Where was Gracie now? Where would she have gone? Back to Lewis’s room on the third floor? The floor where Jake was headed? Or did someone take her?
Wait. All she had to do was find the right screen, and she’d see whatever happened. Police, rescue, shoot-out. Happy ending. Her heart raced with the possibility. She could grab her camera right now, be ready to shoot terrific exclusive video. Would that be legal?
Did it matter?
She stood, hands on hips. Find Gracie. And where was Jake? Trying to scan, she leaned forward, squinting. On the highest row, the screens were too small to make out much. Soon as she saw a cop the image would disappear, because the screens kept changing views, rotating every few seconds, like several cameras fed each monitor.
Made sense, she guessed, because you didn’t need to look at the same place all the time, so they used fewer monitors and multiple sources. Probably also why they had two guys. Mesmerizing to watch these things all day. Eventually, paralyzingly boring.
Unless, of course, there was a shooting. Or a missing girl.
“Okay,” she said out loud. “There’s gotta be rhyme and reason.”
Five rows of monitors. Ten monitors across. Fifty screens. If this had been her setup, she might have labeled them. But no.
If there were no labels, did Beefy and Co. simply know camera placement by heart? There must be a-ha. She yanked a white vinyl binder from between two console banks. The yellowing clear plastic cover was separating at the corners, brittle and peeling away. Someone had made devil horns on the words HEWLITT SECURITY on the cover and added Mickey Mouse ears to their fancy logo of a camera lens. Not-so-happy employees, she thought. With not enough to do.
She flipped open the binder. Bingo. Spreading out a triple-fold piece of paper, she saw a blueprint of what had to be a chart of the monitors. Like a big checkerboard, each square filled in with words. Supply5. Linen5. Vending4. Corridor5A.
Looked like the five rows corresponded to each floor of the hotel. Brilliant. The middle row was the third floor, where Jake and D and a million cops were.
Maybe this was a time suck? Maybe she should run out of here and start going door-to-door. That would be rewarding, because it would feel like she was doing something. It was also inefficient and primitive. And possibly dangerous.
“Find. Gracie,” she commanded herself. Was the little girl hiding? Or being hidden? The whole thing was a juggle, because the shots on each screen kept changing.
Still, in this one room, Jane could be everywhere in the hotel at the same time. Most likely, Gracie wouldn’t be changing position, right? If she was hiding.
If she was hiding. Which was a big if. Because she might be with-
Oh, my gosh. She was an idiot.
Who had told the police that Gracie Wilhoite was missing? Besides Jane, only one other person in the building knew the girl was here. Or maybe-two?
Now it made sense, Jake thought.
Not good sense, not rational sense, but as much sense as domestic violence ever made. The man on the stretcher was Lewis Wilhoite. Gracie’s stepfather, the one who clearly had taken her yesterday.
“Is this the person who told you the girl was missing?” Jake asked Deb Kratky. He repeated the question to the room full of EMTs and cops. “Gracie? His stepdaughter? Did he say any more? Where she might have gone? And why?”
“Negative, Jake,” one of the cops said. “By the time we got here, he was down for the count.”
“So who-” Jake stopped as a familiar shape filled the hotel room door.
“Come with me,” DeLuca said. “Move it.”
Jake followed DeLuca, double speed, down the deserted corridor. The amplified warning instructions blared, repeating. All the room doors remained firmly closed. “D, you got people looking for Gracie?”
“Listen, Jake. Of course we do. They’ll find her. Lotsa rooms in here, lotsa places to hide. But listen.” D stopped in a spotlighted pool of light on the mottled carpeting. A discarded room service tray holding grape stems, ketchup packets, empty breadbasket, and a pile of dirty silverware sat untouched outside the room to his left.
“So, yeah. We have a situation. Got the shooter in there.” He pointed to a closed door black-stenciled SUPPLY RM.
“Great work,” Jake said. Done and done. Only several million questions left to answer, but at least they knew who to ask. There wouldn’t be any more shooting. And then he could get some sleep. All in a day’s work. Two days.
“What’s his condition? What’s his story?” Jake fired questions at DeLuca. “He call for a lawyer yet? What’s the plan for HQ transport for questioning? We’re the primaries, correct? You recover the weapon? Anything I should know?”
“Shooter’s cuffed, seated, basically silent. Got the gun, yeah. Twenty-two. Registered. Hasn’t called for a lawyer yet, no.”
“Great,” Jake said. “Let’s get this asshole. Shooting a guy in a hotel. Scaring this little girl to death. Now she’s hiding somewhere, I bet. Shit. Hope poor Gracie didn’t see this go down. Asshole.”
“Jake?” DeLuca said. “The shooter’s not asking for a lawyer. She’s asking for Jane.”
54
“I can’t look at it,” Catherine said.
She put up both palms, blocking the computer screen in front of her. They’d hurried out of the Purple Martin and crossed to City Hall, she and Tenley and Brileen, then closed Catherine’s office door behind them. Snoop-faced Siobhan Hult had been sent to tell Ward Dahlstrom that Tenley was still with her. Siobhan had never seen Brileen before, so they would appear, Catherine hoped, to be a typical mom hanging out with her daughter and her daughter’s pal. It would all seem peacefully familial. Instead of disgusting and horrific.
Brileen had finished her stomach-turning story, mother and daughter silent, as the din of the Purple faded into white noise around them. “I kept the thumb drive with me, all the time, on my key chain,” she’d finally said. “As insurance. It’s the only way I could make sure it was safe.”
Now Catherine and Tenley were about to see what was on that thumb drive. The video Brileen had protected. The “insurance.” Had Greg watched it, too?
“Tell me again.” Catherine, sitting in her leather desk chair, her computer humming, was still trying to understand. “Whose idea was this?”
“I was only told his name was Hugh.” Brileen standing by the desk, hands jammed in her pockets, shook her head. “He said he had surveillance tape of me, with Valerie. From-well, it doesn’t matter. He threatened to show her parents, the worst possible situation, if I didn’t help him.”
“Help him what?” Tenley perched on the edge of the couch.
“With his-I don’t understand the whole thing, I don’t even want to, but he found me at school. Had me approach Lanna. ‘I know all about your little friend,’ he said. He told me to tell her he had surveillance video of her, you know.” She swallowed. “‘With’ someone. And that he wanted money. Or he’d make it public.”
“Surveillance video? From where?” Catherine couldn’t process this. “With who?”
“With who?” Tenley echoed.
“Lanna never told me.” Brileen shook her head again. “She asked me-begged me-to go to her father. She couldn’t face him. Hugh told me to warn her that it would not only humiliate her.” She paused again. “It would ruin you.”
“Ruin? Me? This man knew me? How?” After three terms at City Hall, Catherine had met an incalculable number of people. But how many would want to destroy her? Well, plenty, she guessed. It was politics. And all she needed was one. This one. “Do I know him?”