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CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

EDMONDS, WASHINGTON

MONDAY, MARCH 27, 2023

11:00 A.M.

It turns out Monica Burns was a surprisingly assertive driver. Ray Horn had a tough time keeping his mouth shut, but refraining from back seat driving was probably a good first step in giving the younger detective her head.

Back in the Brewsters’ neighborhood, the two of them returned to the houses where they had previously obtained surveillance footage for Saturday night and Sunday morning. This time they downloaded footage for a specific ninety-minute period from late Friday night to early Saturday morning. In a few instances they found residents who hadn’t been home for their first canvassing go-round but were there this time out. Everywhere they went, the people were cooperative and understanding. The thought that a killer might still be lurking in the area was a very real concern, and people were motivated to do whatever they could to help.

Once back at the department, Ray and Monica went to an evidence room and began sorting through the footage. The equipment there allowed them to analyze everything frame by frame. Ray was more than happy to let Monica take charge, but it was a painstaking process. Eventually they spotted a light-colored SUV seemingly prowling the neighborhood, but even on a frame-by-frame basis, there was no way to identify the make or model. It wasn’t until the last video they’d collected that they finally hit pay dirt.

That footage came from a house on the street just above the Brewsters’ place. Just beyond it, the roadway dead-ended at a power line right-of-way with no real turnaround. At 12:03 a.m. Saturday morning, a small, light-colored SUV came down the street. At the dead end, the driver threw the car into reverse and then backed past the nearest driveway, the one with the camera, before pulling back into it to finish executing a U-turn. Amazingly enough, the video was crystal clear. Unfortunately, the camera’s angle didn’t allow a view of the license plate. Monica hit the pause button and studied the image.

“It’s a RAV4,” she announced at last. “Probably a 2022. And that sticker in the corner of the windshield means it’s a rental.”

Donning his reading glasses, Ray peered at the screen. He could see the sticker all right, but everything on it was a fuzzy blur. Eventually Monica was able to isolate the sticker and enlarge it, but still it wasn’t quite legible. Finally, having done as much as she could, she made a call to the Port of Seattle Police at Sea-Tac. After a short conversation, she sent the enhanced image to someone there who was able to use a specially calibrated lens to decipher some of what the human eye could not.

“It’s an Enterprise rental,” Monica’s contact said when she phoned back. “Unfortunately, that’s all I can tell you. I can’t decode the rest of it, either.”

“No worries,” Monica told her. “We already knew that it’s a RAV4. Now that we know it’s from Enterprise, figuring out the rest should be easy. Thanks for the help.”

“Good work,” Ray Horn told Monica for the first time ever as she ended the call. Here’s an idea. If I were a killer getting ready to do a middle-of-the-night hit, what would I need more than anything?”

Monica gave him a puzzled look. “A cup of coffee, maybe?”

“Perhaps,” Horn agreed, “but more than that, I’d need to take a leak. How about we go looking for places where our killer might have gone looking for one or both of those essentials—coffee and a restroom— on the night of the actual homicide, Sunday, March 12, and see if we can come up with surveillance footage of either our killer or that same rented RAV4.”

“Good thinking,” Monica said. “We might just get lucky.”

Off they went on a second search-and-destroy mission. The two most likely establishments were located on Edmonds Way, both within a mile of their crime scene. The one to the south, a Food Mart, was closer than the one to the north, a Circle K, so they went there first. Since it was early afternoon on a Friday, the owner himself, Mr. Ranjit Bisla, was on the premises and working on payroll in a backroom office. He was happy to access and download however much of that night’s video as they might want to see.

The store had seven cameras in all, three interior ones and four outside. Inside, one camera was over the cash register and one was located above the hallway leading to the restrooms and office, while the third focused on the front entrance. One of the exterior cameras was directly over the outside entrance, while a second covered the gas pumps. The two final ones were located on either side of the building and covered the remainder of the property.

After leaving the Food Mart, they traveled north to the Circle K. This time the clerk on duty wasn’t able to access the footage. He tried reaching the on-call manager but ended up having to leave a message for him to call Detective Horn at Edmonds PD at his earliest convenience.

Having skipped lunch, Ray and Monica stopped off long enough to pick up Subway sandwiches on their way to the department. Back in the evidence room, they queued up the footage and settled in for what they anticipated to be a long ordeal. Thanks to the cellular tower data, for Friday’s video search they’d had a definite timeline. This time they had no such thing. Just to be on the safe side, they had asked for and received separate downloads from each of the seven cameras starting at 8:00 p.m. and ending at 6:00 a.m.

