North American Vampire Council & Past Calling (Hypernaturals 12 & 13)

Street Cameras

Doorbell camera's and security cameras are available fairly inexpensively to homeowners these days. Many brands and some competition to help drive prices of basic setups down. Nothing like the gate camera setup at my house, which is high-end thanks to Helen, but all of the easily available hardware is pretty good. Easy to install. Viewable from your personal phone.

We surveyed the street and called Olivia with names and addresses wherever we saw either a front-facing security camera or more likely a doorbell camera mounted on the front of a house with a street view. A doorbell camera mounted beside a door that had no street view was skipped for obvious reasons. If it has a view of bushes or the house next door, not interesting. We are not looking for delivery people or door-to-door cookie salespeople dressed up as Girl Scouts.

We gathered back in Ken's front yard about an hour later.

"This PI stuff is both interesting and shitty." Vera commented.

"Why shitty?" I asked.

"Some of these people are assholes!" Vera exclaimed.

"No shit!" Jessica agreed.

Angel, Denise, Morgan, and I shared a private moment on that idea. We are all four aware.

"Not giving up your day job?" I teased Jessica.

"Doctor and mother? Hell no." Jessica said with conviction. "Patients can be assholes, and every time Alexander comes to the clinic for some pheromone harvesting and blood donating, I have to duck out and hide if I don't want to deal with more of his bullshit, but still way better than this." Jessica pointed up the way she and Morgan went on the street. "All that guy in that one house could do is look at my tits! I'm not even wearing revealing clothes!"

"That's all any of us do." Vera told her. "I mean: come on. You are not Cherlynn or anything, but Xena Warrior Princess only wishes she had your chest puppies. Those are some damn fine and very noticeable girls, even when you are not naked. Naked? That dude would have fainted dead away."

"Oh, ha." Jessica gave Vera a withering look.

"I find you very proportional for being nearly two meters tall." Morgan told her wife.

"You like that shape lady. See Janie for details." Angel told Morgan.

"I just might." Morgan agreed. "A little off-topic, however: Anyone get anything of use?"

"I have a bunch of street surveillance footage, thanks to Olivia." Denise said, with a wave of her phone to show how she got the footage.

Morgan's face reflected some inner conflict. "I was thinking about asking her for help." Morgan said, and the conflict is easy to understand. Olivia has a crush on Morgan. Morgan does not like to take any advantage of it or Olivia. Morgan tossed her head back the way she and Jessica and the man in the house who is probably laying stunned in his foyer are. "I have documented some camera's up the street that way that might have something. Good street views. I was not looking forward to trying to get hack into them. However, these various private cameras are the fastest route to knowing what happened on this street at the time Cherlynn and Danielle went missing."

"I have a few from the other way." Angel added, holding up a list.

We called Olivia. Fed her the new addresses, names, and types of devices. Olivia called in some more help, and soon we had all sorts of footage landing in Denise's inbox.

"Thanks, Denise." Morgan was grateful that the request for help came from her.

"No problem." Denise said.

I waited for some flirty byplay, but none came. I inserted some into the gap. "Next shower, you get all the love." I told Denise.

"Not why I did it." Denise was offended by the idea. My sense of humor not working out.