Forgive Me(35)

Angie got up so she could peer over his shoulder. Mike did the same. Part of the interface was a map marking the various locations of installed cameras.

“Okay . . . okay. So, we’re looking for the camera near Heydari Design and Jois Fragrance. That would be . . . ah yeah, here. SF-R2R. That’s second floor, rear, second to the right.” Vincent tapped the location of the camera and entered the date March 18th. Today was the 29th day of April.

Angie said, “It would be sometime before six o’clock because that’s when Sean bought the Batman comic.”

Vincent shot Musgrave a slightly disapproving look. “Your shifts go to seven.”

Musgrave shrugged off the rebuke. “I didn’t want it to sell out. Anyway, it would be late afternoon because I bought it pretty soon after I saw her. That’s why it was so fresh in my mind and stuck there.”

“So let’s watch from four to six. See what we see,” Mike said.

Vincent queued it up. The black and white recording played in a window the size of a YouTube video. Taken from a high angle. the image resolution wasn’t great and the playback a bit grainy, but the quality was good enough to make out faces.

“Can you speed it up?” Angie asked. The anticipation was too much.

After fifteen minutes at four times normal speed, Mike shouted, “Stop!”

Vincent froze the playback. There she was. Nadine Jessup, dressed in a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a low-cut top with a backpack slung across her shoulders.

Angie’s heartbeat picked up. No feeling quite matched the adrenaline rush from closing in on a runaway. Her skin prickled and tingled. The excitement was palpable on her tongue, down her neck and arms, an energy all its own. She noted the time on the video playback. 5:15 in the afternoon. “Advance it slowly, please.”

Vincent clicked a button on the interface.

Nadine moved in slow motion. After a few a moments, a man carrying a bag from Heydari Design appeared in the frame.

Angie studied him carefully. Tall, handsome, balding, but in a way that suited him. He wore a nice-looking suit, Oxford shirt underneath. The black and white video meant she couldn’t tell the color of either. He had a conversation with Nadine, but the angle was wrong for lip reading. Angie knew people who could do it if she had a better quality video. They must have been talking about shopping because the man took out a scarf from his Heydari bag. The man and Nadine chatted for a moment, presumably about the scarf, before the man put it back in the bag.

The conversation continued. What could they be saying to each other, Angie wondered. The man took something out of his wallet—it looked like a business card—and handed it to Nadine, who took it a little apprehensively.

Angie studied Nadine’s body language carefully. At first, she had seemed a little unsure, a bit defensive, but warmed up as the conversation went on. She began leaning toward him. Her arms had uncrossed and showed openness, receptiveness to whatever he was discussing with her.

At some point, Musgrave wandered into the frame and soon wandered out. Angie saw him right away, though he pointed himself out in case anyone had missed him. Something the man said to Nadine appeared to make her anxious . . . or embarrassed perhaps. She looked to the ground, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She shrugged. She studied the card he gave to her.

Who was this man? Angie wondered. What did he want with a sixteen-year-old girl? What the hell were they talking about? Angie wished the surveillance footage also captured sound. The man gestured with his hands and seemed to be asking a question of Nadine. Then he paused, took out his cell phone, and began a conversation with someone else.

Musgrave wandered back into the frame. He lingered, appearing to notice the encounter between the older man and younger girl before he wandered away again, but they took no notice of him. The man on the phone tossed his head back, and even without sound it was obvious he gave a little laugh. Then the man put his phone away and returned his gaze to Nadine.

More conversation ensued, but the girl still looked unsure. The man’s body language was harder for Angie to read. Disappointment, perhaps? The two shook hands, and the man turned around and walked away.

Angie watched with bated breath. What would Nadine do? Could this be a pivotal moment that would forever change her life?

Nadine hesitated long enough for Angie to think she was going to walk in the opposite direction. Angie’s heart sank when Nadine went running in the same direction as the man.

“We need the next camera!”

Vincent checked the maps. “That’s SF-R3L.” After some more clicking, he got the video to load. It was like a scene transition from a movie. There was the man, walking away when Nadine came running into the frame. More conversation took place and the man and Nadine walked out of the frame together.

“Where are they going?”

Sean and Vincent exchanged looks. Both studied the map.

“From here? I’d say the parking garage,” Musgrave answered. Vincent concurred.

“Do you have cameras there?” Angie was thinking vehicle make and model, a license plate maybe, but Vincent’s frown damped her hopes.

“Light is too low there for these cameras, I’m sorry to say.”

Angie gave this some thought. “We need to get pictures of this man to the DC police.”

“No problem,” Vincent said. “I can get that done for you today.”