Page 16 of 4th Silence (Schock Sisters Mystery #4)

Thumps and muttering come from below. Gordy returns, dust streaking his shirt and a black plastic case in his hand.

“State of the art back then,” he tells us, blowing dust off an old VHS tape.

“Sixteen cameras throughout the property, all time-stamped, backed up every twelve hours.” His wrinkled fingers tap the cassette.

“One tape held twenty-four hours of footage. This is the backup copy from that night.”

He shuffles to an entertainment center that looks like it was purchased during the Clinton Administration and slides the tape into a VCR—an actual functioning VCR.

He turns on a much newer flat screen and fiddles with the VCR.

“For that time, it was impressive. Motion-activated in some zones, constant recording in others. Split-screen view of all cameras, but you could isolate any feed.” The screen flickers to blue, then displays a grainy multi-camera view of the Hartman estate.

“Still, I did a manual backup as routine. You never know when technology is going belly up, you know?”

My eyes gobble up the layout—entrances, exits, blind spots. This is much more intricate than the copy we have. “Can you advance to around nine-twenty?”

He fast-forwards, causing the machine to whir. The timestamp in the corner blurs as figures move at comical speeds. Guests arriving at the party, kids go out back to have a snowball fight, while some make angels. “Here we go.” He slows as the counter approaches 21:19:42.

The screen shows multiple angles of the mansion. “There.” I point as a figure emerges. “Can you isolate that feed?”

“Afraid not,” he says. “State of the art thirty years ago, but it ain’t digital.”

The person we couldn’t fully make out with our version steps out into the snow. This is where the other footage turned to static.

His doesn’t. “You’re sure that isn’t Gerry?” I squint at the grainy footage. At least it’s on a big screen. The figure moves with purpose through the accumulated snow, heading directly toward the cottage.

Gordy shakes his head. “That’s Mary. That god-awful hat.” He laughs. “Ugliest thing I ever saw with those weird pom-poms. She claimed it was some fancy designer and wore it all winter that year.”

One more nail in that woman’s coffin.

On screen, she reaches the cottage door, glances back toward the main house, and quickly slides something from beneath her coat.

“What is that?” Meg asks, also moving to get closer to the pixelated image.

“Not sure,” Gordy says. “One of her purses, I think.”

She enters, leaving the door open, and appears a few seconds later without the item in hand, locking the door behind her as she leaves. Head down, she hurries to the kitchen door, her footprints the only evidence of her journey through the pristine snow.

“The Sherman bag,” Meg whispers. “She took it to the cottage.”

The nudge in my brain is full-on screaming. “She did this before she called nine-one-one.” I face Gordy. “Didn’t you suspect Mary could have been hiding evidence that night? That purse could have contained the murder weapon.”

His weathered face registers genuine shock. He leans back in his chair, the springs creaking. “Evidence? No, no. Mary always snuck out there to smoke. Phillip hated her addiction, said it wasn’t ladylike, but she’d been doing it for years.”

“You’re saying this was routine?”

“Her nerves were shot because of the party.” He sounds like he has a crush on her.

“Phillip drank, Mary smoked. All those rich folks under one roof? She was leaving a fresh carton of cigarettes out there. She pretends—pretended—to love parties, but she didn’t.

I figured she was stashing a fresh supply for later.

She’d slip out for a cigarette break when nobody was looking.

Phillip would’ve thrown a fit if he caught her smoking during one of his fancy gatherings. ”

Mary tampered with the security tape. Over her smoking? Hard to believe that. “But you saw her hiding something specific on this occasion, and you didn’t report it.”

“The cops had the same video I do. She had me take a copy of it to them the next morning. If they didn’t question her about it, why would I? I didn’t think anything of it.”

The hair on the back of my neck tingles. “The next morning ? Why didn’t they confiscate the tape that night?”

He splays his fingers. “There was no intruder. Everyone there had been invited. She said all the cops wanted to confirm was the comings and goings of the guests.”