“Let’s start with the footage from the camera covering the exterior front entrance,” Monica suggested.

This time she was able to fast-forward, slowing the video only when a light-colored vehicle of any kind came into view. Several light-colored vehicles came and went, but they were definitely not the one in question. Then, with the time stamp in the corner of the screen reading 1:09:43 a.m., 3-10-2023, Monica brought the video to a full stop.

“Got it!” she said. “That’s a RAV4.”

Truth be told, after his sleepless night, Ray had nodded off in front of the computer screen and Monica’s voice startled him awake. She paused the video long enough to make note of the time stamp before rewinding the recording for thirty seconds or so and then pressing the play button.

Excited as bloodhounds catching a scent, Ray and Monica stared at the screen. The video was in black and white, so the vehicle appeared to be white. It rolled past the entrance camera between the front door and the gas pumps before turning right toward the parking area on the north side of the building. For several seconds after it turned the corner, headlights glowed brightly from that direction, but eventually they must have switched off.

After that, Monica and Ray waited with bated breath until finally a man dressed in dark clothing and wearing a hoodie over his head rounded the corner and strode purposefully toward the sliding doors at the entrance. As he stepped under the camera, the hoodie concealed his face. Then, immediately thereafter, he disappeared from frame.

“Can you switch cameras?” Ray asked.

“Give me a minute.”

As soon as Monica located the correct time stamp on the interior entrance cameras, they watched the hoodie-clad figure—a male probably six feet tall with a medium build—walk into the building. With his head still ducked to hide from the camera, he took only half a dozen steps before turning sharply to the right and disappearing down one of the aisles.

“See there?” Ray Horn crowed. “I was right. He’s headed for the restrooms.”

It seemed to take forever for Monica to locate the correct camera and time stamp. This time they waited for close to three minutes before their target reappeared. When he did so, they were in luck. While in the restroom, he had evidently dropped the hoodie. Realizing his mistake, he quickly pulled it back into place, but not before he’d momentarily revealed his face.

“Can you freeze that?”

“Already did,” Monica said. “Froze it and sent it to the printer!”

“This may not be the first time a pee stop has solved a homicide,” Ray muttered, “but if this works, it’ll be a first for me.”

“Switching over to the gas pump cameras now,” Monica said. “Let’s see if we can tell which way he goes.”

The RAV4’s turn signal indicated he was turning northbound on Edmonds Way, but instead of merging into traffic, he immediately turned right again, into the next parking lot. At that point both headlights and taillights disappeared.

“Any idea what’s there?” Horn asked.

“I’m not sure,” Monica answered. “A small strip mall, I think.”

“Which means none of the businesses are open at night,” Ray said. “And that’ll be our next stop. Let’s hope somebody there has cameras.”

By then it was after four. Worried that the businesses might close at five, they wasted no time. Edmonds Way Center contained five storefronts—a dry cleaners, a chiropractic practice, a physical therapy office, a feline veterinary clinic, and a hearing clinic, and all of them appeared to have cameras. Monica and Ray headed for the dry cleaners—the business at the southernmost corner of the mall.

The footage there existed, but with an inexperienced teenager at the counter and no manager on the premises, it took the better part of two hours to gain access to it. Finally, with the required footage in hand, they went back to the department where the evidence room they had been using still awaited them.

After uploading the video, Monica quickly fast-forwarded to the one a.m. time stamp. At 1:14:28 a.m., 3-10-2023, a pair of headlights entered the parking lot from the south. Although the lot was completely empty at that hour, the car stopped well away from the building, and the headlights switched off. Moments later, in the darkness, a figure emerged from the driver’s side and headed northbound, walking along Edmonds Way.

“Do we need to go back out and look for more footage?” an exasperated Monica asked.

“No,” Ray said. “We’ll stick with this one. Let’s keep watching until those headlights come back on. This is how far from the Brewsters’ place?”

“About a mile,” Monica answered.

“Supposing it takes him thirty minutes or so to walk that far, half an hour to commit the crime, and another half to get back. Fast-forward to two thirty and start watching there.”

