Death in the Sunshine (Retired Detectives Club, #1)(76)

Moira gives the door a quick knock and pushes it open.

Aside from the medical equipment – a drip and a heart monitor – the place looks like a fancy hotel room with pale walls, oak furniture and a comfortable-looking ergonomic bed with crisp linen and a thick blanket. Hank’s sitting in the bed, his attention focused on the football game that’s playing on the wall-mounted television.

As Moira steps into the room he mutes the sounds and looks over at her. He’s wearing a new pair of glasses – a spare pair, she assumes, but his face is a patchwork of purple and black bruising, and there’s bandaging securing a dressing to the back of his head. Even so, his eyes are bright, and aside from the beeping heart monitor and the drip he doesn’t seem to be hooked up to many machines.

Moira softens her posture, doing her best to look non-threatening and non-official – hands by her sides, she rests her weight more on her uninjured leg and gives him a big smile. ‘Hi Hank, I’m Moira. I’m not sure you recognise me, but I’m a resident at The Homestead. I wanted to stop by and see how you’re doing.’

Hank holds her gaze for a couple of beats before speaking. ‘They told me when I woke that I had myself a guardian angel.’ He smiles and tries to sit more upright, wincing from the pain of the movement. ‘From the state of you, all beat up like me, I’m thinking that’s you.’

Moira isn’t sure she likes the analogy, but she nods. She hadn’t really given herself a proper look in the mirror that morning – just washed her face and put on her moisturiser – but she can feel the bruising down one side of her face and the tightness of the skin around the butterfly strips. ‘It was me that found you. I tried to stop the person who attacked you leaving, but . . .’ She gestures to her bruised face.

‘Guess I’m saying a big thank you then. The docs said I was lucky I got found and brought here when I did. I lost a lot of blood, you see.’ He gestures to his bandaged head. ‘Could’ve ended different.’

Moira remembers how he’d looked when she’d found him – lying there so still and pale, a puddle of blood spreading out from his head wound. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Like a monster truck used me for sparring practice. How about you?’

She smiles. ‘Yeah, similar.’

‘Did you get a good look at the asshole who got the drop on me?’

Moira shakes her head. ‘Not really. He was wearing a mask and a hoodie so all I got was the basics – height and all that. Did you see him?’

‘Nope. Never even heard him.’ Hank blows out hard. His frustration is clear on his face. ‘Asshole must’ve sneaked up on me while I was working. One minute I was checking the tapes were streaming right and having my first coffee of the day, the next thing I knew I was waking up here.’

It’s as Moira suspected, that he was hit from behind, but it’s still a disappointment that he didn’t see the guy any better than she had. ‘You mentioned tapes, do you use them as backup to the digital recordings?’

Hank shakes his head, again wincing from the movement. ‘Sorry, it’s a figure of speech. It’s not tape we use these days, hasn’t been for years, but I’m old school. I still think in terms of tapes and reels even though it’s all on the computer now. It’s saved on the computer itself then we back up on to the flash drives.’

Moira remembers the smashed USB sticks on the floor and the gaping holes in the computers where their hard drives had been ripped out. Everything ruined. ‘Then it’s all gone. They stole the computer drives and smashed the flash drives.’

Hank clenches the bedcover in his fists. He shakes his head and winces, cursing under his breath. For a moment he looks dejected. Then he looks back at Moira. He taps his finger to the side of his head. ‘Good job I’ve still got my memory then.’

Moira feels a flare of hope. ‘What did you see?’

Hank gestures for Moira to sit on the visitor’s chair beside the bed. ‘It was after the cops called me to say they wanted the CCTV footage for around Manatee. I told them the cameras are switched off at Manatee once the park closes in the evening until it reopens in the morning, the only exception being if there’s a party or something planned. But I told them I’d have a look at the other cameras and see if there was other footage that’d be worth a look. I was pulling it together for them, trawling through the footage, and I noticed a few things that seemed off.’

‘Like what?’ says Moira, moving her chair closer to Hank.

‘So for starters the cameras around the streets close to Manatee were out the night of the murder. They’d been working just fine the night before, but that night they were only showing snow, which means someone vandalised them. I searched the footage around a big radius from the park, but saw no one in the area around the times the cops wanted footage. No one aside from the Graften boy, Mikey.’

That doesn’t sound good for Mikey’s defence, thinks Moira. She knows Rick thinks he’s innocent, but the little evidence there is all seems to point towards him.

‘Anyhow, I’m not a quitter, and something was bugging me. When the cops on the video call held up a picture of the victim to their camera to see if I recognised her, she seemed kind of familiar.’

‘Had you seen her here in Ocean Mist?’