C Box - Below Zero

Coon wandered over and joined Joe and Sheridan leaning against Joe’s pickup. He looked ten years older than when Joe had seen him the afternoon before.

“You okay?” Joe asked.

“What do you think?”

Joe didn’t respond.

“Man, oh man,” Coon said. “Why did that idiot shoot at us?”

Joe said, “Meth. We’re drowning in it in rural Wyoming. Everyplace is.”

Coon pushed himself up and away from the pickup. “I nearly forgot. There’s something I need you two to look at. Come on, follow me.”

“Me, too?” Sheridan asked.

Coon said, “Especially you.”

COON OPENED THE passenger hatch of the helicopter and dug out his briefcase from under a seat. He unlatched it to reveal thick files and a sturdy government laptop. As he booted up the computer, he said, “I barely got a chance to see this before we took off. I downloaded it from the Carbon County sheriff’s department. From Rawlins, to be exact.”

“What happened in Rawlins?” Joe asked.

“A pharmacy got robbed and the pharmacist was killed in the robbery. We’re not sure what the bad guys took, but we’re guessing it was cash and drugs. The sheriff’s office is doing an inventory. The store had a closed-circuit camera, and they recovered the digital file. The quality’s not so good and the angle kind of sucks, but you can see the crime going down. The sheriff sent it to us to see if we could help identify the assailants.”

Joe and Sheridan exchanged looks, thinking: “na. but he hurt some man 2day in a drug store.”

The static image was in black-and-white and it showed four empty aisles stocked with packaging.

“From what I understand,” Coon said, “the camera is mounted on the ceiling behind the pharmacy counter. The view is basically what the pharmacist sees when he looks out into the store. As you can see, the store’s deserted.”

Joe felt Sheridan’s hand find his. He didn’t look down to draw Coon’s attention away.

“Okay, here,” Coon said, pointing at the screen, which showed a tall man with thick wavy hair entering the store and milling in the aisles. The man looked to be in his early to mid-thirties. Despite the poor quality of the transmission, Joe could see the man was fairly good-looking, with a prominent jaw and straight nose. He looked to Joe like an actor or an anchorman. The man was studying everything on the shelves with great interest, which struck Joe as discordant. No one was that interested in every single item on the shelves. His behavior was suspicious. Although there was no audio, it was obvious that someone-no doubt the pharmacist, who was out of view-asked the man a question because the man looked up with wide eyes and mouthed, “No.”

Then the man turned and walked swiftly down the aisle and back out the door. The exchange between the pharmacist and the shopper was brief and odd, Joe thought. He said, “We ought to have Cyndi take a look at this. She might recognize that guy. My guess is he’s Robert.”

Coon nodded and reached for the laptop. “Okay, we will in a minute. But we’re pretty sure it’s Robert Stenson. The bureau has a few photos of him and we’ve got agents looking for more. But just a second while I advance this. See if you recognize someone else…”

Joe felt Sheridan squeeze his hand.

The door in the store opened again and a second figure came in wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up and cinched tight. There was enough shape to the profile to determine it was a thin female. A strand of light hair crept out from the hood, but because she kept her head down, her face couldn’t be seen.

Joe watched transfixed as the girl dropped items into a shopping basket.

“She looks like she’s really shopping,” Joe said. “She’s picking things out. It doesn’t look random.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Coon said. “Do you recognize her?”

“Not yet. I can’t see her face.”

“Sheridan?” Coon asked.

“She could be somebody,” Sheridan said. “But I can’t tell for sure yet.”

Said Coon, “Keep watching.”

The girl went from one aisle to the next, dropping more items in the shopping basket. One package was large, flat, and square, the kind of packaging used for electronics.

Joe said, “I think that’s a TracFone.”

Coon stopped the tape and tried to zoom in on the package in the girl’s hand. He couldn’t get the controls to work. “We need to examine this on our hardware in Cheyenne,” he said. “I don’t know how to look closer. But if she’s got a new phone, everything we’ve got goes out the window. We can’t find her again unless she calls or sends a text to your daughter.”

Joe grunted. Sheridan looked at her cell phone as if willing it to ring.

Coon gave up trying to zoom in on the package and let the tape roll. The girl got closer to the camera, to the counter. She flinched and Joe guessed the pharmacist had addressed her. She turned, and for a second she raised her head and he could get a glimpse of half of her face. The other half was still hidden in the hood.

What he could see: her face was angular, smooth, pale, and there was a slightly Oriental cast to her eye, which was widened in alarm.

He couldn’t be sure.

Joe said to Sheridan, “Is that her?”

“I can’t tell,” Sheridan said quickly.

“Want to look again?” Coon asked. “It’s the best shot we’ve got of her face on here.”

Joe asked why. Coon said, “Watch.”

Two things happened at once on the tape. A white-sleeved arm reached out from the bottom of the frame and grasped the girl by the arm and pulled her closer. Unfortunately, it was too close to the camera for the lens to focus. All that could be seen was the top of her hood, which was dark and blurred. She appeared to be struggling. At the same time in the background, Robert threw open the door and strode toward the camera. His face was a snarling mask. He bent into the girl and out of view and emerged a second later with a gun in his fist. He pointed it below the eye of the camera and it bucked three times.

Sheridan gasped, “Did he shoot her?”

“No,” Coon said, “he shot the pharmacist. Killed him. And if you want to wait for a minute here, I’ll advance the tape to where you can see Robert and the girl leaving the store with the shopping basket and some rather large pill bottles. But their backs are turned to the camera, so we can’t see their faces.”

Joe realized that Sheridan was squeezing his hand so hard his fingers ached. He asked Coon to rerun the glimpse of her face again. They watched it over and over. He wanted to recognize April, but he was overwhelmed with the dark feeling that he couldn’t remember her face except in abstract: a ghost at a trailer house window. He wished Marybeth were there to give her opinion.

Was it her? She’d certainly look different six years older. But was it her?

“I just don’t know,” Sheridan finally said. “It could be. But it might not be.”

Coon sighed heavily, shook his head. “We can get that one shot blown up and printed. Maybe then?”

Sheridan shrugged.

“Man, I was hoping for better,” he said.

Joe agreed. It bothered him immensely that April had been an eyewitness to Robert shooting the pharmacist to death. No matter what her role was, there was no reason for her to have to see that. She was fourteen. He despised Robert for what he’d done. Then: “What about April’s cell phone? Cyndi said she left it in Skelton’s truck. Let’s see if it’s the right phone.”

Coon didn’t move.

“What?” Joe asked.

The FBI agent shook his head. “It got a direct hit. Maybe two. The pieces are there, but I don’t know if we can put them together to get anything out of it.”