Page 10 of One Step Sideways

I saw Rawlings and Danny glance at each other, but if I was going to help…

Danny gestured to the room he used as an office, and we walked in. I even managed to ignore the dog as it lay curled up on a dog bed. The room looked, I imagined, like the cockpit of some jet. One monitor had the CCTV picture, and another monitor had about a dozen different photos of Rain. There were another three monitors, but they weren’t important right at that moment.

“That’s as large as I can make it without it pixelating,” Danny said, but I didn’t need it. It barely showed one side of a girl’s face, eyes down. Her lip ring was just visible. I eyed another picture of her standing next to a friend, taken ten days ago according to the date stamp. She still wasn’t smiling, and the lip ring was visible.

“Do you have a full figure one of her at the bus station and something to compare it with?”

“A back view of her at the bus station, but it seems to be the same girl, and…” Danny typed, and two more photos shared the bus station screen. One of her at some sports event and one posing with an older woman next to a large black car.

“Is that the grandma?”

Danny nodded. I gazed at the new pics, but they were really only for confirmation. I knew the girl at the bus station wasn’t Rain.

“My program is saying 91% match on height and body mass, allowing for different clothes.”

“The girl at the bus station isn’t Rain,” I said.

Danny gazed back at the pics. “What makes you so sure?”

“Shoe size, but if it was just that, it could be accounted for by different shoes, but in each of the others, Rain has tied her laces with her dominant right hand. The girl at the bus station tied them with a dominant left hand. The loop was pinched in her left hand.”

Rawlings grunted. “I can barely see the laces.” He squinted at the picture.

“And enlarging any more becomes pixelated,” Danny said and looked at me. “This is your ability?”

I nodded. One of them, but I sure wasn’t going to say more.

Rawlings nodded just as Danny’s computer screen flashed a red triangular symbol at the bottom of the screen. He bent and pressed a few keys, enlarging a black car identical to the one the grandma had in the picture. There were no tags visible. “Can you tell if it’s the same one?”

I looked at them both. There were no stickers, and my eyes took in the immaculate paint work, no rust, no dents, then I nodded. “I can’t tell if it’s the same car, but it’s the same pair of hands driving it.” I pointed to the older one of the grandma. “No visible rings, but I’m guessing she’s got arthritis or had a broken finger. The joint is swollen and she has two identical age-spots on the finger I can see.”

“Pull up the grandma’s address,” Rawlings said. “I need to know if there’s been any movement. It may be possible Saunders is there or close.” He picked up his keys. “Do we have anyone near? Ringo?”

“No. Fifty minutes at a minimum, and you can be there in twenty-five.”

Rawlings looked at me. “With me.” I followed him out.

“You need to sign that contract,” he said, getting back in the truck.

I didn’t answer. I hadn’t asked all my questions yet.

“Want to share what else you have going on?”

“Just my vision,” I said mostly honestly, just leaving off the extra part. “But I can’t see through things, nothing like that.”

He nodded and pressed a button on the dash when a screen lit up above it. “What did you find?” he asked Danny.

“There’s been no activity apart from the one journey the grandma made,” Danny said. “They have an attached garage, so I have no idea if she returned with Rain. We know what time Saunders was last seen and unless there’s some kind of secret underground passage, he’s not there yet.”

“Can you disable the cameras from there?”

My eyebrows rose. Was that normal now, or was Danny just that good?

“The ones attached to the monitoring company are looped, but you have two that are on an internal system I can’t get to.”

“Where?” I asked.

“The back. One on the east corner and one above the back sliding doors from the lounge.”

---