Page 41 of The Devil's Advocate

‘I spent ten years in the back of my father’s station wagon as he preached all over this state, reading his Bible to pass the time,’ said Harry. ‘We’re looking for the dragon. That’s who did this to her – the great beast of Revelations 12.’

‘Like a demon?’ I asked.

Harry straightened his back, set his jaw and said, ‘No, it’s the devil himself.’

CHAPTER TWENTY

EDDIE

Bloch stared at the gas station. Started walking toward it. We followed.

We had been outside for fifteen minutes, no more. The back of my shirt had soaked through, Harry’s too. There was a fine sheen of sweat on Bloch’s forehead, but she was still wearing her navy blazer and white tee beneath it. She wouldn’t even let the sun mess with her. Standing at the gas pumps, in the shade, Bloch looked at the four cameras located in the canopy ceiling.

Harry and I went inside. The air-conditioned Circle K was heaven. Well, almost. Their coffee machine was working, but I was too hot for coffee. I got four sodas, four bottles of water from the fridge and took them to the counter.

The kid behind the counter wore a Metallica tee and a smile that he had learned to wear long ago and couldn’t really remember how to replicate.

‘Anything else I can get y’all?’ he asked.

‘Sure, do your cameras cover any of the lot behind the bar?’ I asked.

‘Uuuhhh,’ said the kid.

‘We’re investigators. You know, the murder that happened in the lot?’

I didn’t tell him we were acting for the defendant, nor did I say we were acting for the prosecution.

‘Oh, yeah, sure. Terrible thing,’ he said.

‘Can we take a look at your recordings for that night?’ I asked.

‘Uuuhhhh,’ he said, as if he was both confused and in pain.

‘It won’t take long,’ I said.

‘Are you with the Sheriff’s Department or something?’

‘Something,’ I said.

‘Uuuuh sure,’ he said.

He opened the countertop to let me through. I knocked on the window, alerting Bloch. Harry followed me, but said nothing. There was no mention of security-camera footage in the discovery from the prosecution. There was always a chance of law enforcement overlooking something important, either through incompetence or lack of organization.

I asked the kid his name and he said Damien Green. He was twenty-one years old and his IQ wasn’t much higher, but he was being helpful, which was all that mattered.

In the back office was a small safe, stacks of mail-order catalogs on a desk above it and a floor plan of the store on the wall. On the other side of the room was another desk with a computer with two screens, each screen split into four separate views from different cameras. Most of them covering the pumps. There was a camera that showed the entrance lane to the gas station, and another showing the exit. I took a moment to study the views shown by each camera.

‘Northwest corner. Screen two, bottom right,’ said Bloch, from behind me.

The kid turned and said, ‘Do you have any ID?’

‘Yes,’ said Bloch.

She didn’t reach for it. She didn’t offer to show it.

‘Okay,’ said Damien, nodding. He didn’t ask again.

I looked back to the second screen. Bottom-left corner. Sure enough. This was the pump closest to the bar, and it showed, in the distance, a side view of the building, which took in the front doors, and back lot for at least the length of the parking lot.