check his wallet yet?”
“I have it here, if you want to take a look,” the coroner said.
Kate and Rodney walked around to the side. “Anything missing?”
“No cash—which makes it look like a robbery—and, even more so, no cards.”
“So maybe it’s completely unrelated,” she murmured. “Or made to look like a robbery.” As she glanced into the back seat of the vehicle, she noted, “He’s got several suitcases here. I presume he was running.”
“He probably had a decent amount of cash on him too,” Rodney pointed out. “So a robbery is then quite likely.”
She thought about it and said, “That would make sense. We can check his bank records to see if he’d pulled out any money.”
They spent another ten minutes studying the scene, before they returned to the office. By the time they made it back, she was chilled and damp. That was the thing about living in a coastal town like Vancouver; sometimes it was absolutely stunning, but, when the rains started, you felt like you would never get dry or warm again.
At her desk, she searched through the video feeds. Lots of vehicles in the hours just before Starbucks closed, an amazing amount. She hadn’t realized just how many people were out at that hour. But then the nightlife in the city was always active.
As she watched, vehicles came and went; then their victim’s truck pulled in slowly. She watched as Nico got out, looked around nervously, then walked rapidly into Starbucks. He came out a good ten or fifteen minutes later, a cup in his hand. He was joined by another man, whose back was to the video cameras. She studied the frame, straightening slowly. “I think it’s him,” she said in amazement.
Rodney came to stand behind her. “You think who is him?”
She reached out and tapped the man talking to the victim on her frozen screen. “I think this is the guy I saw outside Nico’s house.”
“It would make sense,” he said.
But then the one guy disappeared, and Nico got back into his vehicle. He sat there for a long moment. The other guy came back again with a cup of coffee and slipped into the passenger seat. They stayed like that, talking for at least another ten or fifteen minutes, while she waited impatiently. She didn’t want to speed up the video camera, even though she was dying to see what else happened. She didn’t want to miss anything.