Vance spun away from me, his expression snapping instantly back into a mask of righteous professional duty. He stepped toward the sliding doors to meet Miller before the officer could speak to anyone else.
I didn't follow Vance. Instead, I turned toward register four. Above the register, mounted to the steel ceiling joist, was a fixed dome camera labeled Cam-04, angled directly down at the cash lane and the customer service counter. But fifty feet back, tucked beneath the drywall soffit above the paint mixing station, was Cam-09—the wide-angle unit we had installed six months ago to catch contractor returns.
Cam-09 had an unobstructed line of sight straight down the center aisle, directly into the open cubicle of the contractor desk where Geller had left his paperwork.
I walked behind the customer service desk, pulled the store’s ring of brass keys from my belt, and unlocked the low wooden cabinet that housed the local monitor for the front-end feed. My fingers were shaking slightly, not from fear of Marcus Vance, but from the realization of what would happen if I did not secure the file before Vance remembered who held the master password.
The hard drive was humming inside its metal cage. On the small color screen, the live view showed Vance gesturing aggressively to Deputy Miller by the carts, his hands shaping an invisible story in the air.
I tapped the function key, entered my inventory supervisor pin, and pulled up the playback log for 5:35 PM. The footage buffered for two agonizing seconds, then snapped into grain-free digital clarity.
At 5:38 PM, Walter Geller laid his brown wallet on the corner of the invoice desk and walked three paces left to pull a sample of cedar siding from the rack.
Arthur Bell was not in the frame. Arthur was across the main aisle, his back turned, looking at a display of galvanized nails.
At 5:39 PM, a figure in a gray collared shirt and a gold name badge walked up behind the contractor desk, picked up a stack of return slips, and used the paper to slide Walter Geller’s wallet off the laminate counter directly into his own left palm.
Marcus Vance had taken the wallet himself.
The surveillance playback loop ran thirty seconds backward, resetting the frame to 5:37 PM. On the low-resolution color monitor inside the customer service cubicle, the timestamp ticked upward in pale green digits across the top edge of the screen: 17:37:42.
I did not touch the mouse again. My hand rested flat against the laminate trim of the cabinet door, my shoulder pressed against the metal casing of the register terminal. If Marcus Vance turned his head toward the service island, he would see me crouched over the under-counter shelf.
Out across the floor, the automatic entrance doors hissed open and shut. Deputy Miller walked past the rows of motorized lawnmowers, his radio chirping with the crackle of dispatch chatter. Vance met him eight feet inside the vestibule, arms outspread, his jaw working as he pointed a manicured hand toward lane four. Arthur Bell had not shifted an inch. The old soldier stood with his back rigid against the rubberized belt of the checkout carousel, the torn hem of his field jacket dangling open, his weathered hands hanging clear and empty at his sides.
Walter Geller stood two paces behind Arthur, holding his brown leather wallet by the corner, his thumb resting against the brass closure. Walter was a framing contractor who had built half the subdivision out past Mill Creek; he was not a man who enjoyed spectacles, but five hundred dollars in cash was half a payroll check, and his mouth was set in a tight, unyielding line.
I focused on the small screen beneath the counter.
At 5:38:10 PM, Geller entered the frame from the top left corner. He laid his clipboard down on the contractor desk, drew his billfold from his back pocket to pull out a tax-exempt card, and set the wallet flat on the dark green laminate. A lumber loader called to him from the open bay door, pointing toward a stack of treated posts. Geller took three steps away, turning his back entirely.
Arthur Bell appeared on the perimeter of the wide lens at 5:38:35 PM. He carried a plastic shopping basket containing two boxes of deck screws and an eight-ounce tub of lithium grease. He walked past aisle five, paused by the endcap display of galvanized nails, picked up a blister pack of three-inch spikes, read the back label, and put it back on the hook. Arthur never approached the contractor desk. He was twenty-five feet away, separated from Geller by two stacks of oriented strand board.
At 5:39:02 PM, Marcus Vance stepped into the aisle from behind the drywall partitions.