Half an hour later, Tracy and John were at the Mulligan residence. Detective Morgan was already there, along with Patricia Schwarz, the department's computer forensics expert. After the introductions were made, Tracy, accompanied by John, proceeded to examine the crime scene, Patricia continued her examination of the home network and other equipment, while the Inspector was busy interrogating the servants in order to see if any helpful information about Francis could be obtained.
There was not really much to examine. As he had read from the file, Francis had used gloves while cracking open the safe. These, John had told him during the drive, were found stashed hurriedly in a nearby dustbin. Nothing else had been taken from the safe. The safe itself was concealed in the tower of the grandfather clock in Mr. Mulligan's study. This, Travis had come to know from the case file, was known among the household. The clock had belonged to Mr. Mulligan's father, and rather than doing away with it, he had decided to upgrade it and use it in his own study.
This upgrade had mainly consisted of replacing the old safe with a modern one, and installing the hidden surveillance camera. The surveillance camera was connected to the central server, which contained the recorded video feeds.
This central server was housed in a separate server room situated in the basement, and contained the recent feeds of all the surveillance cameras. These files were moved to a backup server, also housed in the same room. at regular intervals. The backup server retained the footage for six months before discarding it.
The door to the server room was always locked and there were no signs of the lock being tampered with. Patricia had already started a diagnostics program on the servers to check for unauthorised access. While the program was running, she was busy examining the surveillance cameras for any signs of foul play.
Tracy did a thorough examination of the crime scene, but managed to find nothing of importance. He also checked out the server room, but there also came up empty. He did a more detailed examination, just to double check that he had not missed anything. Satisfied that the server room had told him all he knew, he made his way back towards the lawns, to check whether Francis had left any evidence during his escape.
Examining the grass and the soil and using the location of the main gate as a reference, Tracy was able to determine the escape route. Francis had exited the house by the French window in the main hall which opened directly on the east side lawn. He had then made his way to the paved path which went around the house and ultimately went more or less parallel to the driveway till it reached the main gate.
This was somewhat unexpected, for the first objective of any thief would be to disappear from the scene of the crime as quickly as possible. This, in the present case, would have been the side entrance to the left of where Francis had exited onto the lawn. Neglecting this option and choosing the overtly circuitous route to the main gate seemed to be a completely dumb thing to do.
This new detail puzzled him somewhat. If the idea was to get captured on the surveillance cameras, then the side entrance would have also sufficed. The road which ran near the side entrance also had a sharp bend some distance from the house, which would have enabled the concealment of the getaway vehicle from the view of the cameras as well as from anyone standing at the entrance. In spite of this obvious advantages, Francis had chosen to use the main gate for his exit.
This train of thought only served to complicate matters further. The more Tracy thought, the more Francis's exit route seemed unnecessary. The only logical explanation that Tracy could think of was that exiting via the main gate was a part of the plan. But why was that necessary? What could Francis possibly gain by that? In the end, Tracy decided to view the surveillance footage with the hope that he could find an answer.
While Tracy was busy examining the lawn, Patricia was finishing her diagnostics on the servers. The results, unsurprisingly, indicated that no tampering of any kind had been done on both the main and backup servers. A few minutes later, they all met in the main hall.
"I'm afraid we've come up empty." began Detective Morgan. "There were no signs of foul play with the surveillance equipment."
"I guess that we should check the surveillance equipment over at the Dobsons as well, just to be sure." said Patricia.
"That is a good idea.", agreed John.
And so the party proceeded up the road to the Dobson house. Here again, a thorough search of Mary's room was carried out, and the surveillance equipment was scanned for signs of tampering. But this did not shed any new light on the case.
While all this was going on, Tracy was busy examining the the side exit, which Mary used when going for her morning runs. This exit, like the one at the Mulligans, had a small road running alongside it. This road, as Tracy had learnt from John earlier, was a part of a network of roads which ran in the area, most of them ultimately leading to the main road. He made a mental note of it, planning to ask John later. about the route Mary took, and whether this crisscross network of roads could have been used as a shortcut.
Once they were outside the Dobson house, Tracy asked John the question that had been gnawing at his mind.
"Say, John. You mentioned earlier about a network of roads that cut across the area."
"Yes. They are not much used these days as all houses are connected to the main road and these older roads are not wide enough for the bigger vehicles. However," he added, "one does come across the occasional car or bike using them to quickly get across the neighbourhood or go from one house to another. Also, I gather that they are a popular choice among the residents for morning walks and the like."
"Did Mary use this network of roads for her morning run?"
"Yes." replied John. "And yes," he said, anticipating Tracy's next question, "we did explore the possibility of them being used as a shortcut by the thieves to meet somewhere between the two houses."
"And? What did you find?" asked Tracy expectantly.
"We're not quite sure yet." replied John. "It would all depend upon where they met, and the route they took."617Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu3gLDTR8PY
"That is precisely the question my simulation will answer." added Patricia. "I had requested high resolution satellite imagery of the area before we left. It should have arrived by the time we get back."
As they made their way towards the car, Tracy was hopeful that this was one area from where a lead might be obtained. The other, he reflected, was in trying to make sense of Francis's actions on the day of the theft.
Little did he anticipate that the latter would actually give them the breakthrough they desperately needed.
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