“Is there a problem?” Lieutenant Lacey asked.
The man looked at Matt.
“You say the camera was shipped to us five months ago?”
Matt nodded.
“You know the model?”
Goddamn it, I don’t.
“It’s a rather expensive digital,” Matt said.
“That only narrows the field down a smidgen, I fear,” the man said.
“If I saw one, I’d know it.”
“That sort of item is updated as often as the sun rises,” the man said. “I rather doubt if it would still be in our inventory. You did say you have the serial number?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then it will be a simple matter to go through our sales records and find it. We assiduously record the serial numbers of all our better merchandise.”
“Then we have no problem here?” Lieutenant Lacey asked.
“None whatever. I am delighted to be of service. I will return momentarily.”
He headed for the back of the store.
“Good luck, Sergeant,” Lacey said.
“Thanks very much, Lieutenant,” Matt said.
“No thanks are required. I wasn’t in here with you. I never ever saw you. I would never act in a case like this without the full authority-in writing-of the New York Police Department’s Office of Inter-Agency Cooperation to do so.”
He turned and walked out the door.
The turbaned man who spoke the Queen’s English returned to where Matt stood a few minutes later, trailed by two turbaned men, each of whom held two large cardboard boxes in his arms.
He gestured rather imperiously for the men to place the boxes on a glass display case.
“The sales records are filed, Sergeant, to comply with IRS requirements, sequentially, or perhaps I should say chronologically. I have brought you the records for the last six months. If there is anything else I can do for you, please do not hesitate to ask.”
Not quite an hour and a half later, Sergeant Payne found the sales slip he was looking for, near the top of the left stack of sales slips in Box Three.
The sales slips had been stored in the manner in which they had come out of the sales registry machines-that is to say, fan-folded. Each stack contained 250 sales slips. They had been placed in the storage boxes eight stacks high, six stacks to a box.
By the time Matt found what he was looking for, his feet hurt from standing, his stomach was in audible protest for being unfed, and his eyes watered.
And what he found wasn’t much.
A Kodak Digital Science DC 410, Serial Number EKK84240087, had been sold for cash three and a half months previously to Mr. H. Ford, 400 Lincoln Lane, Detroit, Michigan. Mr. Ford’s signature, at the bottom, acknowledging receipt of the camera in good working condition, was barely legible.
He then had a very hard time making the previously charming English-speaking proprietor understand that he would like, at the very least, a photocopy of the sales slip and would really like to have the sales slip itself.
Then he had an inspiration.
“What I really would like to have are several digital images of you. First in the act of separating that sales slip from the fanfold,” Matt said. “And then another of you initialing the sales slip.”
“And you have a camera?”
“No. But I thought if I bought one…”
“How interesting! I just happen to have a splendid, latest-model, state-of-the-art Kodak-a DC910 with fast-charge lithium batteries-that I could let you have at a substantial discount.”
“The pictures, you understand, would be useless to me unless I had the actual sales slip itself?”
“You do have a credit card?”
“Of course.”
“Of course you do. And nothing would give me greater pleasure than to cooperate with the police in this investigation. ”
A total of $967.50 and fifteen minutes later, Matt put a Ziploc bag in his briefcase. It held the original sales slip and a flash memory card holding images of the proprietor tearing the sales slip free from the others in the fanfold stack; initialing the sales slip; of himself initialing the sales slip; of himself and the proprietor each holding a corner of the sales slip; and a final shot of himself putting the sales slip in the Ziploc bag.
Counsel for the defense, he thought, would, considering the pictures, have a hard time raising doubt in the minds of a jury that he had acquired the real sales slip.
And he could give the Kodak DC910, with fast-charge lithium batteries, to his mother. She had expressed admiration for the camera he had given Amy, and it seemed only just that his mother get one that cost twice as much as Amy’s.
Now all he had to do was find Mr. H. Ford, of 400 Lincoln Lane, Detroit, Michigan.
He walked back down through Times Square to the parking lot, and got into the Porsche. On his cellular telephone, he established contact with a Detroit directory assistance operator, who regretted to inform him they had no listing for a Mr. H. Ford at 400 Lincoln Lane in Detroit.
Matt had been prepared to be disappointed.
“Have you got a special listing for the Homicide Bureau, maybe Homicide Unit, something like that, of the Detroit police department?”
“Just the basic police department number.”
“Give me that, please.”
“Homicide, Sergeant Whaley.”
“Sergeant, my name is Payne. I’m a sergeant in Homicide in Philadelphia.”
“What can we do for Philadelphia?”
“I’m working a job where the doer left his camera at the scene. I traced it to the store where it was sold. According to their records, it was sold to a Mr. H. Ford of Lincoln Road in Detroit.”
“And you’re beginning to suspect there is maybe something a little fishy about the name and address, right?”
“To tell you the truth, yes, I am.”
“Okay. So?”
“Maybe he once went to Detroit,” Matt said. “Have you got any open cases of murder, or rape, or murder/rape where the doer tied the victim to a bed and then cut the victim’s clothes off with a large knife?”
“Nice fellow, huh? That all you got?”
“This happened last night.”
“You do know about the NCIC in Philadelphia?”
“We have inside plumbing and everything,” Matt said. “And I don’t mean to in any way undermine your faith in the FBI, but sometimes we suspect they don’t give us everything out of their databases, including stuff we’ve put in.”
“I can’t think of any job like that offhand,” Sergeant Whaley said. “But I’ll ask around. You said your name was Payne?”
Matt spelled it for him and gave him Jason Washington’s unlisted private number in the Roundhouse.
“I’ll ask around, and if I turn up anything, I’ll give you a call.”
“Thank you very much,” Matt said.
He pushed the End button, put the key in the ignition, and started to drive out of the parking lot.
The attendant jumped in front of the car, waving his arms.
It was necessary for Matt to dig out the credit card again, and sign a sales slip for $35.00 worth of parking before he could put the Porsche in gear and head downtown toward the Lincoln Tunnel.
He looked at his watch; it was quarter past five.
When he came out of the New Jersey exit of the Lincoln Tunnel, it looked very familiar and he wondered why. He rarely went to New York City, and when he did, he almost never drove, preferring the Metroliner, a really comfortable train on which one did not have to keep one eye open for the New Jersey State Police for being in violation of speeding and/or drinking laws.
It was a moment before he understood.
He saw it at least once a week, on television. The opening shot on The Sopranos was from the inside of New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano’s GMC Suburban as he came out of the tunnel.
Another segment of the TV show came to his mind. A New Jersey detective on the pad from the mob got caught at it, and jumped off a bridge.
That made him think of Captain Patrick Cassidy, whose sudden affluence-including his new Suburban-he had found to be completely legitimate.