Stripped Read Online Free PDF Page B

if death were years away, not exhaling on their skin.
    “Keep the tape going,” Stride said.
    They followed the parade of people entering and leaving the casino for another two minutes. Then Amanda extended a finger, almost touching the screen.
    “There,” she said. “On the left.”
    The man emerging through the left-most door wore a faded blue baseball cap with the bill tugged down low on his face. He tilted his head down, staring at the ground as he walked. They could barely make out the dark stain of a beard obscuring the lower half of his face.
    “Tan khakis,” Stride said. “Windbreaker. I think that’s him. The son of a bitch is ducking the cameras.”
    ’Ten to one the beard’s a fake,” Amanda said.
    “We need to find him again,” Stride said as the man disappeared out of camera range. “He looked like he was turning toward the front desk.”
    Gerard fingered the joystick. Less than a minute later, he tracked the killer down at a nickel slot. His hat was askew, at a casual angle to anyone who looked at him, but strategically placed to minimize the camera’s view.
    “He knows where we have the cams,” Gerard observed unhappily.
    “Where’s that machine?” Stride asked.
    “Opposite the VIP lounge.”
    Stride nodded. “So he can see MJ leaving.”
    Gerard zoomed in, but the close-up footage didn’t offer much more for them to see. Looking at the thick beard, Stride agreed with Amanda: It was a fake. The man may also have used putty on his cheekbones and nose to doctor his appearance further.
    “We’ll want a print,” Stride told Gerard, “for whatever good it does us. And it would be great if you could have a tech review the other cameras and see if we get a better angle on this guy.”
    “Of course.”
    “Run the feed out,” Stride told him. “Let’s see what he does.”
    Gerard accelerated the footage, but the killer’s movements were so precise that it hardly mattered. He seemed frozen, with the rest of the action of the casino speeding behind him in a blur. Every minute, he played a single nickel from the twenty-dollar bill he had fed into the machine—slow enough that he could sit there for hours without exhausting his stake. He never appeared to be studying the entrance to the sheltered VIP area, but Stride recognized him instinctively as the kind of man whose eyes didn’t miss a thing. Cool. Methodical.
    Shortly before one o’clock, MJ reappeared. Gerard slowed down the tape again. MJ was obviously drunk now, and he weaved as he headed for the exit. The killer at the nickel slot stretched his arms lazily, betraying no interest, but he stood up, prepared to follow. Stride could imagine the adrenaline pumping, making the man hyperconscious. MJ was alone. The kill was close. He was ready to dog his victim’s heels.
    Then the man at the machine did something. It happened so fast that Stride wasn’t sure he had really seen it.
    “Stop, stop,” Stride insisted. “Back up. What the hell was that?”
    Neither Gerard nor Amanda had noticed anything. Gerard backed up the tape and then, on Stride’s instructions, let it go forward in slow motion, frame by frame. As MJ disappeared in the background, the killer got up, every movement now jerky and unnatural, like an old penny movie machine.
    Stretched. Pushed the chair in with his foot. Brushed past the machine as he moved to follow MJ.
    Reached back with his hand.
    “Son of a bitch,” Amanda said, seeing it.
    “Freeze it!” Stride told Gerard.
    As the killer walked away, he casually planted his thumb in the center of the slot machine’s glass window and rolled it, leaving a perfect print.
    Stride felt his stomach turn upside down, as if he had boarded a tunnel-of-love ride and found himself on the wild tracks of a roller coaster instead. He felt the tingling chill of fear on his nerve ends.
    “He must know he’s not in the system,” Amanda whispered.
    Stride stared at the frozen image on the screen. “It’s more than