Monica did as requested. They waited in silence as the somber realization sank in that during that interval of fast-forwarding, Charles Brewster was likely being stabbed to death. When Monica slowed the video once more, the SUV was still visible, parked in the distance. The minutes crawled by with nothing happening, but then at 2:46:57 a shadowy figure emerged from the darkness and walked on a diagonal from the far corner of the parking lot directly to the RAV4. The driver’s-side door opened, the interior lights flashed on, the shadowy figure climbed inside, and the door closed. Moments later the headlights flashed on. Then something unbelievable happened. In the process of making a U-turn to exit the parking lot, the SUV came straight toward the camera.

“Got the plate!” Monica crowed, freezing the frame.

“Time for a road trip,” Ray said. “We’re better off doing this in person rather than trying to talk to someone over the phone. Are you up for a rush-hour trip to SeaTac?”

“You bet,” Monica said, “but let’s shut down here before we leave. I have zero intention of coming back tonight.”

After clearing out of the evidence room, they left the department and headed south, once again with Monica at the wheel.

“So Atherton’s phone and the RAV4 were both in the area on Friday night, but the phone was missing on Sunday. That means the killer was smart enough to leave his phone turned off the night of the actual homicide, but not when he was scoping out the neighborhood. What I want to know is how the hell Moesha Jackson was smart enough to figure that out.”

“With a traffic tie-up on I-5, they took Highway 99 to get from Edmonds to SeaTac’s Consolidated Car Rental facility. Once there, they went straight to the Enterprise desk, where Ray bypassed customers waiting in line and approached the counter via the exit.

“I need to speak to a supervisor,” he announced.

“I’m sorry, sir,” a frowning desk attendant told him. “You’ll need to wait your turn.”

Ray flashed his badge. “This is a homicide investigation,” he growled back. “I need to see a supervisor now!”

The flustered desk clerk made a quick phone call. Shortly thereafter, a woman wearing a tag that said “Eileen” emerged from a door behind the counter and beckoned for Ray and Monica to follow her.

“What seems to be the trouble, Officers?” Eileen asked after seating herself behind the computer on a well-worn desk.

“We’re investigating a homicide that occurred in Edmonds the weekend of March 10,” Ray explained. “We believe the killer drove himself to the crime scene in one of your rental vehicles, a light-colored RAV4. Here’s the plate number,” he added, handing her the piece of paper on which Monica had jotted down the information. “We need whatever information you can give us regarding the person who rented this vehicle.”

The woman glanced at the paper in her hand and then looked back at Ray. “Do you have a warrant?” Eileen asked.

He sighed and leveled an unblinking stare in her direction. “A man was murdered—stabbed to death in his own bed while he was fast asleep. We’re trying to catch his killer,” he said. “This is information you can give us with a few clicks on your computer keyboard. Yes, we can go to a judge and get a warrant, but do we really need to waste the time it’ll take for us to get one? Couldn’t you give us a little help here without making us jump through hoops?”

Eileen wavered for a moment before caving. Less than a minute after she started typing, the printer on a counter behind her began spitting out pages. When the print job finished, she gathered the pages of the rental agreement and handed them to Ray. Marc Atherton’s name was right there, front and center. He had rented the vehicle at 5 p.m. on Friday, March 11, 2023 and returned it at 8 a.m on Monday, March 14, 2023. Ray passed them over to Monica, who glanced at them and nodded.

“There you go,” Eileen said, without adding the implied Now get the hell out.

“Thanks,” Ray said. He was in the process of getting to his feet, but in a true Columbo moment, Monica didn’t budge. “Are your rentals equipped with GPS?” she asked.

Eileen sighed. “Of course,” she said.

“Where is this vehicle right now?”

Eileen replied with another spurt of typing. “It’s in the garage being cleaned. It was returned an hour and a half ago and is due to go out again at seven in the morning.”

“I’m afraid you’re going have to find a replacement for that morning rental,” Monica said.

“Why?”

“We believe a killer drove this vehicle during the commission of a crime. We’re going to have to impound it and have it towed to our garage for a forensic examination.”

“But this rental happened weeks ago,” Eileen objected. “The car been cleaned several times since then. There can’t possibly be anything left to find.”

“You’d be surprised,” Monica replied, because she knew that wasn’t true, and so did Raymond Horn.

Stabbings are messy, even stabbings through bed coverings. Although the killer may have worn gloves or other protective clothing, that didn’t mean he had walked away clean. And blood evidence, even minute droplets of it, don’t go away with ordinary cleaning. If it’s there, visible to the naked eye or not, Luminol tells all.