Lately, Ryan found that he spent much more of his time watching video footage than he would like, likely owing to the ubiquity of cameras. But he certainly wasn’t going to complain about that today. Witnesses forgot or made mistakes, people lied, and physical evidence disappeared, especially after several weeks’ time. Video surveillance, on the other hand, captured everything, regardless of the time that had passed or how insignificant the event seemed at the time. Assuming one kept the footage. Fortunately, it turned out that the BMW dealership did, and the quality was good. The high-end car lot had clearly felt it prudent to splurge on a high-end security system to match. Anticipating the need to enhance or manipulate parts of the video, Ryan had managed to find a one of the techs to go over the footage with them.
“Cue it up to the 2 hours before the time of purchase, Johnson. I want to watch our guy come in,” Hawkins instructed, eyes focused on the large screen that lit the dark room.
Agent Zachary Johnson fast forwarded through the footage, slowing as they began to approach the time of the purchase. They watched a trickle of people coming in and out of the dealership, browsing, looking at cars. Men in nice suits, women with expensive jewellery. They wandered in, they browsed casually, a few people left on test drives, some people even literally kicked the tires. But, no one stood out, and no one was signing any contracts. Finally, 47 minutes before the recorded time of purchase, a man with a ball cap pulled down low on his head entered the dealership. He was wearing faded jeans and a wrinkled flannel shirt. Not the sort of clientele this place typically saw. But unlike the others, this customer clearly knew what he wanted. He walked quickly over to one of the cars, a sleek, black model. For an instant, he turned towards the camera, and they saw his face. Ryan exchanged a silent look with Hawkins: this was their guy. Hawkins nodded, but kept watching the tape, waiting to see what he would do next. He ran a hand down the side of a BMW 330e, gently caressing its curves, both with his hands and with his eyes. The salesman in the corner knew an interested customer when he saw one, not that this customer was being especially subtle about it; he closed on the man like a cheetah on a wounded gazelle and launched immediately into what looked like a very animated sales pitch. It obviously wasn’t necessary; Martin was here to buy. After only 15 minutes, they were in the back office. Johnson had to switch cameras then, but the view of the man’s face was much better now, Ryan felt a little thrill of triumph. They watched as a familiar brochure appeared and the details were hammered out. A handshake and a signature sealed the deal a short time later.
“The purchase time fits,” Ryan commented quietly.
“And the model is the same as the one ‘Simmons’ purchased,” Johnson added.
“Let’s watch a bit longer,” Hawkins replied, her tone carefully neutral.
They watched for another hour, but no one else purchased a car, of any make or model.
“Well, that fits with the sales receipts from that day,” Hawkins said at last. “Our man was the only one to buy a car. Can we go back? I want a close-up shot of the guy’s signature, then his face.”
“Consider it done,” Johnson replied confidently, sliding back to a time to when the suspect faced the camera directly. Johnson froze and magnified the images. The signature read Paul Simmons, as they had expected, but the face of the man who did the signing looked a lot like someone they already knew. Johnson pulled up Andre Martin’s mug shot on the screen.
“Can you compare them?” Hawkins asked.
“Already got the facial recognition software cued up, not that we really need it,” Johnson was right, it was obvious. But Hawkins was nothing if not thorough, so they ran the program.
“It’s consistent,” Johnson concluded at last. “Mr. Simmons is definitely your Andre Martin. And he didn’t want anyone to know it.”
“Looks like our friend Martin really did come into some money. Wonder where he got it?” Ryan mused.
“That is the million-dollar question,” Hawkins replied. “This is an important clue, but it really doesn’t get us any closer to our man, or the fairy godmother that bought him his shiny carriage here.”
“At least we know they exist,” Ryan tried to be optimistic.
“It’s not enough,” Hawkins muttered. “We still don’t know anything for sure. He could have robbed a bank for all we know. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
For a moment, no one said anything. Then, Hawkins seemed to think of something, and her eyes lit up,
“Rewind the video.”
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“To where?” Johnson asked.
“When he entered the dealership. Just take it slowly back to when he first came in.”
Johnson rolled the tape back, and they followed Martin’s movements through the dealership and back out onto the street, then he turned the corner and disappeared from sight. Johnson reached to stop the tape,
“Keep going,” Hawkins said.
Johnson looked confused, but he kept going.
“Maybe this will give us something,” Hawkins grinned, knowingly.
The men stared blankly back at her, and Hawkins rolled her eyes,
“You didn’t see that? Look out the window,” Hawkins reached forward, pointing at the large window that looked out on the lot. Ryan looked closer; it took him a second, but then he saw it: Andre Martin climbing out of a taxicab.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Johnson muttered.
