All the Lucky Ones Are Dead by Gar Anthony Haywood Page B

archived?”
    â€œThey’re archived for thirty days, then recycled. But look—”
    â€œAny chance I could see the ones for this floor recorded the night Elbridge died?”
    â€œNo. No way. We already let the cops borrow one, no way I’m gonna run ’em now for you .”
    â€œThe cops borrowed one? What do you mean?”
    â€œI mean they asked Ray if they could take one down to the station for a while, and he let them. If we hadn’t gotten it back a few days later, he’d be looking for work right now, and so would I.”
    â€œHold on a minute. You’re saying Beverly Hills PD took a copy of the tapes we’re talking about off-site? For what?”
    â€œYou’d have to ask them, not me. I imagine they were just being thorough, not wanting to rule Mr. Elbridge’s death a suicide until they were absolutely certain that’s what it was.”
    Gunner was somewhat surprised. Kevin Frick hadn’t said anything about having viewed any surveillance tapes, and in fact had led the investigator to believe he wouldn’t have cared to. He and his partner had been convinced from the first that Carlton Elbridge had committed suicide, Frick said. Wouldn’t so closely monitoring who Elbridge’s visitors were the night of his death have been more appropriate behavior for a cop who smelled a homicide ?
    â€œThey only took one tape?” Gunner asked Zemic. “Not the whole series?”
    â€œYou mean—”
    â€œI mean for the entire period between the time Elbridge last entered his room on Saturday and Crumley entered it on Sunday, when you say he and Joy discovered Elbridge’s body. That couldn’t have all fit on one tape.”
    Zemic shook his head, said, “No, of course not. That would have been five, maybe six tapes at the least. If Ray had given them all that—”
    â€œBut you say he didn’t. He only gave them one.”
    â€œYes. That was plenty.”
    Another curiosity, Gunner thought. To adequately rule out the possibility that someone had entered the Digga’s room to murder him, then slipped out afterward, Frick and his partner would have wanted to examine the full series of tapes Gunner had just described to Zemic; one tape alone would have told them nothing, unless it caught the murderer entering and exiting the scene of the crime just before, and just after, the Digga died. The two cops could have taken a shot with the single tape covering that time frame, hoped it alone showed them what they were looking for, but it would have been damn shoddy police work to do so. And if there was one thing Frick hadn’t appeared to be to Gunner, it was a cop who liked to do shoddy police work.
    â€œCrumley gave them the tape without your consent?” Gunner asked.
    â€œAbsolutely. It was against all hotel policy to do so without checking with legal first. I personally would have never allowed it.”
    â€œSo how did you find out he’d done it? I don’t suppose he told you himself.”
    â€œActually, he did. But only in reply to direct questioning. I’d noticed the tape missing from the shelves in our office, and asked him if he knew where it was. He told me then he’d given it to the detectives who were investigating the Elbridge suicide. The only reason I didn’t fire him on the spot was because he thought he was doing the right thing, cooperating fully with the authorities.”
    â€œDo you recall which tape it was, exactly, that he gave them? What time period it covered?”
    â€œOf course. It was early evening that Saturday, I believe. Sixteen hundred to twenty hundred hours.”
    â€œThat would be four p.m. to eight p.m.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBut Elbridge reportedly died around midnight. You’re saying they took a tape that ended a full four hours before that?”
    â€œI’m simply answering the question you posed to me, Mr. Gunner. The tape they