but he insisted it had to be black, so they had to keep looking.”
“Who gives a shit about ink? What does that have to do with anything?”
“You can use it to dye flowers.”
“No shit? Is there any way to link him to the dye on the tulips?”
“I don’t know; we’re working on it. But that’s nothing compared to this. Ken Jeffco took a call this morning about another B&E in the area. Nothing taken, no damage, no nothing.”
“Then how did they know—”
“You’ll see. We need to find out if Palmer got any more emails first, but come have a look.” She led him back to the media room and pressed the Play button on the middle screen. “All those other messages she got, the ones we connected to the other B&Es, none of those houses had any kind of surveillance cameras.”
“Yeah, I know. So?”
“So feast your eyes on this. Video gold, my friend. Video gold.”
This wasn’t normal security footage from outside. This was inside…someone’s home office, by the looks of it.
“Nanny cam,” Hudak said. “This one’s in the spine of their dictionary—can you believe that shit? They have them all over the house, and our friend here doesn’t have a clue. Watch.”
Brett pulled up a chair and stared at the screen, waiting, waiting, until finally something appeared in the bottom corner. No, not something. Someone. Someone’s back, at least. As soon as Brett saw him, his eyes flicked over the time stamp ticking away in the top corner of the video. Saturday’s date, 01:13 hours.
“Soon as Jeffco saw this, he called Sarge.”
Dressed all in black, from his hoodie to his boots, the person walked straight into the room and sat down in front of the computer, leaning back in the big leather chair while he waited for the monitor to light up.
“Is there audio?” Brett asked, leaning closer.
“No, they never hooked that part up.”
From the angle of the camera, they could only get a partial side view of the guy at the computer, who wasted no time logging in to what Brett assumed was an email program. Time check: 01:14 hours.
Brett slowed the video speed so he could watch every single move the guy made—every time his gloved finger clicked the mouse, every time the mouse moved, how far the mouse moved, and the time stamp when he clicked the mouse the final time: 01:17 hours.
Then he backed it up and played it again before letting the video play on.
Apparently finished, the guy pushed away from the desk, set everything back the way it had been when he arrived, and headed out of the room.
“What the—” Brett held up both hands. “Please tell me there’s more.”
“There’s more.” Hudak pointed to another monitor and clicked Play. The screen immediately lit up with the same hoodie-wearing guy, but this time the camera angle got him walking straight toward it.
“No. Fucking. Way.” Even before Kurt’s face showed up on the screen, Brett knew it was him. They had him.
Hudak pointed toward the monitor, where she’d frozen the video so all they saw was a close-up of Kurt’s face. “That camera’s inside the chain they have on the front door.”
“So where is he? Do we have him? Is there more?”
“Simmer down.” Hudak grinned. “Right now we have him on a single B&E, which won’t get him anything more than an overnight stay with us. But if that was an email, and if it did go to Palmer, we’ve got him on all those, too.”
Brett was already out of his chair, but Hudak blocked the doorway.
“What are you doing?” he barked. “Let’s do this!”
She didn’t budge.
“Take it down a notch. If you go off half-cocked here, something’s going to get screwed up, and while you might not give a shit about that, since you’re outta here in a couple days, I do. So calm the fuck down.”
He really hated it when she was right. Taking a deep breath, he nodded slowly and waited for her to continue.
“You go gear up, and I’ll go see if Palmer’s sent anything else. If she hasn’t, we’ll give her a call. Got it?”
“Yeah. Got it. Uh-huh.”
As soon as Hudak stepped back, he took off like a shot up to the locker room, where he messed up his combination twice before getting the damn thing open. Uniform on in record time, firearm checked and holstered, and he was gone again, right back to Hudak’s desk.
“We got him.”
There on her computer monitor was a new message from Ellie, one she’d forwarded