Dollar Runaways

Chapter 25: Cracks in the Wall

AGENT KLINE FINALLY sat down at a clear desk. The last three days had been very successful for his division, and he had no doubt they were going to finally get a conviction on a major case! Now that he finally had finished his last report, he looked at the clock and saw it was only three. 'I should be able to finally look at those videos from the Wal-Mart's...' he thought to himself. He double checked the address of the hotel and chose the Wal-Mart closest to first. The agent had sent over the videos of five that were closest to the hotel, and outwards towards Dallas.

He clicked through the video and saw they had done as he requested, just giving him the morning tapes. He was pretty sure Megan had made it to Dallas that night, so she wouldn't have dawdled long. Bob wasn't even so sure why he was looking at these... But he had a feeling that it was going to give him a lead. He decided to focus on the two entrance cameras first. He put the video on at ten times normal speed and focused his eyes for watching.

"There!" He found himself saying aloud in glee!

He had spotted them entering. He reversed it down to see if he could see any detail as they came up to the camera. She had parked out of view of the camera though, and it was impossible to tell anything more than it was Megan and her son!

He quickly pulled up a map of that store off of a PDF that had been left on the disc for him. He quickly printed it, and mapped out the camera views, so he could map out their trip through the store.

Once done, he went to the store view from the side they had entered. He drew a line denoting their path and found the next camera view. Kline watched her pickup some hair dye and other hair items. 'Well, no surprise there... I kind of figured she had to do something like that since we haven't found her yet. I wish I could tell what color she bought.' He paused the video and tried zooming in but there was no easy way to tell. He could probably print off a sheet and get an agent to look at the aisle for him. If they hadn't restocked differently, they could possibly figure it out... He jotted a note down and then followed her out of view of that camera too.

'Definitely in a hurry...' he thought to himself. He found himself a bit confused as they went to the girl's department and started shopping there. 'That is them...right?' he asked himself. A couple of the looks that Tony gave his mom though made him think it had to be... 'They were probably that desperate...' he thought to himself. They spent a really long time in the section and seemed, at least to him, to get an inordinate amount of clothes before they moved out of frame. He jotted down some notes and moved cameras until they stopped next in the shoes.

He almost laughed aloud as Tony tried on shoes that came complete with lights. Even with the poor angle and video distance he could tell they were exceptionally pink too. It was so absurd that he couldn't help but laugh a little. He watched Megan find some new shoes for herself too before they hustled back out of view. He chased them through camera views until he saw them stop at the girl's underwear section. The walk to the junior's section was next he noticed, and wondered if Megan was doing her own disguise differently too. 'She's not even five feet tall, and she looks pretty young in the face too... We may be going all wrong looking for someone her real age...'

The pair of them walked to, of all places, the baby section and he noticed Tony putting up the first real argument with his mother. She seemed to say just a couple words though and he stopped. They spent a good ten minutes with her looking at car seats, eventually settling on a pink one that looked like a regular car seat - not even a booster style seat. He went back to his notes and saw that while Tony turned eleven next week, but his height was still listed at 4'1". He looked back at the date of the doctor's information and saw that his last appointment was only a month or so before they left and assumed that he hadn't grown more.