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“I know,” she said grudgingly. “All we know is that Crawford is still the most likely to have stolen the coins. Evans is too short and Adler is too tall to be the figure exiting Shady Oaks at four fifteen on Saturday morning.”
Sam frowned. “If either Adler or Evans could have killed Frankie, where did they enter the building? The camera on Frankie’s floor was disabled the night he died, but the exterior cameras were working, weren’t they? Neither Adler or Evans should have been on-site Saturday night. Neither was invited to Eloise’s party, and they didn’t usually work weekends unless there was a problem. Did you catch one of them on camera somewhere?”
Kit nodded, looking annoyed with herself. “You’re right. We should have thought of that. I think we need to go back to the beginning. Connor, let’s have another look at all the cameras and recheck alibis. Assuming that the camera feeds haven’t been tampered with by either Adler or Crawford, we’ll hopefully find something that sticks out. Thank you, Sam.” She looked back at Faye Evans, who was bent over the notepad, scribbling her confession. “What about Shady Oaks? Who will take over?”
Because Evans was not leaving custody. Not unless she made bail at her arraignment.
“Probably the head nurse, Janice Lenski,” Sam said. “Janice covered for Evans when she had to take off time for her mother’s surgery a few months back. Everything was fine then. Evans’s assistant Lily doesn’t have any computer knowledge and Evans was only keeping her on until she retires. Which is next month.”
“We should check Lily’s financials, too,” Navarro said. “If the woman two directors ago fooled everyone, this woman might, too.”
“We already did,” Connor said, “but we’ll give her bank accounts a deeper look.”
Navarro nodded. “Sounds good. Go eat, McKittrick. We’ve had this conversation before. Take care of yourself or I’ll catch holy hell from your mother.”
Kit sighed. “Yes, sir.”
San Diego PD, San Diego, California
Wednesday, November 9, 5:00 p.m.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Connor complained, leaning back until the chair in which he sat was balanced on two legs.
Kit considered giving the chair a little shove but decided it wouldn’t be in her best interest. She didn’t have time to train a new partner right now.
They’d been holed up in one of Homicide’s conference rooms all afternoon, viewing footage from Shady Oaks’s security cameras. They’d examined each entrance, first for the four-hour period around Frankie Flynn’s death, then expanding it to eight, then to twelve. Finally, they’d examined the entire twenty-four hours that encompassed both Crawford’s and Flynn’s deaths.
So far, they’d seen no one who hadn’t been on the duty roster for that day—the roster that Jeff had pulled from the server, once he’d finally gotten in.
“It only makes sense if a staff member on duty that night killed Flynn,” Kit said, looking at the list of personnel they’d been tracking via a combination of the key-card system and the camera footage.
“And Benny,” Connor added. Because they’d checked the camera on Benny’s floor—thankfully reset by Jeff Mansfield in time to capture the footage from the morning that Benny had died.
Just as the key-card logs had reported, Nurse Roxanne had entered Benny’s apartment twice before ten p.m. on Monday evening, staying for a few minutes each time. Nurse Janice had entered twice between midnight and four a.m. Nurse Janice had confirmed all four visits as legitimate.
Then, at five a.m. on Tuesday, someone dressed in baggy blue scrubs and shoes with platform soles had entered Benny’s room using Devon Jones’s key card. The intruder had worn a puffy jacket that obscured the size and shape of their torso. They’d also worn gloves so that their hands were hidden. Their head, hair, and face were also hidden by a cheap wig and a baseball cap, because of course they were. Kit and Connor couldn’t even see how high the intruder’s platform soles were, as their pants covered most of the heel, but the figure appeared to be between five-eight and five-eleven, similar to the thief seen leaving Shady Oaks early Saturday morning.
The person stayed in Benny’s apartment for ten minutes, then crept out and down the nearest staircase. But the intruder hadn’t exited the building. Not through any of the exits.
Kit didn’t need the results of Mr. Dreyfus’s blood test to tell her that Benny had been murdered at five a.m. Tuesday morning.
So now they were looking at every member of the Shady Oaks staff. Including Miss Evans and Archie Adler, even though neither of them had come close to the facility the whole weekend. Either one—or both—could have been calling the shots. Perhaps paying or extorting a staff member to commit the crimes. So they were still suspects in the murders.
Kit stared at the list of staff. “We can eliminate anyone under about five-four.” It was an educated guess, as it was difficult to tell exactly how tall the intruder was because they’d slumped their shoulders and back but had also increased their height with the thick wig on their head and platform soles on their feet. “They knew they were being watched.”
“Yeah, they did. I wish we could at least figure out the body type of Benny’s intruder. That jacket hides everything.”
“This sucks,” Kit muttered. “Now we have to check the financials of nearly everyone here. Only twenty percent of the staff are too short. I wish we had a look at the intruder’s face. I wish the camera angle was better. I wish the killer had left something behind we can work with.”
Because, so far, they had nothing. No fingerprints, no hair, no nothing.
Connor sighed. “We have video of Evans entering Benny’s room, carrying a large shopping bag. The bag would have been big enough for the vase she claimed to have planted a camera in to capture Benny putting his combination into the safe’s lock. Evans leaves a few minutes later with the folded bag tucked under her arm.” He paused, thinking. “Which is odd on its own. I mean, Crawford—or someone—turned off the camera the night that Flynn was killed. Why leave the video of Evans entering Benny’s room? Unless Crawford meant to set Evans up to take the fall for the theft.”
“Sounds like something he’d do,” Kit agreed. “He was going to let Evans take the fall, but someone killed him first. And got the coins. And the vase, because nobody’s seen it.”
Connor nodded. “It’s fair to assume that whoever stole the coins took the vase, too. Maybe we search the staff lockers for the vase? If we can get a warrant. All of the lockers might be too broad a search.”
Kit sat up straighter. “That’s a good angle, actually, even though I doubt the vase is still around. The thief would have to have taken the vase before Saturday morning when they took the collection. Evans said the camera wasn’t connected to the Wi-Fi so that Adler wouldn’t know about it. The thief would have needed to view the video on the memory card to see what the combination was before breaking in. They could have viewed it on a laptop in a break room or even in Benny’s apartment, but nobody else going in and out of Benny’s was carrying a vase or a laptop.” She sorted through the key-card logs once again. “Here’s the master key card used by Evans the Wednesday before the coins were taken—at six o’clock, just as she said.”
