He took a step forward. Paused. “How do we get back there?” The work area was completely enclosed by the counter.
“There’s another door. In the back hall. But you said you didn’t want anyone using the hall earlier.”
“It’s fine now. We’ve gone over it.”
I led him back to the door. Punched in the code.
The manager was at her desk. She stood when she saw us.
“I’ll set everything up here.” She gestured to her desk and then leaned close to me. “The sooner the police can solve this, the sooner business gets back to normal.”
As I put my things into a locker, she sat down in front of her computer. By the time I joined them, she had brought up some footage and maximized it to fill the screen.
It was from after the shooting. Police officers and detectives walked in and out of view. One of them knelt and picked up something in the alley. Put it into some sort of bag.
The image froze and then disappeared as the manager tinkered with the program. Then more footage appeared. “This is the start of the shift, when the first barista came in at four this morning.” She vacated the chair.
The detective sat down. Turned to me. “You said the shooting happened when?”
“At 1:51.” I stopped myself. “Actually, at some point before 1:51. That’s when I came out the door.”
“Can we fast-forward?” he asked the manager. “I’m just looking, at the moment, to see who used that door. Besides Ms. Garrison.”
She leaned over and pointed to a button. Then she straightened and headed toward the swinging door that led to the counter area. “I’m going out on the floor. Let me know if you need anything else.”
After the manager left, I watched over the detective’s shoulder as he reviewed the footage.
The camera was positioned right above the door. Its fish-eye view captured the keypad and a narrow band of the alley. Its purpose seemed to be to identify who was coming and going through the back door.
At 1:43, the door opened into the frame and a man appeared. The camera caught the top of his head. The door retreated as he stepped into full view. As he walked into the alley, the wind flattened his hair against his skull. Holding a hand up in front of his eyes, he turned to his left, to his right. Then he took a drink from his cup. Seemed to look at his watch. Took another drink. Turned to look over his shoulder and then down the alley again. Took a drink. Turned his face up to the camera.
The detective paused the footage. Pulled out his phone. Called someone. “Hey.” He listened a moment before speaking. “Can you send someone to check out the roof again? Take another look?” He paused again. “Yeah. Thanks. And we need to see if anyone else had a camera in the alley or along the street out in front. Go down to the metro station, see if we can get their footage too.” He spoke for a few more moments and then hung up. “You good?” he asked me.
I nodded.
“Okay. I want you to explain to me exactly what you can see and what you can’t. For instance—” He rewound the footage to the place where the victim turned his face full-on to the camera. “What can you see here?”
“The man—the victim—he turned around. Before, he was facing the dumpster across the alley. Now he’s facing the camera.”
“So you know where his face is.”
“Generally speaking, a person’s head is on top of their shoulders.”
“I’m not trying to take a cheap shot here. I’m trying to understand what you can and can’t see. It’s important. The longer it takes to solve this, the greater the chance the shooter gets away with it.”
“I’m sorry.” I sighed. “I apologize. Face blindness has a continuum. Some of us are more affected than others. Here’s how it works with me. When I look at someone, I can tell if they’re a child or an adult. I have trouble distinguishing adult-size age unless I can see someone as they walk or I get an up-close look at their hands or their neck. Or their hair. But people can color their hair. Is a balding man with dark hair a young man or is he just vain? I would need other clues in order to tell you.”
“What kind of clues?”
“Clothes. Shoes. Those aren’t always accurate, but they can usually get me safely to one side of sixty or the other. Unless it’s a woman having a midlife crisis. Or one trying to keep up with a teenage daughter. In that case, knees are a dead giveaway. If I can hear someone speak, that usually helps me too.”
“If you can’t see faces, then how do you know what he’s facing? Where he’s looking?”
“I’m not blind. Which direction are his feet pointing? I can tell if I’m looking at someone from the back or from the front. And in that footage, I saw him turn around.”
“So it’s only faces.”
“Which is probably why the condition is called face blindness.” That was a smart-aleck thing to say, but it really wasn’t as difficult as people wanted to make it. “If you think of me intentionally blurring out the faces of people I see in order to protect their identities, then that would be an accurate way to think about it.”
“Okay. So you see that he turned toward the camera. What else?”
“Can you play it back again?”
He rewound it a few seconds and then let the footage play.
I gave a running commentary as I watched. “He turns away from the dumpster. Pauses to look at his watch. Now he’s facing the door. It seems like he’s about to turn away again, but he looks up instead.”
The detective paused the footage. “How do you know that if you can’t really see his eyes?”
I shrugged. “I mean—” There were multiple ways. “The angle of his shoulders? The shift in the tilt of his hairline?”
“Okay.”
“Why? Is there anything wrong with any of that?”
“It’s windy.”
“It is,” I answered cautiously because I couldn’t figure out where he was trying to go with that information.
“He was looking up and down the alley, he was checking his watch.”
“Sipping his coffee. Maybe he was waiting for someone.”
“Right. That’s what I’m thinking. So why did he look up all of a sudden?”
“Is that rhetorical? Because if it was, I would ask in return, ‘Why do any of us do anything?’”
“He was surveying the place. There was no reason for him to look up. Not when he was clearly intending to repeat his pattern. Up the alley, down the alley, turn and check the door. But he did glance up. I’m thinking he must have heard something.”
He let the footage play on.
Immediately after looking up toward the roof, at 1:46, Joe took an abrupt step backward and then seemed to wilt. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground as his coffee cup hit the pavement and rolled away.
At 1:51, I came out.
I watched myself, on the screen, as I lurched over to the body and knelt beside it. I put a hand to his shoulder. Shook him. Put a hand to the pavement and braced myself so I could shake him again.
I remembered none of that.
Then I turned around and looked up as I put a hand to my forehead. When I drew it away, I left behind streaks of blood.
I stood.