Page 66 of A Forgotten Mistake

“Of course,” he agrees as he starts off. He does a good job pretending like we’re there for a simple factory tour as he moves through the building, pointing out different things of interest.

“Anything different happen this morning?” Liam asks.

“Nothing noteworthy,” Jax says.

I nod toward the large loading door. “There was a semi pulled up to the loading zone when we got here. Was it loaded this morning?”

“It was. Nothing unusual there.”

“Same people work on it?”

“Generally,” he says as Liam seems to notice something. I look over and see that he’s fixated on a clear plastic cup that’s currently sweating. A drink brought in this morning wouldn’t still be sweating like that. Liam stares at it for a few seconds before looking over at Jax. “How long are breaks?”

“Five minutes, typically. Lunch is at eleven thirty. Employees start by seven, but some start earlier and some start later. Like office workers often start at seven thirty.”

“Whose cup is that?” Liam asks.

He glances over at it and shakes his head. “I don’t know… Could be Taylor’s, but I think she’s filling in for the welder who’s out on paternity leave. Could be Cameron’s. Want me to ask?”

“He generally have time to get a cold drink on his break?” Liam asks.

The guy’s eyes drop down to the cup. “Shouldn’t. That place is more than five minutes from here.”

“Was he gone this morning?”

“I know he clocked in. Things shifted a bit because of the man out on leave. Let me ask around.”

“Where’s this Cameron guy?”

He nods over at a dark-haired man punching numbers into a machine before he slides open the door to check something on the machine. Once he’s finished, he closes it again and returns to the computer attached to it, having no idea of the attention currently on him.

Jax walks over to a neighboring machine and calls the man aside as I look at Liam.

“You know they’re not going to take a sweating drink as proof.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Liam says as he watches the man’s back.

Jax returns. “Well… I was told he wasn’t in this section until about ten. Before then, he was helping them load, which is quite typical. He was floating a bit today. The loaders remember seeing him. Would you like to speak to him?”

“Not yet,” Liam says, and I know he’s aware that if we wait to see if the cameras come up with something, we’d havesomething to hold him on. So for now, we’ll wait to keep him from realizing that we’re interested in him.

Our team searches through the recordings, but besides the person who moves the scrap out, there’s no one who goes wandering through it. The culprit could have taken it off the line or when the scrap was being transported, but we have no proof of either. At this point, we have nothing, but we can’t do nothing. So we end up calling Cameron to the side to question him.

The man is confused the moment we ask to speak to him and even more confused when we tell him who we are.

“Did something happen?” he asks.

“Can you tell us everything you’ve done since you’ve arrived?” Liam requests, and he goes through his schedule that pretty much matches what we were given by Jax and the employees who’d been working with him.

“When did you get the drink?” Liam asks.

“This morning before work. I ended up getting called out to the loading dock, so I stuck it in the fridge and tossed more ice in it when I headed back out. We have an ice machine in the break room. I didn’t skip out,” he says. “I know a few employees do to get drinks and shit, but I like getting my shit done.”

Liam asks him where he was the night Jane Doe died, but he states that he was at home with his wife Jessica, who backs up his story. Honestly, the whole thing goes nowhere, but Liam seems determined not to look away from him. He’s like a predator that’s latched on and isn’t prepared to let go.

By the end of the day, we’ve run into dead end after dead end. Liam’s confident, though, and asks the crew to start deep divinginto this Cameron man, but so far, it’s turned up nothing, and I can tell some of them are starting to think it’s a waste of time.

Michaels sends us home at about six while we’re left waiting for answers, none of which have given Liam what he needs to hear. I think Michaels believes he’s doing him a solid getting him out of the office while they deal with Kenny, but I honestly think Liam would prefer to harass Kenny’s statement out of him and then make the lives of at least ten others more difficult.

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