He’d stopped in front of a brightly lit convenience store. It had a camera set just back from the door, obviously there to monitor anyone who set foot inside, but judging by the angle of it, the camera would also have a pretty good view of the street outside as well.
Paige and Christopher went in together, and now Paige felt a sense of determination rising in her. They needed to talk to the store owner, to try to get access to the camera footage.
The store owner was standing behind the broad expanse of a counter, a large man in his late thirties, wearing a grubby white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and dark slacks. He looked like he’d once been in good shape, but that had long since started to fade. His dark hair was cropped short and he gave the two of them a disapproving look as they approached.
“Do you two want to buy something?” he asked.
His tone wasn’t friendly, and it took Paige a moment to realize exactly why. She and Christopher probably didn’t look like his normal customers, and they’d just come into the store while staring at the cameras. To him, it must have looked like they were casing the store, trying to work out the best way to rob it without being caught.
“FBI,” Christopher said, taking out his badge and placing it on the counter for the store owner to look at.
“You think I haven’t seen a fake badge before?” The suspicion was still there. Maybe he thought that this was some kind of con, now.
Paige took out her own badge. “Look again. Call the local FBI field office to confirm who we are if you want. You’ve heard about the murders in the last couple of days? We’re investigating them.”
The store owner looked from her badge to Christopher’s and back again, as if the sudden doubling of the numbers could persuade him of their authenticity.
“You don’t think I had anything to do with all that?” the store owner said. He looked worried, as if he now thought that Paige and Christopher might be there to try to pin something on him. Or maybe had other secrets of his own that he didn’t want them around for too long while they were here.
“No, sir,” Christopher said. “But we think that you might be able to help us. Does your security camera at the front have a clear view of the street?”
The store owner shrugged. “I guess. Mostly I just use it to make sure kids aren’t coming in to steal from me.”
“Could we look at the footage?” Paige asked. “We think that a potential suspect may have driven by this store two days ago.”
“I don’t know.” The store owner sounded like he didn’t really want anything to do with any of this. “I don’t want to get involved. I don’t want to have to be a witness or anything.”
“You wouldn’t be involved,” Paige said. “We just need the footage, that’s all. And just letting us do that might be enough to help us catch a murderer.”
Paige could still see the indecision on the features of the store owner, and she found herself wondering if she and Christopher were going to have to come back here with a warrant. If they could even get one for this. Yet she didn’t say anything, didn’t want to put any more pressure on the store owner than he was under already.
“All right,” he said. “Come on back to the office.”
He led the way back to a grimy office that was halfway to being a storeroom, there were so many boxes stacked up in it. There was a computer there, and the store owner typed in a password, then clicked on a few icons, calling up his security feed.
“There,” he said, gesturing for Paige to take over. “It’s all yours. I have to get back to serving customers.”
There weren’t any customers in the store that Paige could see through the doorway to the office, but she was grateful to be left in charge of the security footage.
“Can you find the right time?” Christopher asked.
Paige nodded. “I know what time the car was passing the store from the traffic cameras. So if I just find the same time on this…”
She scrolled back, looking for that moment. Paige got to with a couple of minutes of it quickly, and then watched forward in real time. She had to look beyond the door to the convenience store, trying to take in what was happening on the street. As cars flashed by outside, Paige watched for the one she wanted.
She saw what looked like the right one, rewound, and then watched again, moving forward frame by frame.
“There!” Christopher said. “There’s a clear shot of the license plate there.”
Paige froze the footage, staring at the still image. As Christopher had said, the freezeframe showed the Dodge outside the store, and the angle was far better than the traffic camera, giving Paige a clear view of its license plate.
“Is that a five?” she asked, trying to make out the full plate.
“I think it might be a three,” Christopher said.
Now that he’d said it, Paige could see that it was. She took the number and ran it through the DMV. She then took the name and put it into the FBI’s systems to see what came up.
“Nick Lloyd,” Paige said. “A local veterinarian. He has priors for a couple of bar fights.”
“A man with a temper, then?” Christopher said. “Someone with low impulse control, at least.”
Paige nodded, downloading the footage onto her laptop for future reference. That was intriguing. A man who was prone to lashing out potentially fit the profile that was starting to form in her mind. It certainly fit with the idea of someone who had killed Gisele Newbury as a result of some kind of bout of road rage.
What was even more intriguing was his address. When Paige looked it up on a map, the location sent immediate red flags flashing in her.
“He only lives about a mile from the Renaissance Faire,” Paige said. Close enough that he could easily have been there. Close enough that if he wanted to hunt for someone else to kill, then that would be an easy place for him to seek out a victim.”
“I think we need to talk to Nick Lloyd.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was getting into evening as Paige and Christopher approached Nick Lloyd’s place, the light starting to fade around them. It was a large house on the fringes of Lexington, modern, boxy, and expensive looking, with the lawn neatly trimmed and the paint gleaming in the sun as if it had been freshly repainted. As they pulled up, Paige could just about see the Ren-Faire in the distance over open ground beyond the house. Close enough that it would have been easy for Nick Lloyd to slip into it unseen. Close enough that it might have been the obvious place for him to try to find victims.
More of her immediate attention was on the car in the driveway. It was a black Dodge Charger, and this close, Paige could see the custom work done to it, the same custom work that had been there in the traffic camera footage. Good, that meant that even if the convenience store owner didn’t want them using him as a witness in court, they would be able to prove that this was the car that had been harassing Gisele Newbury just before her death. There was still no back license plate, but Paige had no doubt that the front one would match. They were in the right place.
She and Christopher pulled up alongside the Charger, and Paige could feel the tension building in both of them. They’d found the right spot, and it was obvious that their suspect was home. Now, they just needed to see how Nick Lloyd would react to being accused of murder.