Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(48)

“You want to see the recordings from that night, I assume,” he said.

“That’s right. If we’re lucky, I’ll have seen this guy before.”

Taft waved me toward a chair, then took a seat in front of a monitor. Clyde sat next to me, but kept his eyes on the chief, as if he understood that the game was afoot and he might have a chance to nail a bad guy in the near future. Taft punched a few buttons, images appeared on the screen, and soon he had the recordings up from that night.

“It’s damn difficult to watch.” Taft’s voice sounded like cement hardening.

Kane came into view. I recognized his red hair and the faint limp from our encounter last winter.

I watched as he moved into the range of one camera, then out, then into another. The RTD had cameras mounted at every station, giving 360 degrees of coverage. Two thirds of the trains were also outfitted with internal cameras.

Through the camera’s eyes, I spied over Kane’s shoulder as he spotted the homeless guy and headed in that direction.

“How long was the transient there before Kane went to him?” I asked. “Can you back up and show me when he got into that space?”

“You bet.” Taft pushed some buttons. “It was just under four minutes between the time the killer showed up and Jeremy went to roust him.”

“And Kane had just come on duty. Was it normal for him to get outside that fast?”

“It’s SOP. He’d be rotating locations with the rest of the security team. Kane always liked to establish a baseline. A leftover from his time in the military, I guess. Whenever he came on duty, he’d take a walk through the station, then head out to the platforms and give them a good visual. Here it is.”

We watched as the killer hobbled into view, entering the platform from the northeast, in the direction of the tracks. He was hunched over and favoring his right leg, muttering to himself as he moved. Periodically he would stop and stare at something that caught his eye, then mutter some more and shuffle on. He carried a dirt-stained backpack, and, even in the heat, he had on a zippered sweatshirt with the hood pulled up and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He wore gray sweatpants torn at the knee and laceless sneakers. Both knees looked red and scraped. Immense sunglasses covered half his face, making me think of the famous sketch of the Unabomber from the mideighties.

The man on the video looked very much like the drawing that had been in the Denver Post. Other than the dirty clothes and scabby skin sported by a lot of homeless people, nothing about him looked familiar.

“The media is calling him the Pushman.” Taft rubbed the back of his neck. “A pun on the old Pullman railcars. It’s as good as anything, I guess. But I hate it. I just keep thinking of how Kane must have felt in his last moments.”

We watched as the Pushman settled into his spot.

“Stop it there for a sec,” I said. “How many security officers were on duty with Kane?”

“We had our usual seven guys. Three were down below, at the bus terminals. Two were inside Union Station. Sadler was outside with Kane. But he was around at the front of the building, answering a complaint about panhandling.”

“Anything suspicious about the complaint?”

“You mean as a diversionary tactic? Sadler doesn’t think so. It was the kind of standard grievance you get when vagrants brush up against the well-to-do. LoDo is famous for it.”

LoDo was short for Denver’s Lower Downtown, a hip part of the city that drew tourists, locals, and cool people from all up and down the Front Range. It also attracted the homeless, the desperate, and opportunists of all stripes. In a typical year, LoDo had a crime density of almost four thousand offenses per square mile.

“Let’s keep going,” I said.

Taft hit play again and slowed the speed. We moved forward in slo-mo, watching in painful increments as Kane approached his killer.

“He followed protocol,” Taft said. “Gave the guy a warning for lying on the floor in the station. If anything, Jeremy erred on the side of leniency. He hated arresting these guys.”

“Maybe because he knew some of them are vets.”

“Probably. Anyway, he gives this asshole a warning, then a second warning. If he’d had the chance, the third time would have been a charm. Kane would have issued a final warning. Then if the guy still refused to move, he would have arrested him for trespassing.”

“Sometimes,” I murmured, “that’s what they want. Three hots and a cot.”

We watched as something caught Kane’s attention and drew his gaze away from the Pushman. Taft hit pause and swiveled his chair to face another monitor.

“Another possible diversionary tactic?” I asked.

“Doesn’t seem like it.” He pulled up the recording from a different camera, and we were looking at a panorama of the people standing on the far side of the tracks. “In a case like this, it’s standard procedure for an officer to periodically check his surroundings. Make sure no one is getting too close. Or that the homeless man isn’t himself a diversion.”

I studied the faces of the Saturday-night crowd, looking for anyone familiar or anything unusual. Maybe I was hoping a man would be standing there in a ball cap that read ALPHA.

No such luck.

Most people were engrossed in their phones. A few looked in Kane’s direction; watching a cop roust a homeless guy probably served as entertainment while you waited for your train. It looked to me like a typical weekend crowd—a lot of young people on their way in or out of the clubs and a few middle-aged couples probably just done with dinner in one of the nearby restaurants.