Stories in the series (in order):
The Lady for a Lady
No Easy Way
Sleeping Beauties
An Act of Betrayal
The Devil You Know
Demons
"Tell him when he finds a time in his busy schedule to give me a call," Hawke slammed down the car phone while still keeping his temper in check to navigate through traffic. When Michael got back from his closed door meetings, he was going to get an earful.
Hawke took a detour in going to the hangar and drove by Caitlin's apartment. Traffic was slowed down by a workman's truck across the street from the apartment. Two men in drab gray suits were working outside of the branch bank. Hawke noticed the man on the ladder was working on a camera. A camera positioned right across the street from the main entrance of Caitlin's apartment building.
Once traffic began to flow at a normal rate, Hawke found a place to turn around and headed back to the hangar. He called Oren on his way there.
Dominic was already at the hangar when Hawke got in. Unless, Hawke slept in town, it was normally Dominic or Caitlin that met him at the hangar in the morning. Driving from the cabin into town was a long and sometimes lugubrious journey.
Hawke told Dominic about the possibility that a camera recorded Duveaux entering Caitlin's apartment along with the real killer. Hawke wanted there to be a real killer. Last night, he had dreamed scenarios of Caitlin killing Duveaux that had left him sick to his stomach and chilled to the bone.
They continued restoring the helicopter, already leaving things for Caitlin to do when she got back; things only her tiny hands or small frame could handle. Around lunchtime was when Oren showed up at the hangar.
"The police and the DA have looked at the tape. Want to see it?"
Hawke wiped his greasy black hands on a handkerchief and threw it into the tool box. "Can we?"
"I talked the police and the DA into letting you see it since you are the closest thing to family Caitlin has here at the moment and may be able to identify anyone entering or leaving Caitlin's apartment." He sized the greasy pilots up in one glance. "Meet me at the police station in one hour. The police and the DA want you to look at the tapes with them present." He looked them over from top to bottom again, this time a little more conspicuously. "One hour, gentlemen." He withdrew his briefcase from the desk where he laid it and left. His shoes clicked on the concrete floor.
One hour and fifteen minutes later, Hawke, Dominic and Oren stood in a wood paneled room with a uniformed officer, the female DA, and the Detective. One more person in the room would have made it too crowded. A TV and VCR set in the corner.
On the DA's words, the uniformed officer switched the TV on and hit play on the VCR. A clear black and white picture popped up on the screen: the front of Caitlin's apartment building.
"How far into the tape are we?" Hawke asked.
"This is forty-five minutes before Henri Duveaux entered the apartment building." The DA nodded and the uniformed police officer fast forwarded the tape until a man appeared on the screen. It was clearly Henri Duveaux. They watched as the casually dressed man punched buttons on the intercom, mouthed some words, and then went inside the unlocked door.
The DA nodded again and the officer fast forwarded the tape. He stopped at the DA's command. Caitlin's car came into view as it drove by the apartment building. It wasn't seen again. Ten minutes later, Caitlin came into view as she walked down the sidewalk with her key in hand. She entered her apartment building.
"No groceries bags," Hawke mumbled.
Dominic turned toward him. "What?"
He shook his head for Dominic to just ignore him. "What's the time from Duveaux's entrance to Cait's entrance?"
"Twenty minutes. As you can see on the tape, no one entered the building between the times the deceased and Miss O'Shaughnessy did." The uniformed office took the tape from the VCR, slipped it into a bag, and wrote his initials on a paper taped to the bag. He then left with the bag in hand.
"There goes your theory on someone else entering the apartment and killing Mr. Duveaux before your friend arrived home." The DA said. "Unless, God himself dropped proof on my desk that Caitlin O'Shaughnessy did not kill Henri Duveaux, she is going to prison. Gentlemen, if you'll excuse me?" She took the tape and the uniformed officer with her as she left the building.
"What we need is a miracle," Dominic said as they headed back to the hangar after leaving Oren.
"What we need is the truth of what really happened that night. I can't see Caitlin killing Duveaux anymore than I can see her killing one of us."
"But we didn't hold her for six weeks and let her believe she was someone she wasn't." Dominic stopped fooling with the Jeep's radio and sat back in his seat. "I can't get over the fact that everything that has happened wouldn't have happened if we had stopped her from going to that spa months ago."
"Or if I had gone with her like she asked," Hawke said.
They drove in silence the rest of the way back to the hangar. Neither one of them knew what to say