Colt Crawford -Chapter 12 (Monday)

Buried in the back office of the art gallery, Colt and Krissy stared at frame after frame of the surveillance video. The view of The Yachtery office was completely unobstructed and, as predicted, very few people came and went. The task was tedious, but after only a few minutes, Colt figured out how to set the video playback to scroll through one frame every fifteen seconds.
The frames clicked by for what seemed like hours when Colt finally stopped the video. “Look here.” Krissy followed Colt’s pointing finger and caught sight of a woman approaching the front door of the Yachtery. The angle of the camera allowed them to see her face as she approached. Now Colt advanced the image one click at a time until he had optimized the view of her face.

“Can you zoom in?” she asked.

“Just a second.” Colt clicked on the mouse and chose the area to enhance. He then zoomed in for a closer look at the woman’s face. The two detectives glanced down at the photo that was resting on the desk. The video image was grainy, but the woman’s features were decipherable. “Looks like a match to me,” Colt said.

A few clicks later, Colt had e-mailed the video file to himself and to Krissy, making sure to note the exact time Jailene Arroyo was seen entering the building. “So now that we have Arroyo connected to Mathis, what’s next?” Colt asked.

“Let’s bring Mathis in,” Krissy suggested. “He’s a suspect in his assistant’s attack, so we can start there and then move on to Samantha. Then we can see what he has to say about Jailene Arroyo.”

Since Mathis was now a suspect in two attacks and posed a flight risk, Krissy made the decision, and her lieutenant agreed, that they would need to bring him in right away. They could have officers down south make the arrest, but the paperwork would be a lot less complicated if Krissy and Colt made the drive once more and took care of it themselves. “You up for a drive?” she asked.

“Always,”Colt replied.

Gambling on the fact that Mathis would be at his Long Beach office, Colt and Krissy made the decision to stop there first. As they pulled into the parking lot of the marina, they scanned each row of cars. “There’s his truck,” Colt said pointing to the silver behemoth in the second row. “This should be easy enough.”

Krissy’s unmarked police car was parked within 20 yards of Mathis’ truck not far from the rows of shops that lined the harbor. It was somewhere within these shops where they suspected they would find The Yachtery’s satellite office. The wooden siding on the buildings coupled with the countless seagulls gave the area a nautical feel. From inside his car, Colt scanned the front doors of the shops he could see. None of them bore the logo of Mathis’ company.

“There he is.” Krissy was already reaching over to open the car door. “Let’s get him.” She waited and watched as he came closer to his truck. When he was within ten feet , she pulled out her badge and a pair of hand cuffs and announced, “Steven Mathis. You’re under arrest for kidnapping and assault.”

Mathis turned at the sound of her voice and broke into a sprint in the opposite direction. Without losing a second, Krissy took off after him with Colt by her side. They gained on him quickly and, realizing he couldn’t outrun the pair, Mathis slowed to a stop then turned to face them.

Krissy methodically slapped the cuffs on his wrists and escorted him back to her car. It was a long, quiet drive back up to Santa Barbara. Since Krissy wanted to wait until the setting was in her favor before she began any questioning, she resisted the urge to probe from the front seat. There would be plenty of time for that at the station.