A Killer Like Me Read Online Free PDF

done.”
    Even on fast-forward, watching the entire tape was going to take at least three hours.
    Great, Murphy thought. Just great.
    At the recently refurbished criminal district court building, the images from the surveillance cameras fed into a digital recorder. Unlike Speedy’s, the time stamp on the sheriff’s video recorder was set properly.
    At 4:00 PM , Murphy sat down at a desk in the third-floor security office and started watching video.
    There were four cameras on the outside of the building, but only two of them had views of the street. One camera was aimed at the prisoner gate at the back of the building and another monitored the main door facing Tulane Avenue. One camera shot images of Tulane and Broad, where there were too many cars to count. The last camera had a view of South White Street, which ran along the west side of the courthouse.
    Murphy watched the recording from the camera facing South White Street at four times bodytext speed, but even then it took until after 7:00 PM to get through it. By the time he finished, the courthouse was closed and a deputy had to let him out through the staff door.
    Twenty-eight cars had driven down South White Street between 3:00 PM yesterday and three o’clock this morning. Before Katrina there would have been three or four times that number. The camera was close enough so Murphy could read the license-plate numbers on twenty-six of the cars. One didn’t have a tag, and one went by so fast he couldn’t read the numbers.
    On the way home Murphy stopped at the Star & Crescent and had two beers. Then he went home to watch the videotape from Speedy’s tire shop.

C HAPTER F IVE
    Thursday, July 26, 9:30 AM
    “How was court?” Murphy said as he stepped into the squad room.
    Gaudet swiveled his head away from his computer keyboard. “A waste of time.”
    Murphy dropped into the chair behind the desk he shared with a detective on another shift. “They didn’t call you to the stand?”
    “I sat there all day and they didn’t even finish picking the jury.”
    “Couldn’t the assistant DA put you on standby?”
    Gaudet shrugged. “He’s some new tight-ass prick, said he needed me there to help with jury selection.”
    Murphy looked at the clock on the wall. “What time do you have to be back?”
    “He said he wanted me there by nine.”
    “So why are you still here?”
    “I told him I had to be at the firing range until noon.”
    “We’re not going to the range today,” Murphy said. “I can’t even remember the last time we shot.”
    “The DA don’t know that.”
    “Good point.” Murphy spun around and started thumbing through the stack of pink message slips on the desk.
    “How did it go with the surveillance cameras?” Gaudet asked.
    Murphy didn’t see any messages he felt like returning. He threw the entire pile in the wastebasket next to his desk. He looked at Gaudet. “I got a bunch of license-plate numbers from one of the courthouse cameras. The other cameras were pretty much a bust. I also got a few tags off of a security camera at a tire shop.”
    “Speedy’s?”
    “Yeah,” Murphy said. “You know him?”
    Gaudet nodded. “I bought some retreads from him once for my nephew’s car. He did some time back in the day, but he’s straight now.”
    “I got that impression.”
    “So what’s next?”
    “Well, while you were wasting time in court—”
    “Hey, brother, I’m sorry about that. You know I would have been there if I could. I love walking around in the hot sun for hours on end, sweating my balls off.”
    “You probably didn’t even have court. I didn’t get a subpoena.”
    “It’s an old case,” Gaudet said. “From back when you were off the job, drinking heavily and trysting with barmaids.”
    “Did you say
trysting
?”
    “Damn right, I did. What of it?”
    “Do you even know what a tryst is?”
    “I used the word correctly, didn’t I,” Gaudet said, his voice loaded with feigned indignation. “Just because