Meg raises a brow at me. “Is that normal? To wait that long afterward to get their hands on the tape?”

“Depends on the detective in charge, but Gordy’s right.

The footage is only of the outside grounds.

The girl was killed inside, and probably by one of the guests or family.

” And this gave Mary plenty of time to alter the original tape.

She just didn’t know that Gordy was actually a pretty damn good guard who made routine backups of them because he didn’t trust the technology.

“They wouldn’t automatically prioritize exterior footage that night unless they suspected an intruder, which they didn’t. ”

“Family?” Gordy’s voice turns shocked again. “You honestly think someone in the family killed Tiff?”

This isn’t the time to admit that I sure as hell do, at least not to this near stranger. He doesn’t know that the original footage has been tampered with. “Did Mary know how to run the security recording software?”

Gordy rubs his jaw. “Sort of. She sometimes watched the recorded footage, and then told me when to erase the tapes so we could reuse them. She kept a few, like ones that showed some of her more famous friends coming to the house.” He lets go of a giant sigh and shakes his head.

“Look, I’ll be the first to admit Mary’s no angel.

She’s assertive and bossy, and her ego is bigger than my whole house.

Some might even say Tiffany learned a lot from her, but she’d never kill a little girl. Never. Why would she?”

I consider his question. Because Tiffany taunted her son?

Scared him? It does seem like overkill, but it doesn’t exonerate her.

Why else would she erase that footage? “Motive can be complex, layered, and sometimes invisible even to the perpetrators themselves. Mary might have had reasons you didn’t see. ”

Meg gets the same look when she’s about to bring a face back from obscurity. “We need a copy of this tape.”

“Ain’t gonna get me in trouble, is it?” Gordy asks.

I can’t guarantee that. I also can’t let this disappear back into his basement. “Your help could bring a killer to justice,” I tell him. It’s a too-often-used statement these days, but still effective.

I hope.

He frowns, unconvinced.

My sister works her magic. “This is circumstantial, and nothing will probably come from it, but we do need to review it with our team. You don’t owe the Hartmans anything, remember? They fired you over this, and it wasn’t your fault.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t say anything. I try another tactic. “You made a copy and kept this tape. You’re in a legal gray area.”

From his body language, I’m pretty sure he’s not our killer, and if he is? He’s a better actor than Mary. I see him wavering.

“We’ll pay you.” I dig in my purse and pull out the last of my cash. “A hundred dollars.”

Gordy’s eyes get the glint of someone who’s reconsidering his loyalties. Since Meg has hit on one of his emotional triggers, he can justify giving us the copy and making a buck at the same time. “Let me see what I can do.”

Meg gives me a high-five behind his back.

Less than ten minutes later, we walk out with a copy of the true original. It’s on another blasted VCR tape, but Matt should be able to convert it to a digital file without too much trouble.

“Could the hockey stick be the murder weapon?” I ask Meg.

She shakes her head. “Even if the killer used the end, it wouldn’t have cracked her skull like that.”

“Couldn’t hide that in a purse, either,” I mutter as I merge onto the freeway.

“Are we taking this to JJ?”

“Eventually,” I say.

“Mom is going to love you forever. This could crack the case open.”

“Mom is going to have to give me a loan. And before we show it to her, we’re going to confront Mary.”

Meg whips her head to look at me. “You can’t be serious. She’ll have us thrown in jail.”

I grin. “Not if I break her first.”

“You’re not waiting to hear back from Gerald?”

“Nope. I’ve got a feeling he’s going to give us nothing but excuses, and after what we saw on this tape, we know Mary is the one who left the house and hid something in the cottage.”

“What are you planning?”

“To bluff my ass off and get a confession. You up for playing bad cop/good cop?”

“Only if I get to be the badass.”

We both know that’s not her style. I pat her arm. “Let’s play it by ear.”