Coletti and the others followed her inside and looked around quickly at her wares. The lighting fixtures she sold ranged in style from antique to postmodern and everything in between. Nothing cost more than five hundred dollars, and every single piece was unique.

“The security system is set up in the back,” she said, unlocking her office door.

When all of them were inside, she sat down in front of a computer with two monitors. Then she pressed the power button and booted up a state-of-the-art video suite. There was editing equipment and graphics software and feeds from four cameras. It was a techie’s dream.

“The store keeps me busy,” she explained when she felt them looking at her curiously. “The cameras keep me entertained.”

She hit a button, and the image from the outside camera filled the screen. “What time did he pass by?” she asked.

“About eight ten,” Sandy answered.

The woman isolated the digital images from five minutes after eight to eight fifteen. Then she ran the images at twice the normal speed. It didn’t take long for them to find what they were looking for.

“There!” Sandy said excitedly as the man in black appeared on-screen, rounding the corner from Twenty-first to Locust.

The store owner slowed the images to half speed, and the four of them watched as the man dove toward a black pickup being driven down the street. A pigeon flew by the camera, obscuring the view for half a second. When it disappeared, the man did, too. Only the pickup remained.

“That’s impossible,” Coletti said. “Can you run it back again?”

She hit rewind, this time running the images one frame at a time. When she did, the pictures showed a different story. The man had run toward the slow-moving pickup. He dove toward the bed, the pigeon flew by, and when it disappeared, the man lay flat in the back of the pickup, his black clothes blending in perfectly with the truck’s black paint. It had happened so quickly that it was almost impossible to see.

“Can you stop it there and zoom in?” Sandy asked.

The store owner did so. The frame showed the back window of the cab and a driver dressed in a dark shirt or jacket. His face was unclear, and shadows from the roof of the cab made it difficult to discern his hair color. She tried zooming in farther to get a better view, but the picture just got blurry.

“The two of them were definitely together,” Coletti said. “There’s no way someone jumps in the back of a pickup like that and you don’t feel it in the cab.”

“Yeah, but what were they doing together?” Sandy asked as she looked at the image.

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Mann said, leaning in closer. “Can you rewind it one more time and zoom in on the license plate?”

The store owner did as she was asked.