His fingers flew over the keys. Hawkins watched silently as he zoomed in on the plate of the taxi.
“If we find that cab, maybe the logs will tell us where Martin came from,” Ryan said.
“It could be nothing, but if you look, he arrived from the wrong direction to be coming from his house, and by this time he had already stopped going in to work. So maybe he came straight from somewhere that can give us a clue,” she mused. “A friend we haven’t met that he could be staying with, a secret apartment, a mistress, something like that. Or, even better, maybe he came directly from getting his down-payment.”
“It’s certainly worth checking out,” Ryan agreed. “Martin isn’t the type to exercise much impulse control.”
“I can’t help but wonder, why he would take a cab instead of driving the van?” Hawkins pondered aloud.
“Well, I don’t think that’s unusual,” Ryan replied. “The van belonged to Tompkins, and I figure that our friend Martin didn’t tell Duane about his signing bonus.”
“What makes you think that?” she asked.
“Well, this was Martin’s car, his baby. You saw the way he looked at it. He didn’t even bring Duane to pick it out. We went over Duane’s records, his purchases, his apartment, and there was no sign that he got any money out of this deal at all. It is pretty clear what happened. Martin was the dominant personality in this duo. I would bet that he was the one who took this job, and he got some cash up front to do it. Then, he got his cousin to help him, be his muscle, but he kept that cash for himself, and never told Duane about it.”
“Makes sense,” Hawkins mused.
“It would fit Martin’s profile. He wants to be rich, be a big man, that sort of thing. He also sees himself as the boss and his cousin as his henchman. It is obvious from their previous brushes with the law that Martin wouldn’t think twice about screwing Duane over, if it suited him.”
“True,” Hawkins mused. “But all of this is academic. Let’s start with what we know for sure and find out where Martin came from.”
“We should finish going over this video again,” Ryan noted.
“Do you know anyone who can go check this out with the taxi company, in the meantime?”
“Yeah, I’ll get an agent on it.”
“Perfect.”
With that, he and Hawkins settled back in to see if there was anything more they could glean from the footage.
Another hour of watching Martin select car features and shoot the breeze with the salesman and they had nothing new.
“You ever get the feeling that someone is conspiring against us in this?” Ryan sighed, leaning his head back against the back of the chair.
“Yes, I do,” Hawkins said softly.
He had been kidding. She was not.
“You know, there really are very few criminal masterminds in the world,” he ribbed her gently. “They probably just got lucky; it happens all the time. Once we find Martin, we’ll know the whole story. I doubt it will even be interesting.”
“You think I’m over-analyzing?” she asked.
“Maybe a little,” Ryan conceded. “I mean, even a moron gets lucky once in a while. I don’t know if you can even call it luck, he did fail miserably, after all. What kind of criminal mastermind can’t even manage to kidnap a kid for more than a couple of days?”
“I suppose you have a point,” Hawkins said slowly. “But still, something about this still doesn’t sit right with me. And there is this money.”
Turning back to the screen, he could see that Martin was still talking with the salesman.
“Chatty fellow, isn’t he?” Ryan quipped.
“Uh huh.”
“You know, if they’d told me I was going to be spending my days watching video surveillance, I might have thought twice about my career choice.”
“That’s the glamorous world of law enforcement for you,” Hawkins laughed. “Paperwork, late nights, 7-hour long interrogations with people who want you dead, and weeks’ worth of waiting for test results are only some of the other perks. Tedious, but if you ask me, the rush when you close a case completely makes up for it.”
Ryan felt his cell phone buzz. Excusing himself, he answered and slipped into the hallway. He listened incredulously to the voice on the other end. Before he even hung up the phone, he was running back into the room.
“Hawkins, you are never going to believe this,” he ended the call.
“What is it?” she looked up, catching the excitement in his voice.
“I just got a call from Collins. We’ve got a location on Martin.”
“Really? How?”
“The place where that cab picked him up. It was an abandoned warehouse down on the docks. The agents who talked to the cab driver checked it out. One of them saw movement so they went to investigate. As they were approaching the building, they saw Martin through one of the windows, he fired a few shots at them and then disappeared back inside. Collins is already scrambling a tactical team to do the entry, so we need to get there fast.”
“Looks like one of our leads finally panned out.” Hawkins jumped to her feet.
“About damn time,” Ryan grinned. “With any luck, we’ll have all of this squared away before the end of the day.”
“Since when do we get any luck?” Hawkins muttered darkly.
With that ominous statement, she grabbed her coat off the chair and headed for the door, Ryan rushed out after his partner.