He looked at me like he was already of that opinion. I’ve tried, but I just cannot hide my feelings from people I know. I sat down behind my computer and Conklin stood behind me as I downloaded the surveillance tape from Waverley Street.
I ran the footage, halting it a few seconds before the heart-stopping incident.
“Look at this,” I said. “Tell me what you see.”
Conklin watched intently, and when we got to the part where Joe turned to the camera, I hit Pause.
My partner said, “Is that Joe? What’s he doing driving by the Chans’ house?”
“That’s the sixty-four-million-dollar question, and I have no answer. As far as I know, we’re looking at Joe’s last known whereabouts.”
“No way.”
“Right.”
“No,” he said. “I mean, that’s why he looks familiar.”
“I’m not following you.”
Conklin said, “The guy in the hotel,” he said. “The one with the bulky jacket who eluded the cameras. Look, Lindsay.” He went over to his desk, moved some papers around, and came up with the screen shots we’d taken of the stealthy man crossing the hotel lobby on the day of the shootings.
“Lindsay, don’t you see it?” Conklin asked me, shoving the photocopy under my nose. “The man in the lobby is Joe.”
CHAPTER 17
I TOLD CINDY I had to see her, and she met me on the front steps of the Hall fifteen minutes later.
“What have you got for me?” she said.
She was wearing a different T-shirt and steel-tipped work boots. The boots signified something. My guess was that she wanted to kick butt. She was in serious bulldog mode.
“We need to identify these people,” I said.
I showed her the pictures on my phone of the three unknown subjects: the mystery blonde and the morgue shots of the two PI kids, slightly ’shopped so that they looked less dead.
“Send them to me,” she said.
I did and she asked, “Are they wanted for questioning in the hotel murders? What can you tell me?”
“Let’s just start with you putting them out under a headline, ‘Do you know these people?’ and see how it goes.”
“OK, OK, OK,” said Cindy. “You’re not giving this to anyone else, right?”
“You’ve got a twenty-four-hour exclusive; then the FBI is going to move in and do it their way.”
Cindy said, “I’ll get this up on the site, front page, as soon as I clear it with Tyler. These photos will be on the Web today and in the paper tomorrow.”
“OK.”
“I’m going to say ‘Contact Cindy Thomas.’”
“You’ve got twenty-four hours.”
“Gotcha.”
My phone buzzed. Brady, of course.
“Boxer, got some people here from the FBI.”