“Okay, but how do we go about finding him?” Astra asks.
“Rick, can you get into the Enfield Mall’s security footage?”
“Probably. Their digital archives aren’t exactly like Fort Knox,” he replies.
“Good. Get into it,” I say. “Mo, get us a digital warrant while he’s working on that. We should probably cover our butts just in case.”
“On it,” Mo says and sets to work on it.
Rick’s brow furrows, and his fingers fly over his keyboard. As each second ticks by, the knot in my stomach gets a little tighter, constricting until it’s painful. This is a long shot but like I always say, it’s better than no shot. Mentally crossing my fingers, I say a silent prayer. Unless we can find this guy on video, we’re not going to have any other way to ID him.
“Paige, get into Ashley’s credit cards,” I say. “I want to know what stores she was shopping in the day Nicole said they were being followed.”
“You got it,” she replies.
I take a drink of water, then resume pacing, giving them both a few minutes to work. The tension in the room is thick, and frankly, I’m feeling a little penned in. The war room feels a little claustrophobic, and the walls seem a little too close for my liking. I want to get out and pound the bricks. I want to be anywhere but standing here in this room staring at the pictures of the two kids who are missing… and I can’t find.
“Okay, I’m in,” Rick says.
“Good,” I reply. “Paige?”
“It looks like Ashley bought a scarf from a store called Neese’s. The purchase was made just after one in the afternoon,” she reports.
“On it,” Rick says.
“The digital warrant just came through,” Mo says. “We’re good.”
“Thank you, Mo,” I say.
Rick taps out another series of commands on his keyboard, and the pictures of the kids on the monitor at the foot of the table are replaced by the mall’s security feed. It’s in color, and we can see relatively clearly, but the picture is grainer than I would have preferred.
“All these stores are high end. You think they’d be able to spring for better surveillance equipment,” Astra remarks.
“The stores are all just tenants,” Mo says. “You’ll want to talk to the person who owns the mall. Like most landlords, they’re notoriously cheap and do the bare minimum.”
“Thanks for the lesson, Ms. Wizard.”
Mo laughs and turns back to the monitor as Rick scrolls to the time stamp Paige gave us. He hits a key, and the video starts to play. The view is from the concourse just outside the store, and we watch for a couple of minutes before Ashley and Nicole come into view. Lieb is tailing them at a discreet distance, his head turning left and right as he surveys the area.
“There’s our girls,” Astra says.
Lieb pokes his head through the doorway, then turns and nods to the girls. Ashley says something to him and holds her hand up, telling him to stay put. Lieb looks reluctant but remains just outside the front door as they disappear inside. Rick switches the view to the interior cameras. We watch in silence as the girls stroll through the store, talking and laughing with one another as they model shirts and dresses for one another.
“Is there any audio?” Astra asks.
“Nada. Sorry,” Rick replies. “Video only.”
We watch as they move through the store, but my eyes drift to the side of the screen. I turn to see a man lurking behind a rack of dresses.
“There,” I say and point to the man behind the rack. “Stop the video.”
“That looks like the guy Nicole described,” Astra says.
“Exactly.”
He’s not looking at the dresses on the rack. Instead, his eyes seem to be fixed on the girls moving through the store ahead of him.
“That’s got to be him,” Astra says.
“He seems to be a physical match for the guy in the smiley-face mask,” Mo notes.
“Nina, can you punch in on his face and run it through facial rec?” I ask.
“On it.”
The screen changes to a closer view of the guy watching Ashley and Nicole. It’s a little more pixelated up close than I’d like, and I cross my fingers, hoping it’s clear enough to get an ID. A moment later, the screen switches again, the man’s face on the left side while the right side of the screen scrolls through a seemingly never-ending series of mugshots. It takes a couple of minutes, but the flashing images stop on the face of the man in the surveillance video.
“We have a winner,” Nina announces. “Ladies and Rick, meet Nick Zane.”
“Nick Zane,” I say as my eyes widen. “That’s Violet’s ex-boyfriend.”
“Well, that’s quite the coincidence now, isn’t it?” Astra muses.
“And you know how I feel about coincidences,” I say.
“She told us she hasn’t spoken to him or anybody from her old life in ages,” Astra notes.
“Rick, pull Violet’s phone records. I want to know if she’s been in contact with Nick.”
