THE MOST STRIKING THING ABOUT THE TWO YOUNG MEN ON the security recording was the tremendous amounts of stress under which they were both obviously laboring. In the first of them, this stress was clearly etched in the the jittery suddenness of his movements, in the habit of constantly raking a comb across his head, defining and redefining the side part in his assiduously composed geek haircut. Finally, and most decisively, his stress was revealed in the way he yanked his Olympic from his retro leather book satchel and sprayed the room without giving any warning that he intended to do so.
It was, for the record, a K3B-M4. So I got the make but not the model.
I got most of the rest of it right. The escalation of the argument with the Korean American, the tactfully turned backs of the workers. And then my re-creation went awry. He did not search the premises. He did not even glance at the travel drive that I could clearly see sitting exactly where I’d been told it would be. He came, he killed, and he left. Leaving the drive.
I watched as the cameras went into delay mode, recording in shorter and shorter bursts at longer and longer intervals, allowing hours to pass in minutes, slight stutters in the lighting caused as one of the monitors continued to flicker. And then the cameras revived, movement bringing them back to life, and a second young man under duress entered the room.
He surveyed the crime scene with some thoroughness, taking several photos, recording the positions of bodies, the placement of entry wounds and blood sprays. Then pausing for a final assessment, he noticed the drive, made a brief mental calculation of some kind, took the travel drive, and left. Giving the impression that the theft of the drive was not at all premeditated.
As for his obvious anxiety and stress, they were revealed not in any particular tick of behavior but rather in the contrast between the efficiency with which he went about his business, and the blind distraction apparent in his failure to erase himself from the security hard drive from which I had recorded the DVD I was watching.
I watched it again. I watched it several times over.
His frame was lanky but fit. The haircut wasn’t one. It was what had been very short hair neglected over several months. The clothes were practical and inexpensive. Off-brand khaki cargo pants, a plain black T-shirt. Only his shoes were of any particular interest. A pair of black Tsubo Korphs, legendarily durable, comfortable, and ugly. Excellent for anyone who spends a great deal of time on his feet. Nurses and hospital orderlies often favor the white ones. In terms of palette and basic silhouette, he could quite easily have been taken for one of the mercenaries I had killed in the room several hours after he had gone carefully through the procedures I was watching him execute.
But he was not one of them. He was, in fact, a cop. Young, not terribly experienced at detective work, but game and apt. He’d obviously done his homework and listened up in class. He went about his business with care, but with concern for the time it was taking, frequently looking at the anachronism on his wrist. I watched and came to another conclusion.
The camera image could be magnified enough for me to see that he was deleting something from the Korean American’s BlackBerry That, combined with his time sensitivity, the impulsive theft of the drive, and his stress level, seemed to make a simple case. Dirty cop. Covering up traces of whatever dirty business he had been engaged in there.
This diagnosis was contraindicated by a few details: the time he took to survey the crime scene, take pictures, and check the pulses of the dead. Dirty? Well, certainly he had something to hide. More than likely it was some form of dirtiness. Always best to assume the worst about a stranger until you know otherwise.
The killer, for instance, had killed out of juvenile rage. There might be money involved, nothing would be more natural, but when it boiled down to the moment of the deed, he simply lost his self-control and, because he had one handy, pulled his gun and opened fire. It was on his face. Not beforehand, not even while he was shooting. But afterward, with smoke still oozing from the barrel of his weapon, the absolute shock on his face. The look that said explicitly, Did I just do that? I hardly needed to see his lips move: Oh, shit. Or to observe the nervous giggle that escaped from them. He’d never planned to go in there and kill those people. He’d just walked into a room where he knew he was going to have an argument with someone and took a high-powered assault rifle with him. For no real reason. Just because he thought he might need it. For what, he would have found it impossible to say.
The other young man, the one with the well-maintained ancient watch, the practical shoes, and the precise methodology, he’d never have lost control in that manner. Had he wanted to kill those people, he’d have gone in with a plan and carried it out with great efficiency. And possibly still have walked out having forgotten to take care of the cameras.
I was, I will admit it, intrigued.
Not that my curiosity was a matter of concern. I would have had to track him down whether or not I was keen to know just how and why he’d come to be there.
He had Lady Chizu’s drive.
Inevitably, I must find him. And take it. And do all that she had asked of me.
Sitting in my Cadillac, spending another late evening in traffic, some hours after the dear French pilot had touched down on the Thousand Storks pad in Century City and reminded me that I had his number, as if I had forgotten, I found a section of the recording where the cop’s face was turned almost directly to one of the cameras. I froze it, grabbed the frame, saved it as “Young Faust,” connected via Bluetooth to the Canon Pixma in the glove box, and printed several copies. Then I left-clicked the touchpad button on my Toughbook and skipped back on the recording, watching Young Faust depart backward, and the killer enter similarly, and, would that it were so easy, watched the dead jump joyously to life, expelling bullets from their bodies in sheer relief that it had all been a bad dream. Or so I chose to reimagine the scene.
I froze the picture and considered the killer. I would need no assistance from business associates who owed me favors to identify this face and give it a name. I owned a TV, after all.
Parsifal K. Afronzo Jr. Cager to his friends. Freshly minted mass murderer.
The policeman, dirty to whatever degree, would likely be seeking him, or vice versa. So then must I.