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Seabrook, New Hampshire
Detective Sergeant Marie Gagnon walks into the Seabrook Walmart, one of three Walmart stores that existed in the area seventeen years ago and the one closest to Suzanne Bonanno’s former address.
She glances around and wonders how the store looked back then and if Suzanne spent the last few minutes of her life picking out housewares here.
A stout gray-haired woman in a blue vest gives Gagnon a cheery wave. “Welcome to Walmart!”
Gagnon holds up her badge. “State police. Where can I find the manager?”
The greeter’s smile dissolves. She’s suddenly flustered. “Oh, my heavens! That’s, uh, Gayle Brennan. She’s usually on the floor somewhere…” The greeter turns and looks anxiously down the aisle. Then she turns back to Gagnon and points. “Yes! See that lady in the red top? Halfway down on the right? That’s her. That’s Gayle.”
“Thanks.” Gagnon keeps her badge by her side. The woman with the red top is scanning barcodes with a handheld reader that beeps like a hospital monitor. “Gayle Brennan?” The badge comes up again. “Detective Gagnon, Major Crimes Unit.”
Brennan’s ruddy face goes pale. “Oh my God! What is it?”
Gagnon sees it all the time. As soon as the badge appears, people assume that they’re in big trouble or that somebody’s dead. They’re often correct.
“Do you have an office where we can talk?” says Gagnon, sliding the badge back into her pocket. “I just have a few questions about the store.”
The color comes back into Brennan’s face. “Sure. Of course.” She drops the scanner on a utility cart and leads Gagnon down an aisle and up a metal staircase to a mezzanine. “Right in here,” says Brennan, opening the door to a small room with a narrow window overlooking the vast sales floor.
“Let’s sit,” says Gagnon, taking one of the chairs in front of the glass desk while Brennan makes a stab at straightening some papers.
“Sorry for the mess,” she says.
“Don’t worry about it, Gayle. You should seemyoffice. Tell me, how long has this store been open?”
Brennan lowers herself into her desk chair. “I’m gonna say… twenty years? I’ve been here fifteen. Started on the floor.”
“Long time,” says Gagnon. “That’s exactly the era I’m interested in. I’m investigating a homicide from seventeen years back, and I’m trying to determine if the victim stopped in here on the night she was last seen.”
“Dear Jesus,” says Brennan, then covers her mouth with one palm.
“I know you have surveillance cameras all over the store. Was that system in operation back then?”
“Oh, I’m sure it was. Maybe not as sophisticated and high-resas it is now, but yeah, I expect the whole store would have been covered.”
“And is there any chance you’d have the footage for this date and time?” Gagnon hands her a slip of paper.
“That far back?” Brennan shakes her head. “I’m sorry. We wipe the files every three months unless there’s been an incident, like a fight or shoplifting or a slip-and-fall. Then we’ll save it for as long as we need to, for legal or whatever.”
“And you control the surveillance from here? Do you have a security room?”
“We do now,” says Brennan. “It used to be centralized, but I guess that didn’t work out.”
“When was it centralized and for how long?”
“Not sure. Before my time.”
“Is there anybody around who would know?”
Brennan drums her fingers on her desk for a moment. “Hold on.” She presses a button on her phone console. “Paul? Gayle. Listen. What was the name of that woman from IT, the one who was here a few months ago about the checkout scanners?” Brennan rolls her eyes and says, “Right, the really hot one.” She scrawls on a pad. “Okay, Paul, thanks.” A pause. “What? No. Don’t worry. She didn’t complain about you. Relax.”
Brennan hangs up, tears the page off the pad. “Lindsay Farrow. She works out of the supercenter in Salem. Should I tell her you’re coming?”
“Please don’t,” says Gagnon. “It just makes people nervous.”