“Oh yeah?” His brow lifted.
“My shop got hit,” I said plainly. “They took parts like transmissions, alternators. Shit, anything they could flip quickly.”
Mr. Earl sucked his teeth.
“Mmm. See, that’s that sloppy work. Folks getting bold.”
“Or desperate,” I muttered.
“Yup,” he nodded, agreeing with me, “a thief will steal a damn microwave out of the break room.”
I couldn’t even argue that. I laughed inwardly because at the first robbery those muthafuckers even took the damn coffee maker in the back break room.
“You catch anything on your cameras?”
I let out a short laugh, shaking my head as I looked down at my keys.
“Man, what cameras?”
There was a pause, and then Mr. Earl barked out laughing like I had just told the funniest joke he had heard all year.
“Boy, if you don’t get it together,” he said while pointing at me. “You young, got all this money tied up in these businesses, and ain’t got no cameras?”
I shrugged while half-smirking.
“Ain’t never needed ‘em.”
“Well, clearly you do now,” he shot back without missing a beat.
I huffed a quiet laugh, but he wasn’t wrong. I had to be on point with all of the spots. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward his shop.
“Come on. Let’s go check mine. I got cameras all around this damn place. If they came through here, I might’ve caught something.”
That wiped the humor clean off my face.
“For real?” I asked while stepping toward him.
“For real,” he nodded. “I don’t play about my shit, Malik. I had my son install a whole bunch of gidgets and gadgets. I got cameras and sensors. Hell, I probably got more security than the damn police station.”
I followed him toward his shop. My mind had already started to race because if Mr. Earl had caught anything, this was a lead.
Mr. Earl’s office smelled like paint thinner and old coffee. His shop had the kind of scent that settled into the walls and never really left. I stood just behind him as he lowered himself into his chair.
“What day was it?” he asked with his fingers hovering over the keyboard.
“May 17th,” I answered.
“Aight,” he muttered as he typed it in. “Let’s see what my cameras picked up.”
The monitors lit up in front of us and split into six different views from around his building. He hit play and pushed the speed up, and just like that, time started moving too fast to catch anything at first glance. Cars passed in streaks, shadows stretched and disappeared, and the sky shifted from daylight to darkness in seconds. Stray cats were caught on camera fighting in the alley over garbage. His cameras picked up everything.
I leaned forward slightly, watching each screen carefully, letting my eyes adjust to the pace of it. For a while, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Then night fell, and the time stamp was almost two in the morning, and something shifted.
“Hold on,” I said with my attention locked onto the camera facing the alley.
Even with the footage moving fast, I caught it. There was a black old-school Chevy Impala that rolled into the alley and then cut its lights. Something about it pulled at me immediately. My mind went straight to Tahari without me even trying to stop it. I didn’t speak on it, though, I just watched.
The driver’s side door opened, and a man stepped out with a ski mask covering his face. His movements were sharp and deliberate. Before I could fully process that this might be my daughter’s boyfriend, another car pulled in behind it. It was a black Toyota Camry.
