Okay, it was curiosity, too.
“You nailed it,” Hinton said.
Gabriel had to bite back the “And?”
Luckily, Finley did that. “We have them on street cameras from the far corner and moving down the road, but we didn’t establish how they left the area.”
“You’re sure they did?”
“Positive,” Finley said.
“The street cams didn’t capture the whole scene the witness captured, though?” Gabriel asked.
“The last frames when the witness camera turned,” Hinton said.
Those last frames were down at the corner where Gabriel found the pole with the fliers stapled up.
Interesting that this case landed in the Joint Task Force’s lap. The JTF worked terrorist cases where an international hand was moving the puppets.
“What about an identification?” Gabriel asked. “Do you at least know who the guy is?” It had been three months. As horrible as it was to say, if the victim hadn’t been found yet—or even identified—that man’s chances of walking out of the shadows were nil.
“No, we don’t.” Hinton said, “We’re continuing to work on it, but in the meantime, from that same email with the same words in the subject heading, we received another video.”
Prescott lifted his hand from the table. “Look, I’m going to cut you off, Hinton. I want Gabriel to know that, in the video you’re about to hand him, we recognize the man holding the gun as a Prokhorov enforcer.”
“East European crime family,” Rowan said.
“Okay,” Gabriel said. The players were meaningless to him.
Finley leaned in. “That’s the same family as Igor Prokhorov. Last year we handed you the picture. He was arrested, indicted in the grand jury, and is—”
“Coming up for trial Tuesday. I’ll be testifying about how I go about geolocating from photographs to prove that the FBI didn’t set up in a sting.” Gabriel turned to Hinton. “And Igor has something to do with your video?”
“Only that you were handed a second puzzle dealing with the same family. The one where you identified the address where the FBI special agent crossed the road at gunpoint. And now this third one.” Prescott answered.
“You saw this enforcer in the video. Did you see the special agent’s face?” Gabriel asked.
“It’s inside a building,” Hinton said. “The lights are very dim. It’s a long shot, but if you can tell me anything at all about what you see, it would be more than I have right now.”
“Where did you get this?” Gabriel asked as Hinton slid a tablet toward him.
“In the same way we got the first. Same words in the subject line. It was a new email address. It must be someone who works in the building and is both observant and willing to take a risk.”
The video that played was of a garage interior. Dim and empty. Worn. Dirty. The doors had long windows that let in the only light.
In the video, a man stood in a garage with a gun in his hand. Hunched over and leaning against the wall was a second man. A third stood closer to the garage doors with a fan of light crossing his face. “The Prokhorov guy?”
“There,” Rowan said, pointing. “That’s him.”
“Our team made the garage discovery,” Hinton planted his flag on that hill. “Then I brought it to The Joint Task Force for input.” He turned to Gabriel. “We gave you credit for the address.”
Credit? Gabriel didn’t need that. He wanted the victim found.
“You’ve had this for a while?” Gabriel asked.
“Yes, for a while now. It occurred to me,” Hinton sent a quick look toward Rowan, “that you might see something I didn’t.”
“You put this through the computer systems to see if AI couldn’t adjust those shadows to get a better view of the victim’s face?”
