The Red Queen Dies (24 page)

“Thank you, Mrs. Giovanni,” McCabe said. “You've been a great help.”

“I'm glad. I don't know what I've told you, but I'm glad if I've helped.”

McCabe said good-bye and turned to Baxter. “To quote you, Mike, ‘bingo.'”

“A movie about ants?” he said. Where does that get us? Back to Ted Thornton's memo on his check about the Charlton Heston movie?”

“Maybe. But, even more important, it might also get us the teaching assistant's name. If she checked out a movie—”

“She would have had to use her library card,” Baxter said, grinning. “I'm slow sometimes, but eventually I get there.”

“A black-and-white movie about ants shouldn't be too hard to identify.”

“I bet it was one of those 1950s sci-fi movies. You know, the kind with the giant insects.”

“That would make sense,” McCabe said. “As I recall,
The Naked Jungle,
the Charlton Heston movie, is in color. A black-and-white sci fi movie would be perfect for a summer science camp. Unless they went serious and showed them an old documentary.”

“I'm betting on the sci-fi movie.”

“Okay, you're on. Winner springs for lunch tomorrow.” McCabe glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost three o'clock. “This is October, right?”

“Last time I checked.”

“Just making sure. As I said, I'm getting punchy. In fall, the public libraries go back to their regular Sunday-afternoon schedule. They're closed on Sunday during the summer.”

“I'll take your word for it. I haven't been in a library in a while.”

“I do occasional book runs for my dad,” McCabe said. She picked up her ORB and touched the icon for Research. “We'd better check the university libraries, too, just to be safe. They have film collections.”

“Problem, though. Even if we can identify the movie, there is the little difficulty of getting a library to tell us who checked it out.”

“All we can do is go to the ADA on that one. I'm not holding my breath that the library will give us the information, but— Kelsey? Hi, it's Hannah McCabe. We need some help finding a movie title.…”

They might not be able to get the library to give them the name of the patron who had checked out the movie, but, McCabe thought, this felt like real progress.

*   *   *

“Not going to happen,” Mark Paxton said. He was the ADA on duty. McCabe had called him after speaking to the lieutenant and getting clearance.

“Mark, can't you even—”

“Is this related to a terrorist threat or a matter of national security?”

“I've told you—”

“That you're fishing for a name of someone who might be somehow involved in your murder investigation. Not going to happen. Libraries do not open their patron records unless it's a matter of national security.”

“Then there's no way we can get the name?”

“Unless you find another patron who was at that library on the day in question and happens to recall seeing who checked out the movie.”

“Okay, I get the picture.” She sighed. “No pun intended.”

“Look, I'm sorry, Hannah. But no point in wasting your time or mine. Call me if there's anything I really can help with.”

“Thanks.”

“No go?” Baxter said.

“Only if we can find an observant patron who happened to see the transaction in question and can provide the name.”

Baxter tilted back his head and stared up at the ceiling. “We could try to get any surveillance video the library has for the parking lot that morning. Of course, we're talking nine years ago.”

“And if they haven't long since recorded over or tossed it, if they knew why we wanted it, we'd still need the FBI with a national security subpoena in hand.”

Baxter sighed. “See this is the kind of stuff Howard Miller complains about. Eleven years of lefty liberals in the White House, stacking the Supreme Court, and law enforcement has to jump through hoops to get anything done.”

“Lucky for him, or he and some of his buddies would be under indictment,” McCabe said. “Any other bright ideas?”

“Traffic-cam videos,” Baxter said. “But they aren't stored.”

“And if we're talking about the main library on Washington Avenue, that parking lot is in back. It faces houses. Unless our teaching assistant went out of the lot and back up the hill onto Washington, the only cameras would probably have been the ones in the library lot.”

Baxter twirled in his chair. “Okay, let's say she did go out of the parking lot and head back up onto Washington Avenue. We've got businesses on both sides of the street. A bank across the street.”

“And we're still talking about surveillance video from nine years ago.” McCabe shoved her hands through her hair and pulled it away from her scalp. “We're so close. It feels like we're so damn—”

“A television camera crew,” Baxter said.

“You know what a long shot this is,” McCabe said, but she reached for her ORB again.

“The library's in downtown Albany. If we're lucky, some newsworthy event was happening that morning.”

McCabe said, “Lieutenant Dole, sorry, it's me again. The ADA says no chance on the library patron information, but Mike had another idea. We're thinking television camera crews. If one happened to be in the area that morning … Yes, sir, I know if we ask for the information … I know … Yes, sir, that sounds like a good idea.”

“Well?” Baxter said.

“He's going to call Jacoby. He thinks Jacoby might be able to get the local stations to cooperate without having to promise them too much.”

“Assuming they won't do it out of civic-mindedness.”

“Assuming that.” McCabe shook her head. “This is such a long shot.”

Baxter grinned. “We've been good. Done our chores and brushed our teeth. We're due for another break right about now.”

*   *   *

They got their break. It came later that evening. Lieutenant Dole tagged McCabe at home to tell her that the commander and Jacoby had talked and Jacoby had reached out to the local television stations. One of them had been so eager to get a jump on the competition that it had initiated an immediate search of its archives for any relevant footage. And the archivist found video of a camera crew covering the setup for a championship wrestling match at the City Armory. The crew had been doing interviews with fans and passersby while also filming the arena setup.

When she finished reading the message, McCabe reminded herself that they would have the car they were looking for only if their teaching assistant had driven past the library or had parked in the lot in back of the library and then gone up the hill and onto Washington Ave en route to the summer science camp on Madison. But at least they had video from which they could try to pull license numbers and hope for a match with a female driver who would have been in her late teens or early twenties.

Unless she had been driving someone else's car or had taken the bus or gotten a ride with her boyfriend.

