Pike studied Dru’s house across the water with a lack of enthusiasm. Cole was right, but Mendoza and Gomer were dead, so even if they lucked into a glimpse of the abduction, leaving to view a recording of questionable value now felt like a waste of time. Then another possibility occurred to him that left him more interested.

“How many hours of camera time do we have?”

“Seven days from whenever he burned the disk, which was sometime last night. Why?”

Pike told Cole about his conversation with Straw and explained his belief in the killer’s professionalism. He had probably reconnoitered Dru’s house as well as the takeout shop, and was likely the person who jimmied the kitchen window. This meant it was possible the killer had moved past the camera.

“Okay, get here, and let’s see if this stuff is even usable. Laine told me we’ll be able to see a little of the street, but we won’t know what that means until we see it. We might see nothing but shadows.”

The trip through the city took forty minutes, but shortly Pike pulled up outside Cole’s A-frame and let himself into the kitchen.

Pike poured himself a cup of black coffee, grabbed a raisin bagel from Cole’s stock, and followed his friend to a desk in the living room. They pulled over chairs from the dining table with Cole sitting in front of his Mac. Cole slipped in the disk, and the drive spun up with a soft whine. Neither of them spoke while they waited, as if their expectation wrapped each man in silence.

A few moments later, a disk player appeared showing four screen-capture images. They were from each of the four cameras monitoring Laine’s home, one on either side of his house, one in the rear, and the front entry camera. Pike saw Cole relax when the images appeared.

“Here we go. The cameras record concurrently on different tracks. Laine said we can watch each track separately, and move back and forth like watching a DVD.”

Cole clicked on the entry image, which expanded to fill the screen. The picture was a ghostly wash of grays and blacks with a time code at the bottom showing the image had been recorded at PM 11:13:42 the night before. Cole glanced over.

“Not bad. We can see a little of the street here in the background, and the clarity is pretty good.”