afternoon, also in D.C. That doesn’t leave him much time to fly to L.A. for an all-night party and still get back.”
“The sultan may be a dead end too,” Jamil told them. “I found security footage of him in a Paris jewelry store on Saturday three hours before he was scheduled to fly home. I also pulled video from the airport where he landed. It’s grainy but facial recognition has the guy exiting the plane as a seventy-four-percent match to Sultan Salah.”
“So that just leaves our Oscar winner,” Jessie said. “What did you find, Karen?”
“It’s a little weird, actually,” the detective said.
Jessie perked up. Weird was better than nothing.
“Weird how?” she asked.
“First of all, Gilliard has been on location in Santa Fe for the last month shooting a western. But I checked the production bulletin. According to the call sheets, his last shooting day was Friday. I called the production office and they said they’re in the middle of shooting an extended gunfight. He’s not a part of it so he’s off until tomorrow.”
“Did they say where he was?” Jessie asked.
“Nope. As long as he shows up on set when he’s needed, they don’t keep tabs on him.”
“So he could have come back to L.A.?” Jessie pressed.
“Possibly,” Karen said. “Unfortunately, it will take a while to check flight manifests to see if his name comes up.”
“There might be another way,” Jamil said, pulling up a new screen.
“What’s that?” Jessie asked.
“On the right is the archived footage from the South House main entrance,” he said, pointing. “On the left is the live feed of the entrance right now.”
“How do you have the live video feed from a place we can’t even get a search warrant for?” Jessie asked, astounded.
Jamil smiled gleefully. Jessie could tell that these were the moments he lived for.
“Before they shut down all cooperation, I spoke to a helpful security guy there. He’s actually interested in joining the department. Anyway, he gave me all their available archived video for the last week. He also let me patch into their live feed. I think he was trying to impress me. But apparently that didn’t get conveyed to his bosses because the feed is still active. I don’t think they’d allow it if they knew we had access.”
“How does that help us?” Karen asked.
Jamil looked like he wanted to enjoy this moment a little longer but seemed to sense it wouldn’t be appreciated.
“We’ve only done facial recognition from Saturday evening to Sunday midday because we assumed that the murderer arrived for the party and left when it ended. But with the archived footage, we can check to see if Gilliard arrived earlier and left later.”
His fingers flew over the keyboard for a few seconds before he looked up again.
“Done,” he said. “We should have the results soon.”
Jessie didn’t want to waste any time.
“I need to make a quick call,” she said. “Keep me posted.”
She walked out to her car, turned on the radio, and made the call. When it picked up, she spoke quietly.
“Are you at work?” she asked and when she learned the answer was yes continued. “I need your help.”
*
When Jessie dashed back into the research room fifteen minutes later, she was so short of breath she couldn’t speak at first.
“Are you okay?” Karen asked, worried.
“I’ve got news,” Jessie panted. “But I can’t say where I got it.”
Both of them stared at her, waiting. She held up her hand while she sucked in air.
I really need to get in better shape.
When she was finally able to speak normally again, she launched in.
“Milly Estrada was Gilliard’s lawyer,” she said. “It didn’t show up in the files we looked at when we were at her office on Sunday because they limited our access exclusively to clients who had cases before a court and he never did. But she’s represented him for years. My source wouldn’t get more specific than that. But they did share that her phone logs from work show that she had multiple conversations with Gilliard this week, including a call on Friday afternoon.”
Jamil immediately pulled up a new window and began a search. Within seconds, he had several tabs open and began flipping among them.
“It looks like he hasn’t posted on any social media outlet since Thursday night,” he said. “Kind of odd, considering that up until then, he was active on all of them.”
A beep from one of the monitors made them all turn in that direction.