Page 16 of The Grave Artist (Sanchez & Heron #2)

Ms. Person of Interest . . .

The silhouette woman who wore black shoes with the red-striped heels.

Who are you? Jake wondered. Just a witness? An accomplice—willing or coerced?

Where have you gone?

And then there was the big question: Had she been the one at the hotel when Brock was killed? Declan’s opinion was tepid at best.

Sanchez had taken a team along one canvass route, looking for HK and what kind of car he was driving. Big Liam Grange another. And Tandy a third.

Jake had been left out of the equation when Sanchez charged off on her mission.

Leaving him free to ... well, do what Jake Heron did best.

Out came his tablet and he typed quickly. He preferred actual keys, rather than digital ones, but he was still lightning fast on the screen’s virtual Qwerty .

He read the results.

Ah, here’s something . . .

He crossed Cedar Hills north of the cemetery and started up Parkside Drive, the row of beautiful homes that bordered the west edge of the park.

He found Tandy walking down the serpentine path from the doorway of the house nearest the cemetery.

“Jake.”

He nodded to the impressive dark brick Tudor structure. “Any luck there?”

The detective shook his head. “They’ve got a doorbell cam. But nobody’s home.”

“No worries.” Jake lifted his tablet. “I’ve got the vids of everybody along the street here who has doorbell or porch cams.”

“What?” Tandy was laughing in surprise.

“It’s about eighty percent of the houses.”

“But how the hell did you guys get paper this fast?”

Jake paused. “You can get warrants for the central server.”

The detective began scrolling through the vids. “I know, but, man, it’d take me hours to write up my petition and affidavit and find a magistrate I could convince to sign off. How’d you do it so fast?”

“Carmen’s pretty well known.”

“I guess so. Damn.”

Everything he had just told Tandy was true. You can get warrants for central security system servers to see what’s on doorbell cams.

Though he had not.

And Carmen Sanchez was pretty well known.

Though Sanchez had not applied for warrants to look at the doorbell cam videos, so therefore her popularity within judicial circles was a factoid of no relevance whatsoever.

Because they needed to find Ms. POI immediately. Witness or accomplice, she might be a necessary component to the case.

And so he was using an effective technique to avoid any consternation or conflict about unauthorized hacking.

He simply didn’t tell anybody that he’d done it.

There were no images of HK, though he could have used the dense foliage in the park for cover.

But they did score something.

“Hey,” Tandy said, eyeing Jake’s screen as he held it up. They were looking at an image of a woman walking down the sidewalk dressed in black, wearing shoes with the infamous red stripes. “We got her.”