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“Heh. She didn’t bring her cats here, but this is the last place anyone saw her alive.”
His smile falls off his face. “Oh, crap. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I don’t know for sure anyone hurt her yet.” I glance down at the picture of Gemma and the cat. The poor woman looks so innocent and happy. It annoys me that I keep assuming she’s already been killed.
“Let me get Simon,” he says. “Maybe we got them on video. Would that help?”
I peel my gaze off my phone, shifting it to this guy on the other side of the bar. In all the years I’ve done investigations, I can count on one hand the number of times someoneofferedto let me look at security video without me having to beg, threaten, mind-control, or get the police involved to bring a warrant into the mix.
Speaking of the police, specifically the Anaheim P.D. (a much bigger department than Fullerton P.D., and one I don’t have any contacts in as of yet), they likely have already gone over the video. What they concluded, I don’t know. If need be, I could ask to speak to the lead detective—or maybe Sherbet has more information, even though he works in a different police department—but my hunch has been to come at this case without any preconceived notions or outside opinions. I suspect this case needs fresh eyes.Myfresh eyes. Not the opinion of an over-worked detective. It’s one reason why I’m a little miffed I keep jumping to the conclusion she’s dead.
“That would be wonderful of you.” I smile.
“Just a moment.” Terry spins away from me, grabs a small black phone on the wall, and makes a call. “Hey, man. Got a cop out here looking for a girl who went missing from our place. Uh huh. Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.”
I bite my lip and raise a ‘wait a sec’ finger. “I’m not a cop.”
Terry gives me side eye.
“I’m a PI hired by the missing woman’s brother.”
“Same difference.” He grins. “Simon will be out here in a moment.”
I chuckle. “Great. Appreciate it. Sorry if I came off as a cop. Not trying to impersonate one.”
“Eh, it doesn’t matter. You’re trying to do the right thing by some poor girl, right?”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
I sit there making small talk with the bartender for a few minutes. He’s bored since there isn’t anyone here drinking yet. Apparently, things pick up around 5:30 in the evening and get crazy closer to eight. It’s also only Tuesday, so it’s going to be slower than, say, Thursday or Friday. We have a laugh over what it is about Thursdays that makes people go to bars. You’d think it would be Friday when they didn’t have to wake up early for work the next morning.
Our conclusion: Thursday is close enough. We laugh again at that.
Eventually, an older guy—late fifties—in a purple polo shirt and white khaki pants wanders over to us. He’s bald on top. A gold wristwatch struggles to remain visible, lost in an ocean of copious forearm hair.
“This is Simon, our general manager.” Terry gestures at the guy.
Simon offers a hand. “Good afternoon. I understand you’re trying to find someone who’s gone missing?”
“That’s right. She was last seen here a week ago Friday evening.” I explain the after-hours office party, her meeting a guy she’d never seen before and for some reason deciding to leave with him.
Simon and Terry exchange a ‘yeah, that sounds sketchy’ glance.
“Already showed them to the police. You must be a private eye.”
“Nice guess,” I say.
“We should still have the files available.” Simon waves for me to follow him and walks off. “We got the whole place on a video feed, by the way. Unless one of my employees thinks something is going down, or one of the alarms is tripped, it’s not full motion. Takes a still every second. Saves on storage space. Anyway, don’t get too excited. From what I could tell, the police didn’t find much.”
Admittedly, I’m not sure what, exactly, I’m hoping to find here. Definitely disheartening that he didn’t think the police found much. See why I wanted to come into this with fresh eyes? I want to make my own judgment based on the evidence.
Norbert’s doesn’t have a ‘security staff,’ but they do have a room that looks like where a full-time security officer would sit. Big white desk, lots of computer screens, and a stack of computers on a shelf. Some of the boxes might be filled with disk drives. If they’re keeping weeks of video data, they’d need a lot of space.
Simon eases himself into the only chair in the room, then tucks in at the desk like a grandpa about to get started on dinner. Sadly, I kind of expect anyone who looks older than forty to fumble around with computer stuff, but this guy’s not the least bit hesitant. He dives right into the system, pulling up four monitors’ worth of camera feeds in seconds.
“Give me a moment. Since I already pulled this up for the cops. Got the time stamps written down somewhere.” Simon rifles through the top drawer of the desk, finds a small notepad, then starts entering information on the computer.
“She came right after work,” I say. “Figure about 6:00 p.m. give or take a few minutes.”
