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Salem, New Hampshire
Have a seat, Detective. Let me see what I can find.”
Lindsay Farrow, the Walmart IT director, is in her late twenties, wearing stylish jeans, a silk blouse, and a fitted jacket. Definitely designer.
“I really appreciate it,” says Gagnon, even as she’s thinking,Probably a waste of time.
They’re sitting in Farrow’s office at the back of the mammoth Walmart supercenter in Salem. Unlike Gayle Brennan’s workspace, Farrow’s is pristine—white tables, Aeron chairs. Banks of monitors show every corner of the Salem sales floor and warehouse.
“Seabrook store, right?” Farrow is bent over a sleek laptop, clicking furiously. “Sorry. I need to go down a bit of a wormhole here…”
“Take your time,” says Gagnon. “Ilivein wormholes.”
Farrow focuses on one panel and zooms in. “Yes. Gayle was right. The year you’re talking about, the company rolled outOperation Harvest, a system that consolidated the security data and linked it to a central database. Probably some consultant sold them on it. From what I can tell, the software was pretty advanced for its time.” She turns the laptop around.
Gagnon examines the screen. “Gayle told me that the surveillance files get wiped every three months. Is that true?”
“True now,” says Farrow. “But not back then, it looks like.”
Gagnon feels the first slight lift since the investigation began. “You mean those files still exist?”
“Like I said, the program was a test, so they might have saved the data in Bentonville for research purposes.”
“Bentonville?”
“Bentonville, Arkansas. The mothership. Walmart headquarters. I spent a week there when I was training. Had fun.” She smiles at the memory, then goes back to her keyboard. “I think I can pull the files up.” She types. “Hold on. I need another authorization code…”
Gagnon closes her eyes and thinks,Please, please, please don’t tell me I need a search warrant.
“Hey! I’m in!” Farrow sounds genuinely surprised. Long rows of digits and letters spill down her screen. She glances down at the slip of paper with the date Gagnon gave her, June 7. “What time are we talking about?”
Gagnon pulls her chair up close to Farrow’s. She thinks back. Felicia said Suzanne left to go to the store at seven p.m. on the dot. “Try from seven fifteen p.m. forward.”
“Where should we start looking? Aisles? Checkout?”
“Try checkout.”
“Which register?”
How the hell would I know?Gagnon lets out a long breath. “Do you have a view of the whole front of the store?”
“Hold on.” Farrow clicks on one of the files. “There we go.”
Unbelievable,Gagnon thinks as a bird’s-eye view of the checkoutsection in the Seabrook store appears on the screen. Given that the footage is from seventeen years ago, she was expecting archival black-and-white. But she’s looking at full color. Farrow has her video player set at double speed so the images of customers filing forward are jerky and blurry.
“Can you tell me who we’re looking for?” asks Farrow.
“Stop!” Gagnon shouts. “Go back.” Farrow rewinds at slow speed. “Now freeze!” Gagnon points to the screen. In the line for register 2 are a tall man with an athletic build and a woman with a mane of wavy blond hair.
Gagnon sits back in her chair. “Right there. In the middle. That’s who we’re looking for.”
I see you, Suzanne. I see you.
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