“Nowhere yet,” I said. “But it’s a start.”
“A start is something.”
“I agree. Can I see her text history?” I asked.
I didn’t need to prompt the young detective. “Don’t see why not. The wife’s been missing for nearly a month now, and we’ve got nothing.”
“You’ve got me,” I said.
“A private dick with no di—” He caught himself.
“Good catch,” I said.
“Er, sorry.”
“Nothing I haven’t heard before, Detective,” I said. “Wanna keep watching?”
He nodded and rolled the video.
Chapter Fourteen
We watched her cross the parking lot and enter the Starbucks with no fanfare. She didn’t speak with anyone and kept her head down. Once inside, through the smoked glass, we lost track of her.
“Interior footage?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t that be nice?”
I knew this, of course. Everyone knew this. I nodded.
He added, “They have since installed an interior camera. Too little, too late.”
I nodded again, and for the next two hours, we watched my client appear and disappear out of the screen, going inside, searching outside, circling the building. Covering his mouth and calling loudly. He looked like a crazy man. He also looked like a man who had lost his wife.
We backtracked the video, going over it frame by frame, studying everyone coming in and going out. But no one looked like her—or even looked like her in disguise. There was no one unaccountable, either. Meaning, a man with a beard didn’t suddenly emerge who hadn’t already come in.
Later, the police came, searching the exterior and interior, taking statements, and taking photos.
“Police checked behind the counter, the back room, even the freezer. Everywhere. No one saw her go back there, and they had like seven employees working at the time. Seven. What coffee shop has seven fucking employees working at one time?”
“Is this a trick question?”
He ignored me and backtracked again. We both were taking copious notes.
“Husband doesn’t come into view until...” Sharp checked his notes. “Until fourteen minutes after she goes in. Almost fifteen. If you ask me, that seems like a reasonable amount of time to come looking for your wife. It doesn’t seem, you know, suspicious.”
I nodded.
“The police come,” he checked the notes again, “thirty-two minutes after she disappears. All normal stuff, if you ask me.”
“Normal, except she hasn’t been seen since.”
We both stared at Henry on the screen, who was now frozen in mid-yell, one hand cupping his mouth, the other shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare. The disappearance had happened just after noon.
After a moment, Sharp said, “Husband’s been taking some heat.”
“Shouldn’t be. It’s obvious that he’s at a loss, too.”
“Unless he’s in on something? Or unless they’re in on something together.”