was getting wetter with the humidity that always comes with the sun in summer.
I showered, shaved, put on clean shorts and a T-shirt with the logo of a local restaurant and took my newspaper, coffee, and a muffin to the patio. It was still cool enough in the shade of the overhang to enjoy the outdoors. It was not yet eight o’clock.
My phone rang. J.D. calling.
“The techies came up with some pictures from the elevator cameras at Tropical,” she said. “You want to see them?”
“I’ve got coffee on.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I’d moved back inside and the new pictures were spread over the coffee table. The first thing I noticed was that the person in these pictures was wearing the same clothes as the person in the pictures from the Grand Beach elevators. The second thing was the size of the new guy. There was no clear shot of his face. He was wearing the same ball cap as the one from Grand Beach and he kept his head down.
“Did you notice the clothes on this one?” I asked.
“Yeah. They look identical. Like a uniform or something.”
“Same briefcase.”
“Identical.”
“And this is a pretty big guy,” I said.
“Yes. You can tell by comparing his size to the elevator door. I’d say he’s around five feet ten. Not huge, but bigger than the Grand Beach guy.”
“The time stamps match. The one at Grand Beach and this guy were going up and coming down at about the same time.”
She took a sip of her coffee. “We’ve got at least two people involved in this. A hit team?”
“Looks like it. Maybe more than two.”
“More than two?” she asked.
“What if Jim hadn’t gone jogging that morning. This was their last chance to get him before he left for Europe. There had to be someone else as a backup.”
She thought about it, her teeth massaging her lower lip. “Or maybe there was a backup plan. If he hadn’t jogged that morning, they may have planned to get him somewhere else.”
“You could be right. But why? Who’d want to hit a young guy just out of college?”
“If we answer that question,” she said, “we’ll probably have an idea of who the shooters were.”
“Even if we don’t get the shooters, if we can figure out the why and the who behind this, I’ll have somebody to sue. We can take it from there.”
“Where do we start?”
“The statements from Chaz Desmond and Jim’s wife, Meredith, weren’t much help. I wonder if I might have a little more luck. Not being a cop, and all.”
J.D. bristled a little at this. “You think you can take a better statement than I can?”
“No. Not at all. But Chaz is my old friend and the guy who wants me to proceed with this suit. He can get me to Meredith as part of the family. There just might be secrets there that they would share with me that they’d want to keep out of the public record. And by talking to you they would be afraid that everything would become public sooner or later.”
She relaxed, smiled, sat back in her chair. “Good recovery, chum. But I think you’re probably right. And there’s nothing to lose by trying.”
“So it’s okay with you for me to talk to them?”
“Sure.”
“How about the other witnesses?”
“No problem. Just keep me informed.”
“Suppose we set up a new file, one that’s not part of the official file. That way I can assure the witnesses that while I’ll share the information with you, it’ll be completely off the record and that you won’t use it without their explicit permission.”
She was quiet for a beat, thinking this over. I knew it went against all her training. The rules are specific. Everything goes into the master file. All evidence and statements are to be kept for use in a trial. She would be breaking all kinds of regulations by going off the reservation, as it were.
“I don’t know, Matt,” she said after a minute or so. “I work for the town. I don’t know if I can hide anything from the prosecutors and other cops.”
“Think of it this way, J.D. I don’t have to share any of this with you. I can claim attorney-client privilege or work product and keep it out of the hands of any of the authorities. But I’d like your help. Besides, you’re at a dead end on this case. You’ve got no suspects, no motive, no nothing. You can’t possibly hurt the case by working with me off