Page 82 of Everything She Feared

Newell tapped on his keyboard. His monitor resumed playing the video.

A woman appears, leaving a trail and walking across the lot, getting into a Ford Focus. She begins driving away before the footage freezes.

Newell typed more commands, enlarging the Washington State license plate on the Ford.

“She’s the second. I’ll call her Focus Woman.”

Newell entered more commands. This time his monitor rewound footage to the start, then resumed playing.

“Watch.” Newell pointed to the bottom of the frame. “This is interesting.”

The Sunny Days school bus arrives; all the passengers begin disembarking. At the edge of the footage, a Chevrolet pickup crawls partially into the frame and stops as if watching. The driver is not visible. Moments later, Anna Shaw and Katie Harmon get off and disappear down the trail. At the edge of the frame, the pickup wheels around to exit before the footage freezes on its Washington State license plate.

Newell’s chair creaked as he leaned back.

“That’s the third. I call it Sketchy Pickup,” he said. “The truck wheels in as if watching the bus, then pulls away.”

After considering the image, Benton said: “Maybe the driver wanted to avoid the security camera.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Newell said.

“When the pickup left, it could’ve parked outside the lot,” Pierce said. “The driver could’ve entered the trail outside of camera range.”

“All good theories,” Newell said, typing on his keyboard. “I’m sending you the three plates and copying the footage.”

The detectives’ phones pinged.

“What you now have,” Newell said, “are three vehicles that were in the parking lot within the time frame of Anna Shaw’s death. But all three left before we got there and sealed the park.”

“This is good,” Benton said.

Back at their desks, Pierce and Benton got to work.

“So none of these three have been checked, interviewed or cleared,” Benton said. “You take Camry Man and Focus Woman. I’ll take the pickup.”

Pierce consulted her open notebook. “Remember, Dave Kneller, the park’s owner, said no one was at the entrance gate. It was left open because his staff member went home sick.”

Keyboards clicked as the detectives entered the plates, submitting them to several law enforcement databases, including ACCESS, a central computerized system.

“Okay, Focus Woman is Marilyn Leanne Hamilton, aged sixty, resides in Seattle. And Camry Man is Gilbert Conroy Croft, aged seventy-nine, resides in Issaquah,” Pierce said.

She continued running their names through other databases that were part of the ACCESS network, including local and state systems with warrant data and NCIC, which was managed by the FBI.

Hamilton and Croft had no criminal history, no records, no offences and no warrants.

Taking a moment to study their driver’s license photos, Pierce tapped her pen on her notebook. She thought how several trails webbed in the park to the one used by the Sunny Days group. What were Hamilton and Croft doing in the park at that time? Did they see Anna and Katie?

Maybe they witnessed something concerning the girls?

“My guys came back clean,” Pierce said. “What about yours?”

Concentrating on what was on his monitor, Benton didn’t answer.

“Carl?”

“This could change everything,” he said.

“What do you have?”

---