“You may want to make a restroom run later. Whatever ink you used on the project stained your top, which is misbuttoned.”
Bray stared at her open-mouthed before allowing a slight smile.
“Thanks. Motherhood, right?” she finally said. “By the way, sorry about Moses. I know you two were tight. Everyone had enormous respect for the man. And sorry about your partner as well—Hernandez, right? How’s he doing?”
“Thanks. Hard to tell. Some days are better than others, you know?”
Bray nodded, then shrugged as if to say “what are you gonna do?” Apparently the sympathy portion of their conversation had drawn to a close.
“Yeah, well, I guess you’ll want to know what we have so far.”
“That would be great,” Trembley said.
“Don’t get too excited. It’s not much.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
They watched the security footage intently.
An overhead camera caught the assailant at the edge of the frame as Corinne Weatherly was dragged into the prop department.
“After that nothing happens for a while, until this,” Bray said, fast-forwarding to footage of the person leaving the stage and walking into the New York Street area.
“Is this it?” Trembley asked.
Bray nodded. Jessie realized the detective was right. If these short clips were the only available video, that didn’t leave them much to work with.
Just as bad, the images weren’t especially crisp. To make matters worse, the cameras were mounted at such high angles that there was no way to gauge the perpetrator’s height, weight, or general build. All they could tell was that the killer wore all black to go along with a black ski mask.
“So the killer just disappeared after that?” Jessie confirmed with Bray.
“From the view of the cameras, yes. The problem is that they’re only set up in high trafficked areas. And since there are so many, it’s hard to monitor all the cameras in real time. Unless a guard in the office was looking at the right screen at the right time, it would be easy to miss what happened. So someone who knows the lot well and has any sense of how the security here works, especially at night, could evade it pretty easily.”
Trembley had a suggestion.
“Maybe that means we should be looking at the folks who handle security,” he said. “Do we have a log of who was on duty last night?”
“Way ahead of you, Detective,” Bray said. “Not only do we have a log, but each security officer is provided with a GPS-enabled radio so their locations can be constantly monitored. They’re also required to check in with the main office every fifteen minutes. Every officer working last night is accounted for and none of them were near Stage 32 or Weatherly’s trailer in the time window of the crime.”
“That’s awfully convenient,” Jessie mused. “Like you said, it’s almost as if the killer knew the best time to do this.”
“It’s definitely suspicious,” Bray agreed.
“How come we don’t have a shot of when she was moved out of her trailer?” Trembley asked.
“Let me show you,” Detective Bray said, leading them to Weatherly’s trailer. “There are a few things you need to see in there anyway.”
As they walked past several crew members milling about, Jessie heard one especially vocal guy in jeans and a T-shirt grumbling that at least now they wouldn’t all need to go to group therapy. She was tempted to stop and ask him what that meant, but before she could, Bray spoke.
“We’re here,” she said.
Ignoring the crowd of onlookers, she ducked under the police tape and stepped inside the trailer. Jessie and Trembley followed. They immediately stepped into another world. Jessie’s image of a trailer was of some flimsy, temporary building with interior corkboard walls and fluorescent lighting. But this place looked like an expensive studio apartment.
It was decked out with amenities she didn’t have access to at her old condo or Kat’s apartment. The living space had a nice loveseat set along one wall facing a massive television monitor. Behind that, in the back of the trailer, was a queen-size bed. Along the other wall was a kitchen, complete with a full-size refrigerator/freezer, a microwave, oven, and stove.
Right across from her was a surprisingly spacious bathroom, including a shower with a small built-in bench. She turned the other way to see a makeup station, complete with a large mirror with built-in lighting. On the mirror was a word written in what appeared to be lipstick: Boatwright.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“This is one of the things you needed to see,” Detective Bray replied.