“No. Just helping her dad. We think this is the last place she was at before she disappeared.”
The daughter’s face tightened. “God. What do you think happened?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“I’ll check inside,” said Tiffany, the mother—the generation-bending names of the women were disorienting. He watched her collect the flyer from the corkboard and disappear into the kitchen, where, presumably, it was displayed to cooks and busboys.
She returned, pinning up the flyer once more. “Nothing. There’s a second shift. I’ll make sure they see it.” She sounded as if she definitely would, Shaw thought. He was lucky to have found a mother, and one close to her child. She’d sympathize more with the parent of missing offspring.
Shaw thanked her. “You mind if I ask your customers if they’ve seen her?”
The woman seemed troubled and Shaw suspected she wouldn’t want to bother clientele with unpleasant news.
That wasn’t the reason for the frown, however. Tiffany said, “Don’t you want to look at the security video first?”
8.
Well. This was interesting news. Shaw had looked for cameras when he’d first walked in but had seen none. “You’ve got one?”
Tiffany turned her bright blue eyes away from Shaw’s face and pointed to a small round object in the liquor bottles behind the bar.
A hidden security camera in a commercial establishment was pointless, since the main purpose was deterrence. Maybe they were getting . . .
Tiffany said, “We’re getting a new system put in. I brought mine from home for the time being. Just so we’d have something.” She turned to Madge and asked the young woman to show Sophie’s picture to customers. “Sure, Mom.” The waitress took the flyer and started on her canvass.
Tiffany directed Shaw into the cluttered office. She said, “I would’ve told her father about the tape but I wasn’t here when he brought the poster in. Didn’t think about it again. Not till you showed up. Have a seat.” With a hand on his shoulder, Tiffany guided Shaw into an unsteady desk chair in front of a fiberboard table, on which sat stacks of paper and an old desktop computer. Bending down, her arm against his, she began to type. “When?”
“Wednesday. Start at five p.m. and go from there.”
Tiffany’s fingers, tipped in lengthy black-polished nails, typed expertly. Within seconds a video appeared. It was clearer than most security cams, largely because it wasn’t the more common wide-angle lens, which encompass a broader field of view yet distort the image. Shaw could see the order station, the cash register, the front portion of the Quick Byte and a bit of the street beyond.
Tiffany scrubbed the timeline from the moment Shaw had requested. On the screen patrons raced to and from the counter, like zipping flies.
Shaw said, “Stop. Back up. Three minutes.”
Tiffany did. Then hit PLAY.
Shaw said, “There.”
Outside the café Sophie’s bike approached from the left. The rider had to be the young woman: the color of the bike, helmet, clothes and backpack were as Mulliner had described. Sophie did something Shaw had never seen a cyclist do. While still in motion she swung her left leg over the frame, leaving her right foot on the pedal. She glided forward, standing on that foot, perfectly balanced. Just before stopping, she hopped off. A choreographed dismount.
Sophie went through the ritual of affixing the bike to a lamppost with an impressive lock and a thick black wire. She pulled off her red almond-shell helmet and entered the Quick Byte and looked around. Shaw had hoped she might wave to somebody whom a staff member or patron could identify. She didn’t. She stepped out of sight, to the left. She returned a moment later and ordered.
On the silent tape—older security systems generally didn’t waste storage space or transmission bandwidth with audio—the young woman took a mug of coffee and one of the chrome number-card holders. Shaw could see her long face was unsmiling, grim.
“Pause, please.”
Tiffany did.
“Did you serve her?”
“No, it would have been Aaron working then.”
“Is he here?”
“No, he’s off today.”
Shaw asked Tiffany to take a shot of Sophie on her phone, send it to Aaron and see if he recalled anything about her, what she said, who she talked to.
She sent the shot to the employee, with the whooshing sound of an outgoing text.
Shaw was about to ask her to call him, when her phone chimed. She looked at the screen. “No, he doesn’t remember her.”
On the video Sophie vanished from sight again.
Shaw then noticed somebody come into view outside. He, or she, was of medium build and wearing baggy dark sweats, running shoes, a windbreaker and a gray stocking cap, pulled low. Sunglasses. Always damn sunglasses.
This person looked up and down the street and stepped closer to Sophie’s bike and crouched quickly, maybe to tie a shoelace.
Or not.
The behavior earned Shaw’s assessment that it was possibly the kidnapper. Male, female, he couldn’t tell. So Shaw bestowed the gender-neutral nickname, Person X.
“What’s he doing?” Tiffany asked in a whisper.
Sabotage? Putting a tracking device on it?
Shaw thought: Come in, order something.
He knew that wouldn’t happen.
X straightened, turned back in the direction he had come and walked quickly away.
“Should I fast-forward?” Tiffany asked.
“No. Let it run. Regular speed.”
Patrons came and went. Servers delivered and bused dishes.
As they watched the people and drivers stream past, Tiffany asked, “You live here?”
“Florida, some of the time.”
“Disney?”
“Not all that close. And I’m not there very often.”
Florida, he meant. As for Disney, not at all.
She might have said something else but his attention was on the video. At 6:16:33, Sophie left the Quick Byte. She walked to her bike. Then remained standing, perfectly still, looking out across the street, toward a place where there was nothing to look at: a storefront with a sun-bleached FOR LEASE sign in the window. Shaw noted one hand absently tightening into a fist, then relaxing, then tightening again. Her helmet slipped from the other and bounced on the ground. She bent fast to collect and pull it over her head—angrily, it seemed.
Sophie freed her bike and, unlike the elegant dismount, now leapt into the seat and pedaled hard, to the right, out of sight.