Detective Miles looked through the tapes one more time. He rubbed the bridge of his nose as he reviewed the tapes one more time. There were two things clear when he viewed the tapes. First is that the garage that was next to the apartment complex was not well lit at night. There were many shadows that could hide a person from sight. Second is that not all of the tapes were in the garage and some of the tapes looked at the complex itself. And since the detectives took all of the tapes, it was a struggle to figure out which ones were relevant to the investigation and which were not. And the detectives had to review each and every single tape.
"Anything yet?" Detective Lukasky said as he approached Miles from behind. He had two mugs of coffee in his hands and he placed one of them down next to Miles before sitting in his own chair near his desk.
"Nothing yet," Miles replied as he picked up his mug of coffee and sipped it. "I gotta say, it's a bit of a pain going through all these tapes."
"Yeah, I know," Lukasky responded, "but if we're gonna find who did this, we'll need to dig through all of these tapes."
"You think it might be some sort of gang that did this or something?"
"Possibly, but Alice Decrux wasn't known to be a gangster. A swindler perhaps and an expert chemist, but not someone who'd go into organized crime."
Miles nodded as he noted that Megan's car was on screen again. He paused the tape as he made a few notes on his notepad before playing it. He sighed as he watched the video. Megan's car was covered in shadows and it'd be easy for anyone to get to her car without being spotted. He was about to press the fast-forward button when something attracted his attention. He could see movement in the shadows as someone, or something, was moving around Megan's car. "Do you see that?" Miles asked as he pointed to the screen. Lukasky nodded as his attention was on the screen. Miles allowed the video to play as the two detectives watched the video. The shadow moved around Megan's car, going towards the driver's side which was hidden from the camera. The two detectives could see the shadow go under the driver's side door, disappearing for a moment before reappearing. The shadow then fled from the car, getting out of the camera view as quickly as possible.
"Well, we know when Megan's car was trapped," Miles said, "But we still don't who did it."
"Rewind that last part," Lukasky said, "And play it slowly." Miles rewound the tape to the point where they first saw the shadow, and then pressed play. He then used the slow-motion feature to play the part frame by frame. Near the end, Lukasky said, "There, pause it!" Miles pressed pause as Lukasky studied the screen for a bit before pointing at the screen. "I think we have our clue," Lukasky said as he pointed at the screen. Miles squinted and looked closely at where Lukasky was pointing at. He could see something coming from the shadow, and it looked like a striped racoon's tail.
Miles sat back and whistled as he said, "Sharp eye, partner." He took a moment to think, "So, we think it might be a raccoon that did this, but how many raccoons live in this town?"
"Well, we can make an assumption," Lukasky replied, "and say that it might be someone related to Alice Decrux?"
"Like one of the men that Alice duped? Or maybe a child who wanted Alice's fortune as an inheritance?" Miles said thoughtfully.
"Either way," Lukasky said in turn, "it's a start. Find out who related to Alice is still in town, and whittle our suspect list from there."
"Yeah," Miles said thoughtfully, "and we'll start with the children. Of all of Alice's children, Megan was the only one who retained the Decrux name. So, we'll have to connect the children with their fathers, and find out who's still in town that could have done this."
"Let's start with the court records," Lukasky said as he went to his desk, "Find out who the adult children are and then find where they're at right now."
"And we'll probably want to start with the court cases twenty to thirty years ago," Miles said as he turned to his own computer. "No doubt that the child's grown by now."
The two detectives went to work trying to form a suspect list from the old court cases of Alice Decrux.