Page 32

“I did remember something,” said Albert. “While I was walking Tinkle, my dog, I remember seeing a white van parked further down the road.”

“When was this?”

“About four days ago. It was the day you were last here. I walked past your truck, too.”

“Had you seen it before?”

“That’s what piqued my interest. I’d seen the same van a few other times. I can’t tell you the number plate, but I do remember it being from Washington state. That’s what I thought was strange.”

“You didn’t catch a glimpse of the driver?” asked Mike.

“No, not that I could identify.”

“Albert, this is useful information. Thank you.” Mike bid the old man farewell and continued along the street. Despite questioning another three neighbors, he didn’t turn up any additional information.

He met Rick and Ernie on the front lawn of George’s property.

“No joy, Mike,” reported Ernie. “Hombres on the other side of the street didn’t see anything. One of them said she heard a dog barking in the middle of the night. Another had a smart camera over their front door, but it didn’t pick anything up.”

“Nothing inside that we missed,” added Rick. “You get anything?”

“Yeah, Albert said there was a van on the street with Washington state plates. He saw it a few times.”

“Did he get the plate number?”

Mike shook his head. “It was here when I last visited, and I didn’t notice it.”

Ernie frowned. “Esse, you’ve got a dash cam in your truck. If you drove in from one end of the street and out through the other, you could have captured it.”

Mike turned and made for his truck. Unclipping the camera from its dash mount, he disconnected it and handed it to Rick. “You’re the tech guru.”

Rick took a moment to find the playback function. “Bro, what day were you here?”

He paused in thought. “Wednesday afternoon, maybe three pm.”

“Cool, that was the 23rd.” Rick found the day and scanned through the footage. “Shit, this thing only records for 72 hours before it doubles back and starts saving over the previous period. It cuts out a few hours before three.”

“Damn it,” exclaimed Mike.

“Wait, make sure it’s turned off,” said Ernie. “If we can find someone who knows computers, we may be able to recover the previous footage. I mean, it shouldn’t have recorded over the final few hours yet.”

“You’re not as stupid as you look,” said Rick as he turned off the device. “Jenny’s pretty good at computer stuff. She managed to recover all the data from my phone after I put it through the wash.”

“Yeah, I’m the stupid one,” said Ernie.

“No, I said you looked stupid.”

“Better than looking like I don’t have a neck,” quipped Ernie. “You’re a wardrobe with legs.”

“That’s rich coming from the man who looks like a combat gnome.”

“Guys,” snapped Mike. “Get in the damn truck. We’re going to Rick’s place.”

The boys watched as Jenny talked them through what she was doing with the memory card she had removed from Mike’s dash cam and inserted into her laptop.

“First, I check the video file folder to see if the clip is still being stored,” she said. “Often, devices like this simply overwrite the files when the camera is activated. If you haven’t looped over it, they might be there.”

“And in this case?” asked Mike.