Blood Sport by A.J. Carella

Why hadn’t he thought of that? He clapped his hand on the deputy’s shoulder. “Good point. If he was caught there he may well have been caught somewhere else, somewhere where we can see the license plate.” He thought for a moment. “He hasn’t been out of the hospital long and I know that Kat has only been into town a couple of times since he has.” Good news for us for a change, Finn thought. “I’ll give Jamie McKay a call and find out if she can help us narrow down our search window. Then we can contact anyone in town with CCTV and see if they’ve caught anything.”
    Feeling energized , he went to his office and called Jamie. As he suspected, Kat had only been into town twice since Daniel had come out of the hospital, as far as Jamie was aware. One of those visits was just yesterday when she’d come to collect the property records. “We’ll start with her visit yesterday as it was the nearest in time to the actual attack. There were two places she visited yesterday, apart from here: the council offices and the coffee shop,” he instructed the deputy. “You go to the council offices and get their footage and I’ll go and grab the coffee shop’s. Get back here as quickly as you can.”
    “Will they be open now?” The deputy checked his watch “It’s only five a.m.”
    Finn realized with a start that he had completely lost track of time. “No , they won’t. You’re right. The diner opens at six, though, so I’ll head over there as soon as it opens. We’ll have to wait until a bit later for the other footage.”
    He was waiting at the glass doors of the diner when it opened promptly at six. He didn’t want to get his hopes up; he wasn’t even sure they had CCTV.
    “Hey , Jen, you got a minute?” Jen had been behind the counter here for as long as he could remember and used to serve him milkshakes when he was a kid. A large, kindly gray-haired lady, you didn’t talk to her if you were in a hurry as she was very difficult to stop once she got started.
    “For you , honey, always.”
    “Do you have CCTV here?” He looked around and saw a camera in the corner of the room and pointed at it. “Is that a real camera or a dummy?”
    “It’s real . We got it after that robbery a couple of summers back.” She put a cup in front of him and started to pour him a coffee from a glass jug that seemed permanently attached to her hand. “Do you remember that summer? That would have been when...”
    He held up his hand. “Sorry , Jen, I really can’t talk right now. I need to get a copy of your footage from yesterday and it’s really urgent.”
    She didn’t seem in the slightest offended. “Sure, come through the back and I’ll get it for you.”
    Leaving her with promises that he would return soon to catch up, he took the footage and hurried back to the station. The deputy was already there and watching the footage he had gotten from the council offices.
    “Anything?” Finn asked , coming to stand behind him.
    “Not so far.”
    They both watched silently as the images played across the screen until they got to the point where Kat and Daniel arrived. Despite going over it slowly, it was clear that the camera hadn’t caught anything.
    “Fingers crossed we have more luck with this one.” Finn handed the disk in his hand to the deputy and watched as he replaced the one currently in the machine and pressed play. Immediately, the image came on screen Finn’s heart fell. The camera covered the interior of the coffee shop, as he’d expected, but you could only see a small section of the road outside the diner. He had hoped that it would be at a better angle. Damn!
    He watched as Kat appeared on the screen and collided with a man he didn’t recognize who was just coming out of the bathroom. He didn’t seem pleased and he didn’t need to be able to lip read to see that he said something angrily to her before leaving.
    “Looks like he’s getting into a red car, or truck ,” the deputy said,