Page 74 of A Week Away
The next two buildings were very similar to the one that housed Top Dog. Both were two stories and wide, with lots of parking lot. I found Rocky on the first floor of the first building. He smiled when he saw me, a little too big.
“I have more questions,” I said quickly, not wanting him to get the wrong idea.
“That’s disappointing.”
I took a couple hundred dollars out of my pocket, and said, “Not that disappointing.”
I handed the money over right away. He might not want to help me, but I knew he wouldn’t want to give the money back.
“What do you need?”
“The building with the storage units, it has camera’s pointed at the first building. Did the police take that computer?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Did you remind them it was pointed at the building where there were no cameras?”
“Oh gosh… must have slipped my mind.”
“Have you looked at it already?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you show it to me?”
He shrugged. He probably wasn’t supposed to. “Yeah, sure, why not. You’ll be disappointed though. It doesn’t show much.”
“Okay, well, let’s look at it anyway.”
We walked back to the storage building. At the front, one of the bays had been converted into a security room. They’d lined it with unpainted sheetrock, and cut a door and a window into what had been a roll-up door. There were large metal tubes leading to vents across the ceiling. There was some kind of heater/air conditioner somewhere outside.
At the furthest end of the room was a banquet table with a couple of stand-up computers beneath it and several monitors on the table, along with a keyboard. One monitor was dedicated to the operation of the computer, the other monitors showed what was being recorded. Based on what I was seeing, there were eight cameras installed around the building we were in. More than the building where Top Dog was located.
“Why does this building have more cameras?” I asked.
“Bigger target. People get it in their heads storage units are filled with hidden treasures. They’re not. It’s mainly just people’s junk.”
Scanning the monitors, I picked out the two cameras that were aimed at the building next door. They would be the most useful.
“Can you go back to yesterday around four-forty-five?”
“Sure.” He called up the interface program that allowed him to control the cameras. Clicked in a few numbers and a short time later we were looking at yesterday.
There were two views that mattered. The one of the southwest camera, and the one from the northwest camera. The south camera took in part of the parking lot next door where the shooting took place. The parking lot wasn’t even a third full. I could easily pick out Joanne’s Cadillac.
The video was black-and-white, with a time code running across the top. The Cadillac, which in real life was bronze, read as a pale gray. We began watching at 4:30.
“I can fast forward if you want,” Rocky said.
“Let me get oriented first.”
An older man walked out of the building and got into a Ford Taurus and drove away. As he left the parking lot, a minivan drove in and parked. No one got out. They must be picking someone up, I thought. Nothing happened for a bit.
“You like living here?” I asked Rocky to fill the time. “In Detroit?”
“Not really sure. It’s the only place I’ve ever been. Grew up here.”
“Maybe you should get out and see the world. You’re still a young guy.”
