Page 42 of Cold Case Discovery

Laurel strode toward some point only she knew, but then she came to an abrupt halt. In the dark, under the parking lot lights, one cruiser sat with its driver’s-side door wide open. For a strange moment, they all stood there in stunned silence, looking at it.

“One of you go inside and tell Linda to get security footage of the parking lot up,” Laurel said, her voice dead calm though she’d gone a little pale.

Chloe immediately turned and jogged back inside. Jack stayed with Laurel.

“How long would that have been like that without anyone noticing? Not long, right?”

Laurel shook her head as she approached the car. “Hard to say. Hart told me he was leaving about an hour ago. There hasn’t been a shift change, so it’s possible no one’s been out here, but it’s also possible he didn’t leave right after he told me.”

Jack peered into the open door of the car. There didn’t seem to be signs of a struggle, but it was shadowy and dark in the car. Jack pulled out his phone and switched on the flashlight mode at the same time Laurel did.

Nothing appeared amiss, really, aside from the wide-open door. “Maybe he just forgot something?” It seemed like a leap—but then again, so did immediately jumping to conclusions about an open car door.

“No reason to leave the door open and kill the battery. Unless it was some kind of emergency.” Laurel did a slow turn, eyeing the entire parking lot illuminated only by a few light towers. “It was still light out when he told me he was leaving. He’s not... Whatever this is, it’s not like him.Somethinghappened.”

Jack did his own looking around the parking lot. Bent County was hardly a bustling metropolis. Even though there was a police station right there, it wouldn’t be impossible for something to happen out here and no one would see. Even if it was light out.

“He didn’t get taken out of the police station’s parking lot in broad daylight without someone seeing,” Laurel said disgustedly, clearly more to herself than to Jack. “Without some kind of struggle. I don’t know what this is, but it’s not that.”

Jack could hear what she was really doing: trying to talk herself out of thinking the worst. All while the worst was sitting right there in front of them.

“The footage is going to give us the answers we need. Let’s go watch it.”

“I don’t like this,” she muttered. “I told him we should have kept that scrapbook. It’s all part of the Brink case. Not that I should be telling you this. Why are you even here?”

“Chloe might be a deputy at my department, but—”

“Come on, Sheriff. She’s a lot more than your deputy. Anyone with eyes can see that.”

Before Jack could react tothat, Laurel was striding inside. Chloe met them halfway down the hall. “Linda says they’re getting the footage up on the second floor.”

Laurel looked at Chloe, then at Jack, then sighed. “All right, follow me.” She took them up a set of stairs and then into a larger room clearly used for meetings. A man Jack recognized, though couldn’t quite come up with a name, sat at a laptop.

He eyed Chloe and Jack, then Laurel. “Want me to put it up on the screen?”

Laurel nodded. In a few seconds, security footage of the police station parking lot showed up on the screen.

“What time you want?” he asked Laurel.

“Let’s start at six. That’s a little before when he told me he was leaving.”

The footage sped up, people coming and going in quick time. When the man hit Play, the parking lot was empty aside from cars. Then Hart appeared. He had a box tucked under his arm.

“That’s the scrapbook,” Laurel explained, pointing to the box.

Hart opened his cruiser door, leaned in and put the box down, presumably on the passenger seat, though that wasn’t fully visible from the camera angle. Then, before he slid into the driver’s seat, he stopped, straightened and looked off into the distance with a puzzled frown.

Everyone held their breath as he turned and immediately began to jog off to the right—and quickly off-screen.

“We need footage of that side of the building,” Laurel instructed the man at the computer.

“That side’s a dead zone, Detective. We’ve only got cameras at entrances and exits—there aren’t any in that corner.”

Laurel swore.

“Does he see something, or does someone call out to him?” Chloe said, pointing to the screen. “Because he was getting in, but something stopped him. So someone had to have seen him. Something had to have gotten his attention.”

“It’s got to be a noise, right?” Jack returned. “He’s getting ready to getinthe car. Head down, then he looks over.”

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