Axel pointed.

“Get a room, right?” he grinned.

A young man entered the scene from the right at 7:51.

“Here we go,” Duckworth said. The man wandered down toward the end of the bar and perched himself on a stool, although it wasn’t the same one Duckworth had just been sitting on.

“No,” Axel said.

“What do you mean?”

“That’s not Brian.”

Duckworth put his face closer to the screen. The image wasn’t crisp, but he could tell now that this man was not Brian Gaffney. But they were about the same height, had similar hair, and were both dressed in jeans and a dark shirt.

“At a glance, yeah, they look kinda the same, dressed pretty much the same,” Axel commented. “Sorry about the camera. It’s not exactly high-def. Look, there’s Brian.”

Axel was right. Brian Gaffney had come in, and he did place himself at the bar on the stool Duckworth had sat on minutes earlier. Gaffney raised a hand, Axel came over, chatted with him briefly, then got him a beer.

“Do you remember what you were talking about just then?”

“Just the usual shit. How was your day, how ya doin’. Nothing special.”

“How’d he seem?”

“Seem?”

“Same as always? Did he seem worried about anything? Anxious at all?”

“Nope. Same old Brian.”

Duckworth started fast-forwarding, but not so fast that he couldn’t spot anyone paying any kind of attention to Brian. At 8:39, a short, balding man walked past and gave Brian a friendly punch to the shoulder. Brian looked up from his drink and gave the man a thumbs-up.

“Who’s that?”

Axel said, “That’s Ernie. Can’t think of his last name. Just a regular. Sometimes they sit and have a beer together, shoot the shit.”

Twice Duckworth saw Axel get Brian another beer. Axel was always on the move, tending the bar while the waitresses looked after the booths and the tables.

Axel pointed to the couple sitting together in the booth, lips now locked. “Ain’t love grand?” he said.

Duckworth’s eye was drawn again to the man further down the bar who bore a passing resemblance to Brian. “What was this one’s name again?”

“Beats me. I only checked his ID to make sure he was old enough. But he paid in cash. Why?”

“No reason, just—Hello.”

Brian was throwing some bills on the bar. Axel came over, shook the man’s hand as he slid off the stool. Brian disappeared to the left.

“Where’s he going?” Duckworth asked. “Is he going out a back way?”

“He’s hittin’ the can before he goes.”

Sure enough, Brian reappeared about ninety seconds later, crossed the path of the security camera and exited to the right.

Duckworth noted the time. Brian Gaffney had left Knight’s at 9:32 p.m. By then, it would have been dark outside. If someone called to him from the alley, he wouldn’t have been able to see who it was.

“Well, that’s it,” Axel said.

Duckworth decided to watch the next few minutes of the surveillance video. Maybe Brian popped backed in briefly. Or maybe—