Page 61 of Close Her Eyes

“Because of the autopsy?” Josie asked.

“Not just that.”

The Chief stepped forward and pointed a finger at Cyrus’s chest. “You need to show us what’s in that file. Now.”

THIRTY-THREE

Twenty minutes later, the four of them were in a conference room, crowded around a laptop that Cyrus had brought from his office. Josie sat in a chair beside him while Noah and the Chief looked over their shoulders. With a few clicks, he found a thumbnail of what looked to be video footage.

Cyrus pointed to the small square. “This is video of the last time Jana was seen alive. It’s from the gas station.”

“According to her mother,” Josie said, “Carolina Eddy never mentioned this.”

“She never had access to it. The owner of the station kept his security footage off-site. This way no one could ever come in, rob the place, and destroy the video. They could destroy the cameras but nothing that had already been captured. That’s what he said, but I think what was really going on was that he’d be able to tell if his employees were ripping him off or not because they couldn’t destroy footage.”

Noah said, “You’re saying Carolina Eddy didn’t know about this video?”

“She knew they had cameras there, but she didn’t have access to any footage. We never showed this to her. She never asked. We were never sure exactly what she witnessed since from behind the counter inside, she would only have been able to see a portion of the lot. We pressed her on it because what she told us and what’s on this footage don’t match up, but she stuck to her story.”

The Chief said, “Play it.”

Cyrus clicked on the thumbnail and the square enlarged to fill up the entire screen. The angle was from overhead, showing the gas pumps and a small part of the front door of the minimart. It was in color and surprisingly crisp. The date and timestamp were in white on the bottom left of the footage. An older model, beat-up white pickup truck pulled up to one of the gas pumps. Mathias Tobin emerged, dressed in dirty jeans and a worn brown hoodie that bore as many stains as it did small holes. Mud crusted along the bottom of his heavy boots, which were unlaced. As he went to the pump and used a credit card to pay for gas, they could only see the back of his head. He slotted the nozzle into the truck’s gas tank and leaned back against the pump, waiting as the tank filled. When it finished, he returned the nozzle, slapped the gas cap on the truck closed and waited for a receipt. It was then that Jana emerged from the mini-market.

She was dressed in tight black pants and a white jacket. Her curly blonde hair bounced over her shoulders as she approached the truck. In one hand she held a can of Coke, in the other, a pack of cigarettes. She stuffed the smokes into her jacket pocket as she pounded on the truck’s hood. A grin spread across her face as Mathias startled.

He matched her smile when he turned and saw that it was her. Stuffing his receipt into his pocket, he walked toward her. Now they were both at the front of the truck, facing one another. They were only visible in profile. It was difficult to even see their mouths moving but Josie could tell by their body language and the way they each occasionally used their hands, gesturing in various directions, that they were having some sort of conversation. In the bottom corner of the screen, the seconds ticked past. Going on three minutes. Trinity had said they spoke for about five minutes before parting, but she’d gotten that information from Hallie Kent, who had evidently never seen this video.

“Hallie Kent didn’t know about this video?” asked Josie.

“I don’t know,” Cyrus said. “I’m sure she had access to it. Maybe she didn’t have time to find it before she got caught. Or maybe she saw it and decided not to slip it to Trinity Payne because it’s so damaging to Mathias.”

Noah said, “There is nothing concerning in this video. Nothing damaging to Mathias Tobin. Certainly, nothing that Dr. Feist should be worried about.”

Cyrus held up a hand. “Just wait.”

Another minute ticked past, then another. Just over five minutes had passed when something in Mathias’s posture changed. He seemed to grow larger, looming over Jana. From the sliver of his face that Josie could see, his skin was flushed. His mouth moved more rapidly. Jana took a step back but didn’t cower. She set the Coke can onto the hood of the truck and pointed in the direction of the road.

Mathias shook his head. He lifted a hand and stabbed an index finger in the air, aimed at her. If Josie had to guess, she would say he was probably shouting now. Still, it was impossible to tell what he might have been saying.

Jana put a hand on her hip and thrust her chin up at him in a universal display of “fuck you.” She waited until he finished his tirade and then she uttered two words. Josie couldn’t make them out. Maybe they were “fuck you.”

She spun on her heel and started to walk off. Mathias stomped after her, seizing her upper arm and spinning her toward him. She tried to pull away. Words were exchanged. As they fought, their bodies moved, giving a better view of their faces at the moments in the video they were pointed toward the camera. It was still an odd angle, looking down on them from above, but it was possible a skilled lip reader could glean some of what they’d said to one another.

The struggle lasted about a minute. Mathias pulled at her, trying to drag her toward the truck, gesturing wildly with his free hand. Jana dug her heels into the gasoline and oil-stained concrete, protesting, her fingers trying to peel his hand from her arm. When that didn’t work, she kicked his shin. His grip loosened and she tore her arm away, stepping out of his reach. He called out to her, but she shook her head, said something else, and then turned and ran. For a few seconds, he watched her. Then he snatched up the Coke can from the hood of his truck, got in, and sped off in the same direction Jana had gone.

A total of twelve minutes and thirty-nine seconds had elapsed.

Cyrus clicked out of the footage, returning it to a thumbnail in a bed of black screen. “As you can see, they argued. Heatedly. He put his hands on her and then he followed her. He always said he went after her to check that she was okay, but it sure doesn’t look like it in this video.”

The Chief said, “That’s not enough to convict him of a murder.”

“I know that,” said Cyrus, turning in his chair so he could make eye contact with the Chief. “You all know that. The general public doesn’t. The general public only knows that he was the last person to see her. We never released the details of what he told us. People figured it out when we went out searching for the mystery person Jana was supposed to meet. If this video got out, it would look very bad for Mathias Tobin—worse than it already did. People would look at this and convict him in their minds. Hell, around here, they did that without ever having seen this! Then they’ll have a look at the autopsy report, authored by Anya. They’ll say, how could she have seen this video and still ruled Jana’s death an accident?”

Noah said, “Did she see this video?”

“We showed it to her but we agreed with her assessment that Jana getting into an argument and a physical confrontation with her foster brother two miles from where her body was found didn’t prove she was murdered.” He pounded a fist onto the table. “We could never get from here to there, don’t you get that? But again, the public won’t care about that. The public doesn’t care about the burden of proof. They see what they want to see, and in this case, they’ll see a medical examiner who didn’t do her job, and that’s simply not true. What the hell’s gonna happen when your sister does an episode on Jana’s case?”

Josie pointed to the computer screen. “Have you ever had this video studied by a lip-reading expert?”

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