Blake Pierce - Once Shunned

She pointed at the screen and said, “There’s a man right there.”

Riley’s companions peered more closely at the screen as Jenn continued to run through the footage frame by frame. Sure enough, a man was walking alongside the truck. The low-resolution image didn’t show him at all clearly. He appeared as little more than a fuzzy silhouette.

When the truck finished dumping Robin’s bin, it began to drive on to the next house. But the man just stood there.

Riley realized with a tingle …

He’s staring at Robin’s house.

Then Riley gasped and said to Jenn …

“Stop on that frame!”

Jenn stopped the feed, stared at the image, and asked …

“What’s he doing now?”

The shadowy figure seemed to have raised one arm.

“Almost looks like he’s aiming a gun,” Brennan said. “But the victim wasn’t shot.”

“It looks to me like he’s pointing at something,” Bill said.

“Pointing at the victim?” Jenn asked. “Threatening her?”

Riley said, “Keep running it slowly.”

Jenn ran the footage frame by frame by frame. Riley and her colleagues could see the man standing there for a moment, arm raised, staring in the direction of the victim’s house. Then he lowered his arm and hurried out of the frame.

Riley said to Jenn, “Run the whole thing again.”

Jenn backed up the footage to where the truck was coming into view, than ran it slowly. Again, Riley and her colleagues saw the truck stop to pick up Robin’s garbage bin. Again, they saw a man walking alongside the truck. They saw the truck start to pull out of view, then the man standing, gesturing, and finally leaving the scene.

“Who was that guy?” Chief Brennan asked in an amazed voice.

“What was he doing?” Jenn added.

And where did he go? Riley wondered.

Riley sighed in discouragement. There simply was nothing more to see.

She and her colleagues had been staring hard at the screen as Jenn ran the security camera footage several times. But the camera wasn’t well focused for that distance from the house it was set up to protect. The man walking alongside the truck remained an indistinct blur.

They’d found no clue to suggest why he’d suddenly walked out of the frame, or where he’d gone. He had never come back into view.

Riley said, “We’ve got to find out who that man is. He and the truck driver seem to be the only signs of life on that street at that time.”

“This guy was on the move at the approximate time of the murder,” Jenn added. “We could be sitting here watching the killer.”

“The truck appears to have continued on its way without him,” Bill said. “We can’t be sure they were even supposed to be together.”

“I think I know how to find some answers,” Chief Brennan said. He pulled out his cell phone. “I’ve got a direct number for Roger Link, the director of Public Works here in Wilburton.”

Brennan punched in a number, then put the call on speakerphone so Riley and her colleagues could hear.

When Brennan got the director on the line, he said, “Roger, this is Clark Brennan.”

The voice replied cheerfully, “Hey, how’re you doing, Clark?”

Brennan scratched his chin and said, “Well, I’m hoping you can help me with a problem. I’m sure you know about the murder that happened the night before last.”

“Yeah. Awful thing.”

Brennan said, “Some FBI agents and I have been looking at a security feed, and we see that a waste collection truck went by the victim’s house at about the time of the murder. There was a guy on foot alongside that truck, and he acted a little oddly.”

Riley could hear the director gasp.

He said, “Surely you don’t suspect any of our sanitation guys.”

Brennan said, “Honestly, Roger, we don’t know what the hell to think. But we need to know who was working that particular route that night.”

“Our guys usually work alone,” the director replied. “Now that we’re using these robotic arm pickup vehicles, they don’t even interact with people on their routes anymore. Generally speaking, things are better this way.”

Brennan told him Robin Scoville’s address.

“OK, I’ll see what I can find out,” the director said.

Riley and her colleagues heard clattering on a keyboard. Then the director spoke again.

“I may have found out something for you. This is a little unusual. The driver on that route’s name is Dick Abbott. That night he did have someone kind of working with him, a young guy named Wesley Mannis. It seems that Wesley lives at Wilburton House, an IDD facility.”

Jenn asked, “IDD?”

“Intellectual and developmental disabilities,” the director said.

Chief Brennan squinted and asked, “So does that mean he’s retarded or physically handicapped or …?”

“I wouldn’t know,” the director said. “But the facility and the city run a program together for live-in IDD residents. The city hires the residents for jobs outside the facility, helping them transition into regular lives. This Wesley Mannis was part of that program, and his job was sort of a made-up one, something that wouldn’t be too demanding. Really, he just walked alongside the truck and made sure no garbage got dropped. Not much of a job, but it gave him something to do until …”

The director paused. Riley had to bite her tongue to keep from asking …

“Until what?”

After another clatter of keys, the director said, “Two days ago the driver filed a report that Wesley disappeared sometime during that morning’s shift. We’re required to do that when these workers don’t show up or wander off.”

“That was the morning Robin Scoville was murdered,” Jenn said.

“Can you pinpoint the time?” Brennan asked.

“No,” the director replied. “This doesn’t say exactly when, where, or why Wesley skipped out. Apparently Wesley just walked away somewhere along the route and the driver didn’t miss him right away. The Public Works Department alerted Wilburton House that one of their residents had walked off on a job and … well, that’s all the report says.”

Riley asked, “Nothing about whether Wesley eventually turned up at Wilburton House?”

“No, I guess you’ll have to find that out from the staff there.”

“We’ll do that, thanks,” Chief Brennan said.

He ended the call and looked back and forth at Riley and her two colleagues.

“What do you think?” he asked the three agents. “Maybe this Wesley Mannis is our killer?”

Riley had no idea, and judging from their silence, she was sure neither Jenn nor Bill did either.

“If he is,” Jenn finally said tentatively, “we’ve got him.”

“Now wouldn’t that be nice and easy?” Bill muttered.

But the possibility didn’t quite add up to Riley. Had the same resident from the same facility gone to New Haven a week ago and killed Vincent Cranston during his morning jog on the Friendship Woods trail? Riley found that hard to believe.

She said to Brennan, “We need to check in with Wilburton House.”

Brennan nodded and punched another number on his cell phone.

When he got the facility’s female receptionist on the line, he said, “Police Chief Clark Brennan here. I’ve got three FBI agents listening in on this call. We need to know—do you have a live-in resident there named Wesley Mannis?”

“Yes.”

“Is he in the facility right now?”

“I’ll check.” After a brief pause, the receptionist said, “Yes, he’s in his room.”

Apparently unsure what to ask next, Brennan looked appealingly at Riley and her colleagues.

Riley said to the receptionist, “We need to know about Wesley Mannis’s activities two days ago, during the very early morning hours.”