“I did. I pulled her out of the way just before it hit. It pulled back out onto the street and disappeared.”
“Did you see who it was?”
“No, I honestly was so focused on getting her out of the way all I could get was the license plate. I asked Aaron to look into it.”
“And,” Ben prodded.
Mike loved this team. No one knew Destiny and yet they were all concerned about her.
“Geez, keep your hair on.” Aaron opened his laptop and started typing away. “Not surprising the car came back reported stolen from a couple in Big Bear Lake. It was found in Barstow.”
“Strange that someone would steal a car there to come here to try and kill Destiny and drop it off in the next town,” Ben said more to himself. “Why not just steal a car here?”
“Unless they did that to cover their tracks,” Sam said, which got everyone’s attention. “Think about it. If it was someone local, they wouldn’t want to use their own car nor the car of someone they know. It’s a small enough town that a missing car doesn’t go unnoticed. But if you take a car from another town and use it to commit the crime and drop it off somewhere else, it throws police off the track.”
He was right. It made perfect sense. So the person who committed the crime was probably from here or Big Bear Lake. It was just too random of a town to pick up a car. You also needed someone who knew how to hotwire a car. “Aaron, can you pull up the traffic cameras?”
He dialed Terry’s number, the sheriff from the mugging, and waited. Something about the mugger had been nagging him and he hoped his instincts were wrong for once.
“Hey Mike, what’s up?” Terry answered, sounding surprised to hear from him. “I figured I wouldn’t hear from you until next week for the charity drive.” Mike volunteered with the police and fire crew to hand out free meals and clothes for the needy every few months. It was how he met Terry. He was involved with many charities including a charity fund for spouses of deceased veterans for law enforcement. He loved helping the community.
“What happened to the mugger?” He asked without preamble.
“So not a social call.” His tone turned sour.
“Terry, where is he?” Mike wasn’t in the mood to dick around. Terry was a great friend, but now wasn’t the time to play with him. If the mugger had been released and was the one behind the wheel, he needed to know.
“Mike, you know I can’t talk about that. It’s police business.”
“Bullshit.” Mike barely kept a rein on his anger. His hand tightened around his cell phone biting into his palm. If he wasn’t careful, he’d break it. “This is a matter of life and death. The woman he was trying to mug, my girlfriend, was involved in an almost hit and run. I need to know if the mugger is still in jail or not.”
Terry sighed heavily in his phone. Mike knew he finally got through to him. He knew he was asking a lot by asking if a person was still in his custody or not, but Mike didn’t care. He’d go down to the precinct if he had to in order to find out.
“He was never arrested.”
“That’s not possible I was there when you put him in the car.”
“He ended up escaping before we could book him.”
“Why wasn’t I informed?”
“I didn’t think it was important.”
“The man pulls a knife on us and tries to kill Destiny and then escapes and you didn’t think it was important to give me a common courtesy call and say the guy was still at large?”
“Mike,” Aaron whispered swinging the laptop around to show him the footage of the vehicle barreling down on Destiny.
Mike pulled the phone from his mouth. “Go back.” He studied the footage intently looking for anything that would give him a hint of who was behind the wheel. “Slower.”
Frame by slow frame he watched the car come down the street, but it had tinted windows or something.
“Could one of the stores have a camera out front that might show something?”
“Let me check.” A moment later he turned the laptop back around and hit play. Mike couldn’t say what store it came from, but it gave a perfect view of the car going by and an even better view of the driver, well some of them. He saw the side profile, but it was enough to tell him who it was.
“Mike you still there?” Terry asked sounding concerned when Mike remained silent.
“I have to go.” Before he went down to the precinct and beat the shit out of his friend.
