“I’m Detective Scott and I’m looking for someone who might have come in here.”
“Oooh, a police case. I’ll try to help if I can.”
“This would have been about two weeks ago.”
“Okay.”
“He would have been dressed in black, jacket and jeans. Medium height and weight. Short cropped hair like the military. Does that sound familiar?” said Katie.
The young woman thought about it. “Yes!” she said enthusiastically.
Katie almost laughed at her response. “Do you remember someone like that?”
“I remember him because he didn’t fit in like most people who come in here. It was on a Thursday, I think… because that’s when I do the dusting of pictures and the shelves.”
“Do you remember anything else? What he said? Any tattoos? The way he spoke?”
“Not really. He just ordered a black coffee with a ton of sugar. Who orders just black coffee anymore?”
“Not many,” said Katie. Her mind was reeling, trying to figure out what all this meant. “Too bad no one has security cameras.”
“What do you mean? We have something better,” she said.
Lori walked over to one of the shelves that had a small laptop computer. Katie didn’t notice it due to the fact there were plastic flowers piled all over several narrow shelves. “We use this to video the area so we can stream it on our website. The owner wanted security, but he chose to use this method,” she said. “See.” Lori showed Katie the memory sticks. “And here’s from the past two to three weeks.”
Katie couldn’t believe her luck. “Would it be possible for me to take that to try and find the man and then bring it back?”
“Of course. I’m sure Mack, the owner, would be fine helping one of our finest.”
“Here’s my card. If he has any questions, he can call me.”
“Great! Glad I could be of some help.”
“And can I get two large lattes to go?” said Katie.
Katie left the coffee place and met back up with McGaven.
“Hey, I thought you left without me,” he said.
“I thought about it.” She handed her partner a coffee.
“Thanks. I need this especially before going to the prison.”
“Look what I found,” she said waving the memory stick.
“What?”
“It turns out the coffee place uses a laptop to record real-time on its website. And… the barista remembered the guy in black coming in the same time he went to the jewelry store.”
“Home run.”
“Maybe we can learn more about this guy. I would love to be able to put him at the location where I saw the dark-dressed cowboy.”
“Let’s swing by the construction site and swap out the trail-camera cards and see what we have,” he said.
Katie realized they were going to have to up their game if they wanted to catch a killer before they found more graves.
TWENTY-SEVEN
