AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Gabe frowned. “I’m just concerned about you. What have I done to make you mistrust me?”
“You show up on my doorstep asking me questions about an event from twenty-seven years ago, and that very same afternoon my apartment building burns down. Excuse me for being a bit paranoid.”
“This fire was started because of something totally unrelated to what I asked you about.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“What...?” Gabe stopped and thought for a minute. Though on the surface it looked as if Thomas’s murder and the deaths of the Pope family were unrelated, was it a coincidence both cases led here?
Frank Grace never believed in coincidence, and it was something he drummed into guys he supervised. Things happen for a reason. Every action results in a reaction. There’s no such thing as a coincidence. In his career, Gabe had found those axioms to be true. Here, now everything seemed to circle back to Barton Plaza.
“What do you mean?”
“I heard people talking. They said cops were inside Thomas’s apartment. That’s where the fire started—someone tried to kill them.”
Gabe scratched his head, frowning. “How can these cases be related? A murder and a traffic accident twenty-seven years apart.”
“You’re looking at the how, not the who.”
Who?Gabe ran through the list of names in his mind: White, Hoffman, Pope, Curtis, Johnston... Try as he might, he could not see a connection. He went a different direction.
“Did you know that someone was staying in Thomas’s apartment after he was killed?”
“I did. I’ve lived here for nearly thirty years; I don’t miss much.”
“Why didn’t you notify the police?”
“I didn’t think it would do any good.”
“Do you know who was staying there?”
Curtis said nothing.
“Did you know there were cameras in the alley?” Gabe asked.
“Cameras?” Curtis’s face scrunched in bewilderment. He touched his chin with his forefinger. “Oh, oh yes.” He nodded. “Thomas put them there. A long time ago.”
“A long time ago?” Gabe felt a zing. He was onto something big here. “When? And why did he want to put them up?”
“The serial rape case. The one where Natasha was almost a victim. He told me he didn’t feel safe and thought cameras in the alley would be helpful. The landlord put bars on his windows and Thomas hated them.”
“Those cameras have been up since the Tiny Tim case?”
“Yes.” He frowned. “Thomas monitored them religiously. Maybe he was a bit misguided at the end, but he was community-minded. He wanted his neighbors to be safe.”
“Monitored them. Did he record what the cameras picked up?”
“At first. Thomas believed it was the way to stop crime, policing your own neighborhood, not relying on the official police. He saw things like homeless people using the alley for a toilet, kids doing malicious mischief, and he would talk to them, explain that he wouldn’t go to the police if it never happened again. Amazingly, Thomas was very persuasive. After a while the alley became the safest place around. I think eventually Thomas lost interest in recording everything. I don’t believe he even turned them on anymore. If he had, he never told me about seeing anything.”
Gabe knew Danni had seen the cameras turned on after Thomas’s death. Questions still remained: Who or what had Thomas recorded? And who turned the cameras on after his death?
He needed to let Danni know about Thomas and the cameras. He looked at the clock and realized this would have to wait until morning.
Frustrated and bone-tired, Gabe finished questioning Curtis. “Look, Mr. Curtis, we can’t stay here. If you don’t trust me, at least let me take you to a hotel. I can’t just leave you here.”
Time ticked away as Curtis seemed to be considering his options. Gabe had almost given up when finally the old man said, “Thank you, Investigator Fox. Maybe I can trust you. Lead the way.”
