Page 14 of 4th Silence (Schock Sisters Mystery #4)

Meg

C harged energy fills the room while Charlie downloads the thumb drive to her laptop.

Despite JJ sending this footage, he’s on my shit list. I understand his passion for the job, but really? Dumping my sister?

If I didn’t think Charlie would bury me alive, I’d call him myself and blast him.

I may risk it anyway.

“Meg!”

Charlie’s sharp tone snaps me from my spiraling thoughts, and I swivel to face her. The artist in me can’t help but notice the flush in her cheeks. The spark in her eyes is classic Charlie. If we weren’t deep into a murder case, I’d be sketching her.

We Schocks get off on our work.

Even when our souls are crushed.

Charlie passes me the thumb drive. “Download everything to your laptop. Then back it up to the cloud. We’re not taking any chances.”

Since I don’t have it with me, I set the drive on the table while Charlie hammers away at her keyboard.

“I’ll put it on the big screen,” she says.

Seconds later—voila—a grainy, black and white video appears on the large television mounted on the wall.

I once hated that thing. I thought it was tacky.

Now?

Not so tacky.

Mom slides into the chair next to Matt, the two of them swiveling to face the television.

“This is good,” she says. “We can study it frame by frame.”

“Great,” Matt deadpans, his voice flat. “I’ll clear my day.”

Indeed.

Charlie taps her keyboard, and footage rolls of what appears to be the front of the Hartman mansion.

“That’s the front,” Mom says.

“And?” I ask, heavy on the sarcasm since we’re not blind and can see that.

“Well,” Mom claps back, upping the ante on the sarcasm.

“If you were meeting with your drug dealer or bookie, would you do it in front for everyone to see or somewhere out back? The main grounds and cottage are behind the house. If you wanted to sneak around and do deals or get high, you’d do it there.

You’d leave through the kitchen door. At the rear of the house. ”

Gotta give it to Mom on that one.

“I’ll buy that,” I say, pointing at the laptop. “Charlie, do you have footage from the yard?”

She moves her finger over the mousepad and juts her chin at the television, where a menu with different tiles appears.

“There.” Matt points at the screen. “Lower left says kitchen door.”

A click from Charlie yields another grayscale image, the quality so poor I squint and crane my neck closer as if that’ll help me see better. Security footage has come a long way in thirty years.

“For people with so much money,” Mom says, “you’d think they’d have invested in a better system. With sound.”

Charlie grunts and shoots me her I-may-have-to-kill-our-mother look.

I offer her a sympathetic smile and turn my attention back to Mom. “Check your notes. What time was the murder?”

“I don’t have to. The estimated time of death was nine-thirty.”

Using her mouse, Charlie drags the button below the video to the right and clicks.

“Eight o’clock,” I say. “Keep going.”

She tries twice more before she lands on nine-fifteen, clicks the play button, and sits back.

The video shows a group of kids of various ages hanging out in the yard. Three younger kids lie in the snow, making angels, while what appear to be older teenagers stand around watching.

As irritated as I am with Mom, I have to agree with her on the sound issue. It would be nice to have color images, as well as the option to hear what’s being said.

“Charlie,” I say, “can you zoom in on the younger kids? Maybe Tiffany is one of them.”

She does, but the already hazy video blurs even more.

“Two boys and a girl,” Charlie says.

“Tiffany had blonde hair,” Matt adds.

I focus on the girl in the image, swinging her arms and legs and smiling over her snow angel efforts. She’s not wearing a hat, and lying on the ground as she is, her hair blends with the snow.

“Even in grayscale,” I say, “light versus dark stands out. Her hair is light.”

“Meg’s right,” Mom says. “I don’t think that’s her, though. Tiffany’s face was rounder.”

“Mom,” Charlie says, “who are those boys on the ground? Do you recognize them?”

She shakes her head. “No. But I have a list in my notes of everyone in attendance.”

“Do they look like Alex?”

Mom stands and moves closer to the screen, studying it for a moment before shaking her head. “I don’t think either of them is Alex. They look too young. And the ones standing are too old.”

Interesting. “So, Alex and Tiffany aren’t in this shot?”

“Doesn’t appear so.”

I push out of my chair, move to the murder board, and grab a marker. At the bottom of my myriad of notes, I draw a line, put a hash mark in the middle, and label it nine-thirty.

“The estimated time of death,” I say, “is nine-thirty, and we’re looking at video shot at nine-fifteen.

