The security room was on the ground floor, a strange oblong shape, with a low ceiling, like something left over after thearchitects had drawn in the other things they needed. Bob showed his ID card to the two men sitting there. One introduced himself as the security guard. He had skin with deep, large pores that made him look as if he was composed of pixels. He said he knew there had been a murder out in the parking lot and he had no objection to showing Bob footage from the cameras.
“I’d like to see the roof,” said Bob.
“We don’t have a camera there,” said the security guard. “We have IP cameras, so the weather’s too rough for them, especially in the winter. But we’ve got all the floors covered.”
“Can we go to five thirty and play back all recordings from all cameras at high speed? Simultaneously, I mean. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Sure, but that stuff is old-school.” The security guard grinned his satisfaction. “Check this.”
He typed in a few commands on his keyboard.
“We got two cameras for each field,” he said. “One that’s on all the time and an IPCC-9610 camera that’s motion-activated. It has night-vision and—”
“Very impressive, but like I said, we don’t have much time.” Bob glanced across at the blue lights in the parking lot.
“Okay, okay, then we’ll use the IPCC camera here.” The guard tapped in a few more commands. “See? We skip the pauses, it’s nonstop action and the camera automatically zooms in and follows anything that’s moving. Check this woman here, for example.” He pointed to one of the tiny images in the mosaic that covered the screen.
“Does the elevator go all the way up to the roof?” asked Bob.
“That and the interior staircase stop at the top floor. From there, there’s a separate staircase up to the roof.”
“Perfect. Can we limit what we’re seeing to the elevator and the stairway door on the top floor?”
“Sure. Check this.” The guard tapped away with an alacritythat made Bob realize he’d made at least one person happy this week.
The camera followed people and cars as they came and went. As soon as Bob was satisfied a recording didn’t show what he was looking for he would ask the guard to fast-forward to the next one. After a dozen of these forward jumps the guard suppressed a yawn.
“Sorry, it’s been a lo—”
“Stop!” Bob said. “Switch to normal speed here.”
The guard tapped on the keyboard and Bob looked at the person coming out from the stairway door. Someone wearing a top with the hood pulled up and shades. He was carrying an oblong package swathed in bubble wrap.
“There you are…” whispered Bob. He felt his heart beating a little faster.
The person stopped at the foot of the stairs leading to the roof, turned and looked around.
“Freeze it there!”
The guard’s reaction was instant.
“You want him close-up too?”
“Please,” said Bob.
Despite the fact that the face on the screen was in partial shadow beneath the hood, and the eyes hidden behind the sunglasses, Bob Oz was in no doubt. This was the man in the composite. This was Tomás Gomez.
“Can you email me that picture?”
“Sure.” The guard clicked on the Share icon. “Where to?”
“To every damn patrol car in the city,” Bob muttered half to himself before taking over the keyboard and punching in the address for the duty officer at MPD central.
Clicked Send, said thanks, then headed over toward the shopping mall to wait for Myers.
—
I got off the bus at the Nicollet Mall. There were always people on this shopping street, even on the coldest winter day. I passed restaurants and bars with music coming from the open doors. I walked by two Latino men standing by a kiosk and sharing a cigarette.
