Page 75 of A Week Away
“Yeah, maybe I should,” he said in a way that made me think he wouldn’t. I wondered why. But then I watched a woman come out of the building. She wore a leather jacket that looked like Joanne’s purple one. It was very dark on the video. I was pretty sure it was Joanne even though the quality of the video made faces hard to distinguish. She stopped, looked through her purse, and then pulled out a cigarette. She lit it and inhaled deeply. After studying the cloudy sky for a moment, she walked to the Cadillac.
She didn’t get in, though. She stood there smoking. Which made sense. Joanne was a woman who didn’t smoke in her own house to spare the drapes. Standing outside her car to smoke made sense. It also might have gotten her killed.
The kid in the hoodie came out of the building. On the video, the hoodie was so dark it looked black. When he got close to Joanne, he pulled something out of the hoodie’s pouch. The gun. It only took a second and he shot her.
“Can I see that again?”
Rocky ran the video back. I watched the murder a second time. This time, I picked out Lois Sitwell. She’d come out of the building about forty seconds after Joanne and walked to a Lincoln Continental sedan—though it might have been a Crown Vic, it was hard to tell in the video. She was looking at the door handle as the gun went off. She ducked—well, squatted really. She hadn’t mentioned that. By the time she stood up the shooter was entering the building. She barely got a look at him at all.
“Again?”
Rocky ran the video backward. This time I watched Joanne. Yes, Joanne might have said, ‘Why?’ It looked as if her lips had moved. The cigarette dropped to the ground right before she was shot. She knew what was happening.
“Is there a way to enlarge the picture?”
“Not really. The cameras record at seventy-two dpi.”
“What is dpi?”
“Dots per inch.”
“That doesn’t sound like a lot.”
“It’s not. When you enlarge that kind of image, the computer puts a pixel in between. It kind of guesses. Garbage in garbage out. That’s what they say. Did you want to see it again?”
“Yes. Let’s let it play all the way through this time.”
I kept an eye on the second screen this time. It covered the back parking lot, which was pretty quiet. Looking back to the first screen, the Ford Taurus drove out of the parking lot. The minivan arrived and parked. We waited.
There was a young woman at the edge of the back parking lot. I hadn’t noticed her before. She was looking at something in her hand, probably a flip phone. Then she was holding it up in the air. She was trying to find bars.
I looked back at the front parking lot. Joanne came out of the building at 4:51. She looked into her purse, fished out a pack of her long skinny cigarettes, and lit one. Lois Sitwell came out of the building and squeezed past Joanne, brushing smoke away from her face as she did. It was 4:53.
Joanne walked to her car, stood next to it, and smoked. Lois Sitwell’s Lincoln was closer to the road, facing in the opposite direction of Joanne’s Cadillac. Lois was standing next to the driver’s door. At first it seemed that she was just staring at the door, but then I realized she was trying to enter a code to open the vehicle. Those cars had a five button keypad above the door handle and you put a number in to open them.
The shooter came out of the building at 4:55. He walked directly to Joanne. He doesn’t decide to steal Joanne’s vehicle. He could have gone after Lois’s. She’d just gotten the door open. No, he went directly to Joanne and shot her at 4:56. She hadn’t even opened her car door yet.
Joanne slumped to the ground. The shooter bent down and took her purse, which was still hooked in her elbow. He ran back to the building and entered it at 4:58. The murder and robbery had taken two minutes.
I continued to watch. Lois walked over to Joanne’s body and began screaming. Something caught my eye and I looked at the view of the back of the building. The young woman had gotten bars and was talking. But the screaming made her stop. Then, still talking, she rushed over to a Geo Metro and got in. She drove along the far side of the parking lot, disappearing for ten seconds, and then sped through the front parking lot and out onto the street.
A couple of people had come out of the building. Most people worked until six. One of the perks of dunning poor people for money appeared to be banker’s hours. A younger woman was trying to calm Lois down. Funny, in our interview she hadn’t mentioned being that upset.
In the back parking lot, Mr. Cray came out of the building carrying a briefcase. It was 5:02. He walked directly to his BMW and then drove out of the parking lot. He passed the front parking lot at 5:04. There were a few people standing around, but not many. Thinking about it for just a moment, it didn’t really seem odd that Mr. Cray didn’t notice anything unusual.
Then the minivan began to move and drive out of the parking lot at 5:06.
“Stop for a minute.”
Rocky paused the images.
“Do you think that minivan could be a Plymouth Voyager?”
“Hard to tell.”
“But there on the back bumper. That’s a Clinton/Gore bumper sticker, isn’t it?”
“It could be.”