But they had at least a shot at finding what they were looking for.

The television station had already sent over the video. McCabe debated getting dressed again and going back to the station.

But she was exhausted, and she knew Baxter must be, too.

She sent him a tag, letting him know his idea had paid off. Then she went out into the kitchen and made herself a turkey sandwich and a cup of cocoa.

The house was quiet because Pop was out. He'd gone down to the City for a reunion with an old buddy from his days as a foreign correspondent. “An overnighter,” he had said in the note she had found on the bulletin board. “So don't wait up.”

Truth be told, she was glad to have the house to herself. Pop wasn't hard to live with, rarely played the heavy father. She did what she wanted and he did what he wanted, and they were company for each other. But now and then, it was nice to have the place to herself and enjoy the solitude.

Pop probably felt the same way when she spent the occasional night out, so she felt no guilt about thinking it.

McCabe settled down on the sofa in the living room in her cotton nightgown and robe. Stocking feet on the coffee table, she brought up the movie menu.

According to Research, the movie that the teaching assistant had picked up had probably been
Them!
It had been, and still was, in the Albany Public Library catalog.

She owed Baxter lunch. He had bet it was a sci-fi movie, not a documentary.

According to the description from Research, the movie was about giant ants, mutants produced by nuclear radiation.

McCabe scanned through “classic sci-fi.”

There it was.

She read the notes and settled in to see how the New Mexico State Police and the FBI would handle the infestation.

“Okay, that's why the teacher chose this movie,” McCabe said out loud when the father-daughter team of entomologists arrived to provide their expertise. “A female scientist. Dr. Kincaid's 1950s counterpart.”

Of course, the downside of a movie about giant ants was that it might give sensitive children nightmares. But presumably girls of between twelve and fourteen had been way too sophisticated to be frightened by a black-and-white movie made in 1954.

Still, the giant ants were pretty good. According to the notes, the special effects had been nominated for an Oscar.

McCabe took another bite of her turkey sandwich and settled back for some mindless entertainment that had nothing to do with the case, other than one girl's taunt to another: “Want those big old ants in your pants?”

Had Bethany Clark, middle-school bully, improved with age? What they knew was that she had worked as a waitress and, during her off-hours, she had liked to party with what her sister had described as her “wild friends.”

But there was nothing to indicate Bethany's friends had been any wilder than other young people their age.

At age twenty-two, Bethany Clark had been a beautiful young woman. But had she been kinder than she was when she was thirteen, skinny, and awkward?

When the movie was over, McCabe decided, she'd read through the entries on Bethany's social network node again. At first glance, there hadn't been much there. But maybe, with the additional information they had, some throwaway remark would stand out this time around.

McCabe wiggled her toes and took a sip of her cocoa. Not the appropriate drink for a warm evening in October, but the house was on cooldown. And with luck, even if other people were doing the same thing, the Northeast would make it through the night and right through December without a repeat of the three-day blackout they'd had in the spring.

 

22

 

Monday, October 28, 2019

“Mike, look at this,” McCabe said when Baxter walked into the bull pen the next morning.

“What? The video from the TV station?”

“No, I was waiting on you to get started with that. But I found a really interesting entry on Bethany's Web node.”

“I thought you said you and O'Connell had gone through all those already.”

“We did. But I thought I'd look again now that we know about the science camp.” McCabe highlighted the entry on the wall. “Read this.”

Baxter read out loud: “THE DIET GODS WILL PUNISH SINNERS. Really wanted hot fudge sundae today. Swore I'd do another thirty crunches at gym. Broke down and stopped at place out on Wolf Road. Cute guy working counter. Decided to sit at table outside even if it was hot. Then realized had forgotten to get water. Went back inside. Came back and ANTS crawling ALL OVER my sundae. TOTALLY GROSSED OUT. Little brats at next table laughing like hilarious. Diet gods laughing, too.'”

Baxter finished reading. “When did she write this?”

“August eighth, 2019,” McCabe said. “A few weeks before she was killed. I wonder how the ants got on her sundae.”

“The kids were giggling. Maybe they did it. Or maybe the ants were on the table and rushed for the sundae as soon as she walked away.”

“Maybe,” McCabe said. “Or maybe someone else scooped up the ants from the ground and sprinkled them on Bethany's sundae. Maybe nobody was paying attention but the kids, and they thought it was a good joke. And anyway, you hop in your car and you're out of there.”

“But what's the point?” Baxter said, sitting down in his desk chair. “If she thinks the ants got on the sundae on their own, then what's the point?”

“If it's a message and she didn't get it the first time, maybe you send it again.”

“Okay. Does she mention ants again?”

“No. I did a search, and ants only come up in this one entry.”

“Does she mention anything else that seems odd now that we know about the science camp?”

“Nothing that jumps out at me so far. But it's going to take me another couple of hours to finish rereading.”

Baxter took a sip of the iced coffee he had brought in. “You really think the ant thing means something?”

McCabe shrugged. “I have ants on the brain. I watched that movie last night.
Them!
”

“Great movie, right? I saw it years ago, when I was a kid.”

“And you probably recalled that movie had a female scientist.”

Baxter grinned. “That's why I was betting they'd watched a movie instead of a dull old documentary about ants. So let's see if we've got anything on the TV station video.”

“We're going to need help from the lab to see what we have.”

“Task force meeting this morning. After we take a first look, maybe we can get some help from the State Police.”

*   *   *

By that afternoon, they were at the State Police lab with Whitman, the investigator assigned to the task force. He had helped them to expedite the forensic examination of the video from the television station.

Cahill, the lab tech, was manipulating the images on the screen. The license plates of the cars on Washington Avenue between 8:30 and 9:30 that morning nine years ago were being scanned into the database.