We have no idea where Tiffany was at this time, and I’m wondering why she’s not with these kids who are close to her age.

If time of death is accurate, I don’t think it’s a stretch to think the murder could be happening while these kids are playing in the snow. ”

Matt clucks his tongue. “Time of death could easily be off by fifteen minutes. Hell, she could already be dead at this point.”

I twirl my marker at Charlie. “Get to nine-thirty. See if there’s anything suspicious?”

Charlie does her thing, dragging the icon a bit to the right and … nothing.

The screen goes black.

“Whoa,” I say, turning to Charlie. “What happened?”

She holds her hands palms up and lets out a huff. “No idea.”

Matt swivels to face her. “Did you accidentally exit or something?”

“I didn’t touch it.”

“Dirty bastards,” Mom says. “Someone erased the footage.”

Mom. Always the conspiracy theorist.

“For once,” Charlie hammers away at the keyboard. “I don’t think you’re nuts. I’m sending this to Teeg.”

Teeg. What he can do with a computer never fails to amaze.

Matt nods. “He might be able to tell if it’s been tampered with.” He spins back to the television. “Once you’re done sending it, let’s watch that last few minutes again.”

Two minutes later, Charlie resets the video, hits play, and we watch a bunch of kids loitering around the back door of the mansion. No Gerry or other adults, though.

“Wait!” Mom stabs her finger at the screen. “Zoom out, Charlie! There. On the right. See that?”

My mother makes me insane. She really does. But when I see her like this? All lit up and excited?

I get where Charlie and I come from. Where our obsessive desire for justice was born.

Charlie does as instructed, and a person—well, part of a person—comes into view. The camera angle isn’t wide enough, only allowing for a profile.

I study the image, capturing details. Oversized coat, ugly hat, collar turned up.

No hair is visible, so if it’s a woman, her hair is either very short or tucked into the hat.

The person is taller than the teens, but from this angle, it’s impossible to determine gender.

“Damn,” I say, “Can you zoom out more? Give me a better look?”

“No. That’s it. The camera must have been fixed, so we can’t see all of whoever that is.”

She rewinds to right before the person comes into view, stepping out the back door, and staying to the periphery of where the kids are.

On purpose?

If they’d just committed a murder, maybe.

“Look how he’s hunched over,” Mom says. “As if trying to hide something under that giant coat.”

Okay. Now she’s getting crazy. “You’re assuming,” I say, “it’s a man. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves on the hiding something. There’s no way to tell that. It was cold. They could be trying to stay warm.”

She pins me with a heated look that takes me back to my childhood when I decided I wanted a mural and took a marker to my freshly painted bedroom wall.

“Or hiding a murder weapon,” Mom says.

“Whoever that is,” Matt says, “knew where the blind spots were.”

Mom smacks her hand against the credenza. “Yes! That’s our killer! I’m sure of it!”

“Relax, Mom,” Charlie says. “Let’s think about this.”

Matt peers at us and cocks his head. “Someone who lives—or works—at the house might know the camera locations.”

Charlie angles her chair toward my murder board. “Meg, let’s list all the people who lived or worked at the house who might know the security system.”

With Mom’s help, we identify six. Mary and her husband. Alex and his sister, Christina. The full-time housekeeper and nanny.

“Those are only the ones who have regular access to the house,” Matt says. “There could be landscapers or maintenance people. Whoever installed and/or monitors the system would know. Plus, there are the guards at the gate.”

The guards. During our previous meeting at the U.S. Attorney’s office, Alex had said that his family had been receiving threats due to financial issues and layoffs.

“I forgot about them,” I say. “The Hartmans had a rotation that operated the gate.”

“Were they there 24/7?” Matt asks.

“For the most part,” Mom says. “From what I saw, it was rare that there wasn’t someone there. And they always had someone at the gate during events.”

“They would all know,” Charlie says, “from viewing the footage, what the camera angles were.”

I tap my timeline. “Playing devil’s advocate here. Let’s assume this person is the murderer and they’re leaving the house at nine-twentyish, that means the murder happened before nine-thirty.”

“The nine-one-one call.” Mom marches to the corner where we’ve stacked her research boxes. “I have a transcript somewhere. Everyone, take a box.”

Then we’re all in motion, and Matt hefts them onto the table, each of us taking one.

I lift a lid and groan at the number of files. We might be here a while. “Mom, do you remember who placed the initial call?”

“Of course. It was Mary.”