Page 103 of Mafia Angel

We don’t know if there’s even one. But I figure if she acts like she already knows something, he’ll go along.

“One was on the dashboard just above the center of the display. The other was attached next to the steering wheel. Why?”

“You know how anal I get.”

She’s watching me as she speaks. She smirks at her last comment. I lift my left palm and scratch it with my right. She knows what an itchy palm means. She grins.

“I wonder what kind of camera was on the dashboard.”

“From the brand on the holder, it was a higher end one. For some kid who worked in a hardware store, his whip was tricked out. There’s no way he wasn’t still dealing. You don’t get something that nice from working minimum wage at a hardware store. I hate to say it, Sinead, but your client had him doing a lot more than stocking paint.”

I take the notepad and scribble a message before pushing it back to her.

“Was all the nice stuff aftermarket?”

There’s a pause, then the guy hedges his bets.

“Well, yeah. But that stuff couldn’t be cheap.”

I scribble another note.

“But the car was a late model, right?”

Another pause.

“No. The car was ten years old.”

“Even for an older car, it sounds like the guy took good care of it. Aftermarket parts, good quality dashcam and phone holders, high end camera, and I bet a good stereo system.”

“Yeah. Nicer than what I drive.”

She shoots me a look. The guy didn’t say there was no camera.

“Was it damaged at all?”

“No. Everything in it was fine. The car probably shook from the blast, but it was far enough away that the debris only dented it in a couple places and scratched the paint in several.”

“How far was it? I don’t remember what the report said off the top of my head.”

“About eight meters.”

“So that’s what, about twenty-six feet?”

“Yeah. Twenty-six and some change.”

“And it was undamaged? I thought blast perimeters were like four hundred feet?”

“Not everything within a perimeter gets damaged. That’s a safety specification for a particular blast. The perimeters vary. This wasn’t a large explosion. It was the resulting fire that did most of the damage. The car got lucky, I guess.”

Once again, I jot a note. She needs to press for the camera fast before he gets suspicious.

“I wish I could have seen it.”

“You haven’t?”

“Not yet. I need to get it from evidence.”

Sinead stares at me and shrugs.

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