“There she is,” Flint says under his breath.
She queues behind Magma. She is on her phone.
Flint freezes the frame.
“I’m sure that’s the same make and model as the burner found. I’ll get my team to magnify this and find out.”
He pushes play again, and the female drops the phone right at Magma’s feet. He bends and picks it up, handing it to her. She takes it with one gloved hand and smiles, saying something. He nods, and they step back into line.
The whole thing takes less than ten seconds.
“That’s it.” Flint pauses the playback. “That’s our girl.”
“Get a clean shot of her face.”
He scrubs back, finds the moment she looks up at Magma, and pauses. The angle is good. She’s looking up and almost straight into the camera. I pull out my phone and snap a picture of the screen. Flint does the same with his.
“We need her registration. Let’s hope she parked out front,” I tell him.
“Here’s to hoping she did.” Flint scrubs back further.
He scrubs forward to find her walking out.
“It doesn’t look like she bought anything,” I remark.
“Interesting,” Flint says.
He pulls up footage from an outside camera, and she walks out of the front of the store. She doesn’t dawdle.
Flint picks up a different angle that shows her getting into a dark blue sedan.
“Aaaaand here are the…plates.” Flint zooms in.
The image goes blocky for a second and then resolves. The reg is clear enough.
“Got it.” He notes it down on a small pad he pulls from his jacket. I take a picture of the screen on my phone, as well, just to be safe.
“We got her!” he says with a flourish.
“We did, indeed,” I tell him.
Flint stops the playback. He stands up and stretches his back. We leave, closing the door behind us, as requested.
Peter is at the till talking to the young woman. He looks up when we come back.
“Get what you needed?”
“We did,” Flint says. “Could I ask one more favor? Could you send me some footage? I’ll give you the timestamps and cameras.”
“No problem.”
Flint writes everything down, tears the page off, and hands it over with his business card clipped to it.
“You can email them as files or share a link, whichever is easier.”
Peter looks at the card. “I’ll get this to you at closing tonight.”
“Perfect.”
