I paused it.
In the garage, nobody said anything at all.
The face under the hood was in three-quarter view, perfectly lit by the camera's own infrared, sharp enough that you could see the fine lines at the corners of the eyes and the two small pearl earrings and the mouth slightly open in surprise. You could see, under the hood, the stiff curved brim of a visor. I zoomed in on the frozen frame, four times, eight, and the image held, the way 4K holds, and the embroidered letters on the visor brim came up white against the gray, clear enough to read from across the garage.
KESTREL RUN 20TH ANNIVERSARY.
I didn't look at Sheryl. I couldn't. I looked at the screen. I heard Doug make a sound like a man who has just sat down on a chair that wasn't there.
"Mrs. Kinsella," Quist said, in the same mild voice she'd used for everything, "is that you?"
"The light," Sheryl said. "The light is very—it's very bad, it's distorted, those cameras, everyone knows they—"
"The light's fine, ma'am," Quist said. "That's what 4K is for. Mr. Overbeck, go to the side-yard camera. Same time."
I did. The side-yard camera covered the fence line from the house to the shed. At 5:39 the hooded figure came through the gap in the fence where Hildur Engstrom's roses had pulled the rails loose decades before. It was facing away from the camera now, but it didn't matter; it was the same sweatshirt, the same bag, the same visor brim jutting under the hood. At the gap it stopped. It stood there for about four seconds, just standing, and then its free hand came up and rested on one of the thick old rose canes on the fence, very gently, the way you'd rest your hand on somebody's shoulder.
Then it walked to my shed, opened the door, bent, set the shopping bag down inside, stepped back, and closed the door.
"Can you get closer on the bag," Quist said. "When she sets it down. Before she goes in."
I backed it up and zoomed. The bag swung at the figure's side as it walked, and as it swung, it turned toward the camera. Printed on the side was a logo in looping script: Marlowe's, which is the department store at the Pender Mill Crossing mall. And hanging out of the top of the bag, caught on a strap, swinging, was a white cardboard price tag on a plastic barb. The 4K held it. You could see the bar code. You could see the price, in a big bold font, $38.00, and below it, smaller, a style number.