Keep Them Close(59)
49
Louise
—Investigation, Day 5—
The security office for 432 East Erie is tucked behind a frosted-glass door just off the elevator to the parking garage, a windowless room that smells faintly of microwave popcorn. The air is stuffy, with little help from the oscillating fan buzzing in the corner.
Louise stands behind the security supervisor, a man named Hans, a retired cop from Evanston. “Sorry if the lawyers made you work for this,” he says. “The residents here? They like their privacy. The building needs to make a show of playing tough before they turn over surveillance vids. So it’s April first, right?”
“Right,” says Louise. “I need to know who was in and out of that condo unit on April first. And I need to know what happened to Finley’s car. All I know about his car is that it wasn’t in its parking space when we searched the condo yesterday.”
“Well, that last part’s easy enough, the car. Let’s start there. I can tell you the last time the husband’s car was in the underground lot.” Hans starts typing.
“You have cameras down there in the underground lot?”
“No. No cameras.”
“Just a key card entry and exit?”
“Not even that. We have a plate reader,” says Hans. “It recognizes the license plate, the gate opens. But we keep records. So…Finley Brice…Fin—here we go. Is this the license plate you have for him?”
Hans reads the plate number. Louise confirms it.
Hans shows her the screen. “The last time his car left the parking garage was 10:37 p.m. on the night of April first.”
Louise draws back. “He was still alive close to eleven that night?”
“Beats me,” says Hans.
“Well…this shows him driving out of the garage at 10:37.”
“It shows his car driving out of the garage,” says Hans. “It registers the license plate. It doesn’t show who was driving.”
* * *
“So let’s see who visited Finley Brice that day,” says Louise. “I don’t know much for certain. Finley and his wife had split. He was staying here. The wife says she visited him in the afternoon and left the condo around three p.m. That’s the latest I have anyone coming to the condo.”
“Gotcha.”
“Hey, Hans, while I have you. The rear entrance? The service entrance on Ontario? Am I correct that there are no cameras there?”
“Correct. No record of entry or exit, either. You need a key to open the code box. Once opened, you punch in the code. That pops the service door. No key card. No records.”
“So if someone came through the back service entrance, there would be no record of it?”
“No record at all. Key cards are only for the residential elevator.”
“So how does the key card system work?”
“Pretty simple,” says Hans. “You need your card to access the residential elevator going up. Every family gets their unique cards. The Brices…” He checks his computer screen. “The Brices were issued three cards. I take it there are three family members?”
“Husband, wife, and son. But the son’s off at college.”
“Well, here we go, Detective.”
“Call me Lou.”
“Well, Lou, someone with a Brice card accessed the residential elevators twice that day, April first. Once about a quarter past two, the other about a quarter to seven that evening.”
Louise leans forward to take a look at the screen:
017-2??14:16:21??Granted??11
017-3??18:44:14??Granted??11
“The number ‘017’ is the Brices’ number. Cards 2 and 3 were used.”
“Were the numbers assigned to particular people?” asks Louise.
“No. We just gave them three cards. You said the wife claimed to have left the condo at three? So she must be the one who came in at 2:16 p.m. She must have card 2.”
“So card 3 could be Finley, the guy staying there?”
“Sure. But we don’t have to guess. We can check the lobby video.”
“Show me the 2:16 p.m. arrival first, Hans.”
On the screen in front of them, security footage plays in grainy black-and-white, time-stamped in the lower right-hand corner. Hans plays the video at double speed to move it along. The building lobby is an attempt at something, Louise isn’t sure what—sharp angles and steel and glass with a black marble floor and loud, modern artwork on the walls.
“There’s Mrs. Brice, I think. Only met her once or twice.”
“That’s her,” says Louise. Allison Brice enters the lobby in a wool coat, purse over her shoulder, giving a polite wave to the security desk before slapping her card for elevator access.
“Do you record them by key card coming back down?”
“No. Only going up. But we’ll have video of her in the lobby. She left around three?”
Louise chuckles. “That’s what she claimed.”
Hans moves the tape at double speed again. Right around three, he stops it. Allison Brice leaves the elevator and walks, eyes down, all business, to the exit.
“She spent about forty minutes up there,” says Hans.