11:15 a.m.
Hall of Justice

Grace shoved the second videotape into the VCR. She had decided to review the security tapes from the convenience-store robberies before she talked to Max Kramer again. The investigation was at a standstill, but she didn’t like the idea of needing Max Kramer or his so-called witness. Bottom line, she didn’t trust the guy.

The tapes had been reviewed over and over again. There wasn’t much to see on any of them, anyway. The robber always wore a black mask over the bottom half of his face, a stocking cap, gloves, a dark-colored long-sleeve T-shirt and jeans. The picture wasn’t as static riddled as the bank film, but not much better. The cameras in all three stores shot down at an angle from behind the counter and included the cash register and a slice of the store, a couple of aisles and usually the back freezer case.

She had already watched each of them once and was going through them again from the beginning. She hit Play. Damn! She’d gone back too far. She kept doing it with the first tape, as well, expecting there to be more. She recognized her mistake because there had been customers in the store each time right before the robberies. But the robber always waited. He had to be outside, watching, anticipating.

Grace reached to fast-forward past the array of customers coming in and out of the camera’s view. But she paused it instead.

That was odd. Had she picked up the first tape again by mistake? She stopped and ejected it. No, this was the second one. She pushed it back in, rewound it and hit Play.

She watched the back of the store where a young man—probably a teenager, it was difficult to judge from the grainy picture—walked in front of the freezer case. She hit Pause and left the image frozen with him suspended in midstride. She found the videotape marked #1 and slipped it into the small TV/VCR combo on the shelf below. She rewound it, making sure she went back far enough then she pushed Play and watched and waited.

There he was.

She hit Pause. She stood back and examined the two screens. It had to be the same kid, same spiked hair, same loose gait and baggy jeans and the same bright white high-top tennis shoes. It was the shoes that she’d noticed first. What teenager, especially a boy, was able to keep his shoes so white? Could it be a coincidence that he was in both stores just minutes before the robberies?

She opened her file folder and shuffled through to find the stores’ addresses. One was on the north side. The other in West Omaha. The third in the northwest section.

She pulled out the third video. Two could be a coincidence. She replaced one of the others with this one, rewound and hit Play.

Nothing.

She rewound farther back and tried again. The store was busy. This must have been the afternoon robbery. The others had been at night. But this last one the robber must have gotten cocky and struck in the afternoon, in broad daylight.

Grace watched closely. She didn’t see him. No walk-through in front of the freezer case. There were others but not him. She rewound the tape again and started from the beginning one more time.

“Grace?”

She hit Pause, turned and looked up at Joyce Ketterson in the doorway to the small conference room.

“It’s the call you’ve been waiting for. Zurich is on line two.”

“Thanks, Joyce.”

She grabbed the receiver, her eyes staying on the paused TV screen.

“Hey, sweetie,” she said. “Sorry I missed your call earlier.”

“I’ve got about five minutes before they begin serving dessert and coffee. How are things?”

Vince sounded tired. She knew without asking that he probably hadn’t slept yet, except for a catnap on the long flight over.

“Things are going okay.” She wouldn’t worry him about Barnett. There wasn’t a thing he could do about it. “How’d the meeting go?”

“It’s still going. So, seriously, I do need to get back in there, but I just wanted to see how you were.”

She smiled. He was doing a good job sidestepping the topic of Barnett, too.

“Hey, what’s with the ceramic gnome?” she asked. “Are you planning some tacky front-yard landscaping? Actually, it’s kind of cute.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Grace.”

“The ceramic gnome?”

“Gnome? You mean like dwarf?”

“Yes, silly. The one you left on the steps down to the garage.”

“Grace, I swear I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Richard’s waving me back in. I gotta go. You sure you’re okay?”

“Oh, sure, fine.”

“Okay, give Emily a hug for me. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

She decided she’d ask Emily about the ceramic creature. Maybe one of the workers had left it. Although they hadn’t been back since last week. Then it occurred to her—what if Jared Barnett had been in the house? But why leave something like a stupid ceramic gnome?

She shook her head and stared at the TV screen. That was when she saw him again, or rather a sliver of him.

She was certain it was the same kid. He had his back to the camera. His right hand reached up over the door to the freezer case—a strange way to hold it open. But then she saw the reason. A little girl stood below him, getting something from the same case. He was holding it open for her, holding his arm way above her head, so as not to touch her. His hand was in a place where no one else probably touched, where there still might be some fingerprints. And, yes, there at the foot of the screen was one of the bright white high-tops.

She picked up the phone again and dialed.

“Darcy, it’s Grace. There’s something I’d like you to take a look at. Believe it or not, I may have found some fingerprints for us in one of the convenience stores.”