and see if Tonya used to take this path for any reason. Maybe he found her on it. I think Marcus is trying to see if we can get a team to comb the distance between the university and here in case she was pulled off along the way.”
“Sounds good,” he says as he takes out a camera and begins photographing the scene.
I head off where I bump into Briar and DeGray and explain to them what I know before the three of us return to Marcus.
Marcus gives them a nod before turning to me. “I’m going to help the team making the trek between here and the university. There are about four miles between them, but that wouldn’t be impossible for a vampire to carry a body that far. We can now assume he used the path after dark since the path is a common bike and walking route.”
“Are there any cameras up?” I ask.
Briar nods. “Wait, isn’t there a wildlife preserve notice in the area? They were documenting something, right? Do you think they could have gotten footage?”
“What were they documenting?” Marcus asks.
“I remember hearing about it,” I say. “Some kind of camera setup.”
“Eagles, right? They have a live feed of it or something that people can watch. It was the hot thing and all over social media when they were hatching,” DeGray says, “but that was weeks ago.”
“Would it even get anything from that high up?” I ask.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“I’ll contact them and see what I can find,” I say. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Alright, I’ll head out with some of the others; keep me up to date if you hear anything,” Marcus says.
“Got it.”
While he does that, I hunt down the parks department’s number and call around until I find someone who has information on it. They agree to meet us here and show us the location of the cameras.
When the vehicle pulls up, a woman gets out and smiles at me. “Are you Detective Hayes?”
“I am, and you must be Jackie?”
“Yes. So I’ll show you the location, but I fear the camera will be too high to catch anything,” she says. “Before we go, I can show you the shot it gets.”
She pulls out a laptop and sets it on the hood of her SUV before a video begins to play. “Do you have an idea of when it could have happened?” she asks.
“We’re looking at Sunday evening, probably between five p.m. and Monday morning at three a.m. I can’t imagine it happened any later, but if there’s a good angle, we’d love to watch whatever you have.”
Jackie shows me one pointed at a nest of baby eagles sleeping. The angle of the camera shows nothing but the nest and tree.
“Ah… I see the issue.”
“Yeah. I wish it was more help.” She seems to think for a moment. “Can you tell me how far away it could have been? We have a few other cameras set up.”
“We’re thinking maybe somewhere between here and the university.”
She hesitates for a moment before clicking around. “We have some butterfly houses that were being vandalized by kids, so we set up a camera. It’s off the path but could give you something.”
“Let’s see that,” I say.
She goes to the feed of that and while it doesn’t show the path very well, it does at least show the ground.
“Well, that’s a better angle. Can you look at past footage on there?”
“Yes, it keeps up to a week at a time. Let’s see what we can find,” Jackie says as she starts hunting through it. It takes her a while, but I stand next to her as she figures it out and starts the recording. I have her fast-forward it, but we have to stop at every person who comes into sight of the camera. The people on the path can be seen, but they’re small, so we have to scrutinize each one. Most seem to be on bicycles, jogging with dogs, or walking with their family.
That is until something flashes by so quickly, I almost miss it.
“Stop it!”
She does and goes back and plays it again. It’s very clearly a vampire by the way it moves, but it’s on and off the screen so quickly there’s nothing to be seen. Whether or not it’s our vampire and he or she has our victim at that point is impossible to tell. I look over to where Karsyn is documenting something on a notepad.
“Karsyn, you’re tech-savvy, come here a minute.”
He comes over