The Forgotten Holocaust (Ben Hope, Book 10) (10 page)

It was still just the three of them, Erin, Detective Topher Morrell and the intimidating shape of Chief O’Rourke. They’d moved from the little office to a larger room deeper inside the headquarters building. At the end of a long table flanked by plastic chairs was a stand with a DVD player and a large screen.

‘Is this the only copy?’ Chief O’Rourke growled in his gravelly voice as Erin handed him the disc from her backpack.

‘That’s the only one,’ she lied.

‘What about the phone itself?’

‘Right here,’ she said, pointing at her backpack.

‘I’ll need that as evidence, too,’ O’Rourke said, and took it from her. He motioned for her to sit, and she perched on the edge of one of the plastic chairs. Morrell sat near her, saying nothing. Erin’s mouth was dry and her neck and shoulders felt tense.

The police chief fed the disc into the machine, grabbed a remote control from the stand and sat heavily across the table from Erin. ‘Now let’s see for ourselves,’ he growled, pointing the remote like a gun at the screen and pressing the play button.

The screen popped into life with the opening moments of Erin’s video. She’d revisualised the scene so often in her mind during the last two days that she’d forgotten how poor the quality of the playback was. It was jerky and grainy, and where it wasn’t overexposed with the glare of the cabin lights, the murky shadows made it almost impossible to see what was happening.

And on it went, for over two full and very long minutes during which Erin sat and dug her teeth into her lip and didn’t dare to glance at either of the two cops. She could sense Detective Morrell shifting about uncomfortably next to her, and wondered what he was thinking.

Through a confusion of light and shadow, the horror on the veranda played out. For Erin, it was like reliving the scene yet again. But she wondered how much actually having been there was colouring her interpretation of the shockingly poor footage. What would someone make of it, seeing it for the first time? As for the sound, it seemed to her even more muffled and boomy as when she’d played it on her computer at home. The blasting gunshots had overwhelmed the phone’s tiny, sensitive mike, reducing nearly all the voices to a drowned garble.

The video clip was reaching its climactic moment now, but it was a long way from what it had been in real life. The squirming shape of the victim on the veranda was just a blur. His executioner could be made out, but only just, and his features were still very unclear. As he fired the coup de grâce that had flattened his struggling victim to the floor for good, the bright muzzle flash and detonation of the huge revolver obscured everything else. In the second or two it took for the camera’s automatic exposure to readjust, it was barely possible to see the killer do that cowboy gun-twirl whose nonchalance had so chilled Erin at the time.

‘Stick this … in the … his … later,’ said the badly muffled voice. The three shadows moved away from the shadow on the floor. Next, a flurry of movement as Erin had scrambled away on her knees and elbows. Then the clip was over and the screen blacked out.

There was a moment’s silence in the room. Slowly, Chief O’Rourke laid down the remote and turned his heavy gaze on Erin.

‘That’s it?’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘That’s it.’

‘Then we have a problem,’ O’Rourke said. ‘I can’t see Mayor McCrory in this video.’

Erin reached across the table and grabbed the remote before he could snatch it away. She pressed the rewind button, and the screen lit up again with the playback in high-speed reverse until it returned to just before McCrory had shot the bearded man on the veranda. From her vantage point at the top of the stairs, she’d got the mayor framed right in the doorway. Between his feet, the victim’s face and part of his body were visible as he crawled on his belly, his mouth open in a scream that sounded distorted and inhuman through the speaker. She hit play, then pause, and the image froze right where she wanted it to. She pointed. ‘What are you talking about, you can’t see him? That’s him right there.’

O’Rourke glanced at the screen, then turned back to face her. ‘All I see is a big guy in what might be a suit, with hair that could be any shade from blonde to white. You want me to arrest everyone in Tulsa who answers that description, then I’d have to arrest myself.’ He grinned at his own joke, but there was no humour in his eyes.

‘It’s not exactly Oscar material,’ Detective Morrell said, speaking for the first time. ‘Frankly, it’s pretty disappointing.’

‘But you can see enough, right?’ Erin protested. ‘And even if you can’t see his face that well, that’s the McCrorys’ cabin. His own place. Doesn’t that count for something?’

O’Rourke was unmoved. ‘Could be anybody.’

‘Sure, with a key. And who knew the alarm code,’ Erin said, feeling her temper rising.

‘Miss Hayes, we deal with a hundred cases like this every year,’ O’Rourke said in an attempt at a reasonable tone that just sounded patronising. ‘Someone wants to get into a place, they’ll get in. Criminals adapt. They’re becoming more sophisticated all the time.’

‘Don’t give me this crap,’ she said. ‘The victim was invited to the place. McCrory set up a business meeting of some kind as a pretext, but it’s obvious that he meant to kill him there, because it was out of the way and he thought it’d be empty. How would some opportunist criminal have known that?’

She turned to Detective Morrell, but he was shaking his head. ‘There might be a way our forensic techs can clean up the video—’ he began.

‘But for the moment, there’s nothing here to support your story, Miss Hayes,’ O’Rourke finished for him. The reasonable tone was gone again.

‘But you do agree that a murder was committed there, right? Surely there’s evidence at the scene?’

‘That footage could have been shot anywhere,’ O’Rourke said flatly. ‘I don’t see any goddamn thing that convinces me otherwise and we’re not making a move until we know better.’

‘But I witnessed it happening right there!’ Erin yelled, banging on the table.

‘Calm down, please,’ Morrell said.

‘Call Angela McCrory and ask if she didn’t give me the key to the place.’

O’Rourke actually laughed. ‘Beautiful. You want me to call the first lady of Tulsa to ask if her husband, our city mayor, popped some guy in their lake cabin. Sure, I’d like to see that on
Oklahoma’s Own
.’

‘So what happens now?’ Erin asked, shocked. ‘Nothing?’

‘Let’s start with the video,’ Morrell said. ‘One step at a time. It might clean up. The technical folks can work wonders.’

‘What about me?’ she said. ‘I just put my neck on the block. These people are murderers. Don’t I have a right to police protection, or something?’

‘It’s a little early for that,’ Morrell said. ‘No formal charges have even been made. If it comes to it, you’ll be entitled to full witness protection.’

‘
If
it comes to it?’

O’Rourke stood up, towering over the table and looking down at her with hard eyes. He handed her a card from his pocket. ‘My number’s there. Call me if you need to.’

‘That’s it?’ she said, amazed this could be over so soon. Her situation remained exactly the same as before.

‘Go home, Miss Hayes. Speak to no one. Don’t leave town. We’ll be in touch.’