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Co
The guard shrugged. “Thirty, thirty-five. Medium height. Dark blue suit like they all wear. Actually he was more hip than most of them. He had this tie with triangles on it. Oh—and a scar on his hand, like a burn or something.”
“Which hand?”
“The left hand. I noticed it when he was closing the briefcase.”
“Could you see inside the briefcase?”
“No.”
“But he was closing it when you came in the room?”
“Yes.”
“Was it your impression he took something from this room?”
“I really couldn’t say, sir.”
Phillips’s evasiveness began to a
Co
The guard went bland: “I really don’t know, sir.”
Co
“Yes, we do.”
“Could you show me how you do that?”
“Sure thing.” The guard got up from the desk and opened a door at the far end of the room. We followed him into a second small room, almost a closet, stacked floor to ceiling with small metal boxes, each with stenciled notations in Japanese kanji script, and numbers in English. Each with a glowing red light, and an LED counter, with numbers ru
Phillips said, “These are our recorders. They lay down signals from all the cameras in the building. They’re eight-millimeter, high-definition video.” He held up a small cassette, like an audio cassette. “Each one of these records eight hours. We change over at nine p.m., so that’s the first thing I do when I come on duty. I pop out the old ones, and switch over to the fresh ones.”
“And did you change cassettes tonight, at nine o’clock?”
“Yes, sir. Just like always.”
“And what do you do with the tapes you remove?”
“Keep ‘em in the trays down here,” he said, bending to show us several long, thin drawers. “We keep everything off the cameras for seventy-two hours. That’s three days. So we keep nine sets of tapes all together. And we just rotate each set through, once every three days. Get me?”
Co
“Right, right.”
Co
Phillips pointed to the corner. “Over there.”
“Thank you.”
Co
“Right. Each set is numbered with letters, from A to I. Now when I come in at nine, I eject the tapes and see whatever letter is already in there, and put in the next one. Like tonight, I took out set C, so I put in set D, which is what’s recording now.”
“I see,” Co
“Right.” He pulled open a drawer. “This one here.”
Co
“I think I understand now,” Co
“Exactly.”
“So each set gets used once every three days.”
“Right.”
“And how long has the security office been using this system?”
“The building’s new, but we’ve been going, oh, maybe two months now.”
“I must say it’s a very well-organized system,” Co
“Sure.”
“First of all, these counters here—“ Co
“Yes, that’s right. I put the tapes in one right after another. It takes a few seconds between tapes.”
“I see. These all show almost two hours. But I notice that one recorder down here shows an elapsed time of only thirty minutes. Does that mean it’s broken?”
“Huh,” Phillips said, frowning. “I guess maybe it is. ‘Cause I changed the tapes all one after another, like I said. But these recorders are the latest technology. Sometimes there are glitches. Or we had some power problems. Could be that.”
“Yes. Quite possibly,” Co
“Yes, of course.” Phillips read the number off the recorder, and went out to the main room with the monitor screens. “It’s camera four-six slash six,” he said. “This view here.” He tapped the screen.
It was an atrium camera, and it showed an overall view of the forty-sixth floor.
“But you see,” Phillips said, “the beauty of the system is, even if one recorder screws up, there are still other cameras on that floor, and the video recorders on the others seem to be working okay.”
“Yes, they do,” Co
“You didn’t hear it from me,” Phillips said. “But you know how they like efficiency. The word is, they are going to kaizen the office workers.”
“So basically these cameras have been installed to observe workers during the day, and help them improve their efficiency?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Well, I think that’s it,” Co
Phillips shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
“Have you ever been out with him, socialized with him?”
“I have, but not much. He’s an odd guy.”
“Ever been to his apartment?”
“No. He’s kind of secretive. I think he lives with his mother or something. We usually go to this bar, the Palomino, over by the airport. He likes it there.”
Co
“Out in the lobby, and around to your right, by the restrooms. But you’re welcome to use the phone here.”
Co
“No problem.”
I gave the guard my card. “If you think of anything later that could help us, Mr. Phillips, don’t hesitate to call me.” And I left.
6
Co
“What are you doing?”
“We have two separate questions to answer tonight. One is how the girl came to be killed on an office floor. But we also need to find out who placed the original call, notifying us of the murder.”
“And you think the call might have been placed from this phone?”
“Possibly.”
He closed his notebook, and glanced at his watch. “It’s late. We better get going.”
“I think we’re making a big mistake here.”
“Why is that?” Co
“I don’t know if we should leave the tapes in that security room. What if somebody switches them while we’re gone?”
“They’ve already been switched,” Co
“How do you know?”
“I gave up a perfectly good pen to find out,” he said. “Now come on.” He started walking toward the stairs leading down to the garage. I followed him.