Edward slid the last page from the printer into the folder and closed the file. He could only imagine how frustrated Agent Gibbs and the others were right now. Taylor Briggs' dossier showed "him" to be a twenty-one year old girl, and unlikely to be the person they were after.
Lacking any other directive, he decided to seek out the young lab technician: Abby, if his memory was correct. With nothing more he could do on Ms. Briggs' profile, perhaps Abby had something he could work with. He suspected it would not do to be found idle when Gibbs returned.
After one wrong floor and two wrong turns, Edward found the lab. Then he wondered how he could have missed it. The music was earsplitting, though not entirely in bad taste.
"Ms. Abby!" he yelled, so as to be heard over the din. When she didn't respond, he tried a second time. "Ms. Abby!"
"Huh? What?" She turned around and stared at Edward for a full beat before asking, "Do I know you? Oh, wait! You're one of those English guys McGee brought in here, right?"
Edward smiled and nodded. "Is there any way we could turn that down some? It's a little hard to hear you."
Abby grinned and walked past him to her stereo controls. "I'll give you credit, at least you didn't call it 'racket', like Gibbs does," she said as she dialed down the volume. "Better?"
"It's not bad stuff, actually. My younger brother would quite like it, I'm certain."
"Your younger brother has good taste. Now, what can I do for you… I'm sorry what was your name again?" Abby looked apologetic, her brow furrowed as she obviously tried to remember the introductions from several hours earlier.
"Edward. Edward Harper."
"Right. Gotcha, Eddie. What can I do for you?"
"I've finished the task Gibbs set me to and I doubt that simply waiting for him to return is wise. So I've come to see if you have anything at all I could be working—"
"Smart man, Eddie. Never let Gibbs catch you napping. Let me see what I have." She began looking through the evidence she'd processed when suddenly she looked up, holding up a finger. "Oh! I know!"
She motioned Edward to follow her, leading him into a small room off the main lab. Here Abby pointed down to a black and white photo. Or what would be a photo had its subjects not been all blurred or obscured.
"It's the best I could do and I haven't even started analyzing it yet," she told him. "The fire destroyed the fine details, so we can't make out any faces. Is there a chance you could recognize Helena, for example, from the back of her head?"
Edward sighed. Without details, the picture seemed nearly useless. Abby had been correct earlier. They would be able to match it to the original, if they found the negatives, based on this, but the reconstruction itself would likely tell them nothing.
He stared at it a bit longer cataloging the features he could identify. It was clearly an outdoor café of some kind, there were trees present. And whoever took this had their back to the street, because there were no cars in the picture. There was a low wall of some sort just beyond the cluster of tables. And beyond that, off to the side, in the distance… he stopped and cocked his head to the side. "Abby? What's that shape there, off on the edge of the frame?"
"Looks like the Washington Monument to me," she said as she peered at the photo and he nodded. "You know – that looks like it could be in Georgetown!" She deftly plucked the photo from Edward's hand to get a closer look. "Tables outside… lunch crowd, maybe? See that shadow there, and there… and that must be the sun over there…"
Edward cleared his throat to interrupt her puzzling. "Are there many outdoor cafés are there where you can see the Washington Monument in the distance?"
"Let me think," she mused. "The best bet would be Antonio's." She looked at the picture again, running her finger over a dark shape in the background. "That could fit. He has a low shrub that runs between the patio he sets his tables on and the edge of his property. And if you're seated facing just the right direction you can indeed see the monument."
"Terrific. It might be Antonio's," he said skeptically. "Even if we could prove that, how do we prove she was there? Last time she paid cash and used someone else's name for her reservation. I don't suppose she'd be careless this time." Edward leaned carefully against the table and looked at the lab tech, who was grinning from ear to ear.
"Doubt me not, Eddie-baby," Abby said, returning the photo to him and striding over to the computer terminal in the center of the lab. Her hands flew over the keys as she muttered, "Our anonymous photographer wasn't the only one snapping pictures around Antonio's." At Edward's confused glance, she explained, "Traffic cameras, security video from the parking lots, all that jazz. She's taking pictures, she's got to show up in someone's footage totin' a camera. Welcome to the digital age."
"Of course," he nodded. "I should have thought of that. But don't we need a warrant? And is this even a legitimate use of the data?"
"You bet your boots it is, Eddie. Traffic cams and the public security cams are government. I can access them, no problem. Now if I want private ones, those I need a warrant for, unless the owner chooses to release them voluntarily." She gave him a grin as she swept past him and into the lab, leaving him to trail in her wake. "But let's see what we can do with just the traffic and security videos first."