The station was only a short ride away, and he was eager to share what he’d learned with Will. He found him at his desk behind the partition, slurping a Cup Noodles.
“How do you eat that shit?” Reyes teased. “Didn’t your mother ever cook for you?”
Will scowled up at him. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, brother. Cup Noodles are a classic. Now what do you want?”
Reyes grinned. “I spoke with the assistant—Johanna.”
Will’s face twisted with confusion. “Who?”
“Davenport. The missing person case. The woman from the bridge, remember?” Reyes should have expected this. They’d been called out to an assault and battery charge in the third degree at a bar last night, and the suspect had fled the scene. Will was preoccupied with finding him before he managed to cross state lines. And unlike Emil, he felt the Davenport case was an open-and-shut suicide, even though her body had yet to be recovered. Though with the Atlantic so close, that wasn’t unheard of.
“Right.” Will nodded. “So, does the husband check out?”
“He was at work, but he was late coming in.”
“How late?” Will asked.
“Enough. And the secretary mentioned something about a busted lip.”
His partner frowned. “He looked fine when we saw him.”
“No, the wife.” Reyes told himself to be patient. Will would catch on eventually.
The investigator sat forward. “You mean the day of? This woman saw her?”
He shook his head. “No. Some time before. But it’s suspicious. If this is a domestic violence case—”
Will waved a hand. “Let me stop you right there, Emil. Evenifyou can prove this guy beats his wife, which I doubt you can, it doesn’t have any bearing on her whereabouts. It could just as easily support her decision to jump as it could indicate anything else, including foul play.”
Reyes grinned down at his partner.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Will set his Cup Noodles down. “You know it makes me nervous when you get that shit-eating grin on your face.”
“Come with me,” he told Will. “I got something to show you that will change your mind.”
Will stood up and wiped his hands on a napkin, following Emil around to his own desk. Reyes sat down at the computer and pulled up the footage he’d been studying from the CCTV camera. He dialed it back to the right moment.
“Just watch,” he told his partner before hitting play.
The image was silent, but soon enough the Davenport woman came into view. She was looking frantically over a shoulder before she doubled over and got sick. Rising, she spun around and began backing up into the railing, putting her hands out in self-defense.
“What the hell…” Will muttered, squinting at the screen.
“Just wait,” Reyes told him.
Together, they watched as she climbed over the bars, sobbing, pleading with someone still off camera. A second later, he appeared. Tall. Lean. A black hoodie obscuring his face and hair. He watched her, pursuing, and then stopped. Something transpired between them, shorter than an eye blink. But Reyes could see the way her face fell, resigned, and how unaffected the man was. A moment later, she dropped. The man stood frozen to the spot before he approached the rail and looked over.
“You see that,” Reyes pointed out. “He’s making sure.”
The man stepped back. He kept his head down, angled away from the camera. He didn’t run—a man like Henry, Reyes thought, would never run—but walked briskly away.
Reyes stopped the footage.
Will whistled. “Did we just witness him force her over that bridge?”
“Looks like it. And remember that pink dot on his shirt sleeve?”
His partner pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are we sure? Couldn’t this have just been some guy walking along when she jumped?”
