A Killer Like Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

court, still stood empty. The DA had taken his people to a building on Poydras Street, not far from the Superdome. There were cameras outside the old DA’s building, but they hadn’t worked since the storm.
    Three small businesses—a corner store, a hair salon, and a tire shop—provided the only commerce in the neighborhood, and by the look of things, all three were on life support. Only the tire shop had a security camera. Speedy’s Tires stood on the corner of South Rendon and Gravier, in the block adjacent to where the woman’s body had been found.
    “I only got two tapes,” the owner told Murphy. “I rotate them so they last longer.”
    The two men stood just inside the work bay.
    “Which tape did you have in last night?” Murphy asked.
    “It’s still in the machine,” the man said. He was tall, six three, about fifty years old, with big, powerful shoulders. He looked prison hard.
    Murphy glanced at the heat waves rising off the street. A breeze would be nice, he thought. “Can I take a look at it?” Murphy said. His feet hurt. He was sweating bullets. It was too damn hot to be pounding the pavement in a suit and tie.
    “Sure,” the big man said. Then he turned around and walked toward his office at the back of the shop.
    Murphy fell in behind him.
    The office was small and cluttered. A pile of tire catalogs, stacks of receipt books, a gray metal desk, a file cabinet, a bookcase—all jammed into an eight-foot-by-eight-foot square. An old videotape recorder and a thirteen-inch black-and-white television sat on a shelf over the desk.
    “I got broke into a little over a year ago,” the tire man said. “Little bastards just kicked open the front door and came right on in.”
    “What’d they get?” Murphy asked.
    “Tires and rims, and my cash box. I don’t keep cash around here no more, and I put a security camera on the corner of the building to watch the front door.” The shop owner punched a button on the video recorder and grabbed the VHS tape when it popped out.
    “How long does a tape last?”
    “About twelve hours. The camera only takes a picture every few seconds. They call it time . . . time something. Time delay, I think.”
    “Time-lapse,” Murphy said.
    A label stuck on the edge of the tape had the words
Speedy’s Tire—Tape One
handwritten across it.
    “Are you Speedy?” Murphy asked.
    The man nodded. “My daddy gave me that name.”
    Speedy held the tape out to Murphy. “You can take it with you. Just bring it back when you’re finished.”
    Murphy nodded. “I don’t even think we have a VCR at the office that works. You mind if I watch a little of it here?”
    “Be my guest,” Speedy said. He shoved the tape back into the machine and mashed a flattened thumb against the power button on the TV. Then he hit the rewind button on the VCR.
    “I’m sorry about the time,” Speedy said as soon as the tape started playing.
    At the bottom of the TV screen the date and time flashed “01-01-01/12:00 AM .”
    “The power keeps going out and I can’t ever remember how to reset it.”
    “It’s not a problem,” Murphy said. “What time did you start recording last night?”
    “About six o’clock.”
    According to the coroner’s best guess, the woman had probably been killed between 9:00 PM and 1:00 AM . That meant Murphy didn’t need to watch the first three hours or the last five. Just that four-hour stretch in the middle. He had a VCR at home that would show the elapsed time, as long as he started the tape at the beginning and reset the counter.
    But what if the killer had cruised the neighborhood earlier in the evening to get a feel for it? Or drove around afterward to stay close to the victim? Murphy realized he was going to have to watch the whole tape. He punched the eject button. “I better take it home. This is going to take a while.”
    “I’m sorry about that, Detective. You go on and keep that tape as long as you want. I’ll use the other one until you get