Page 128 of Capuleto
"I'm glad. In case you're wondering how I knew where to find you, I stopped by your house and told your maid I needed to know your whereabouts."
"And she told you?" I asked, surprised.
"On the contrary. That woman is tougher than Sergeant Hartman; it’s lucky Piero was there because I doubt she would have opened her mouth."
"Don’t doubt it, Ana María is too loyal to do anything against me."
"You asked me to send you the graphic material of Jonás Sánchez as soon as I had it. But you know me, I prefer to deliver it in person."
Segarra handed me a folder that I didn't pay much attention to, thinking it was some work he was taking home.
I opened it when it was right in front of me. Inside, there were some photos. Judging by the quality and the angle, they seemed to be taken from a security camera. Not from Korpe, but from the company located in front of the storage area. Segarra reached into his jacket pocket and handed me a pen drive.
"Here’s the full recording. It doesn’t show much more than in the images. These are the ones that were enlarged to check if it was your wife."
I flipped through the photos and tried to focus on the details. It showed a blonde woman with her back to the camera, with a low bun, so the hair length wasn't clear. She was slim, dressed in an impeccable business suit, and anyone could have determined it was Nikita Koroleva; she fit the profile. However, ... I don't know, my intuition told me it wasn't my wife. Or maybe it was my shitty subconscious trying to exonerate her. My sharpness regarding the people around me wasn't at its best right now.
"What do you think? Is it your wife?" the cop asked.
"Don’t you have anything better than this?" He shook his head.
"You can’t see her face in any of them. In the video, her profile is shadowed, but she’s wearing very large sunglasses, and the camera angle doesn’t allow for a clear view of her face. My only hope is that you can recognize her by the clothes or her gestures. But she does go in and out of the warehouse, and I doubt there are many women like that who can enter and leave Korpe as if they own the place. Also, the warehouse door is open."
I stroked my beard. Something didn’t quite convince me.
"I don’t know... It's true it could be Nikita, but something tells me it's not."
"It's logical that you want to defend your wife."
"Believe me, it's not that." I pointed at the image. "I’ve never seen these clothes in her wardrobe, nor those shoes. I’d swear she doesn’t have any outfit like this; she likes to attract attention, and the woman in the photo dressed too conservatively."
“Maybe it’s her ‘I’m going to do shady business’ suit,” he joked, dropping the paper fan he had crafted. “Watch the video, maybe you’ll find more answers there than in these photos. People are looking for a culprit, and a reasonable doubt would be enough for them to go after your wife.”
“What does your commissioner say?” I questioned.
“He wants someone’s head; nobody likes it when a teenager commits suicide because someone else is getting rich. However, we can’t arrest Nikita yet, not until we have something conclusive. At most, we can call her in for questioning, nothing more.”
“So, there’s nothing against her,” I asserted.
“While it’s true that everything points in her direction... no, we don’t have anything more. The gaming app has been ‘neutralized’ so no one can use it, but that doesn’t stop those crazy teenagers from playing that crap elsewhere. The Cybercrime unit is trying to pull at the few threads available on the Dark Web, but every time they think they have something, the thread disappears. They’ve done work worthy of an Oscar for Hackers.”
“And the guy with her? Do we know who he is?” Segarra shook his head again.
“He could be anyone; the facial recognition software didn’t identify him as anyone we have on record. The hooded jacket and sunglasses don’t help. Judging by his style, the way he moves in the video, and the nervousness in his gestures, he seems like a university student. In the images, you can only see the blonde woman handing him a couple of large boxes with the Korpe logo and the Mentium symbol.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. The boxes are just packaging; they could have contained something else.”
“Yeah, like polystyrene balls to safeguard your lovesick husband’s heart.”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“Don’t be a fool. You know my boss is going to want to get to the bottom of this.”
“Wanting to and being able to are two different things. We’ll see what I can find out. Thanks for coming here to bring me this.” He stood up.
“No problem, it’s always a pleasure. You know this is a copy and its confidential material. I’m risking my job, so now that you’ve brought up the raise and my gray hairs...” He smiled at me.
“We’ll see what I can do. You’d better leave; I’m expecting someone and we both know it’s better if fewer people see us together.”