ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN
TWELVE
The Monte Carlo was still parked in front of the gas station when I got there. An officer had spotted it and called it in shortly after I placed the bulletin on it. I pulled in and parked beside it, but decided to ask a few questions and get the lay of the land before I checked out the car.
"Do you know how long that car has been there?" I asked the clerk, a cleancut, Hispanic kid in a store uniform.
"The Chevy?" he asked.
"Yes."
"It was here when I got here this morning, and I got here at five."
"Do you know who it belongs to? Have you seen it here before?"
"No, not me," he said.
"Was it here yesterday?"
"I didn't work yesterday."
"Can I speak with someone who may have been here? Do you have a camera feed out there?" I pulled my badge from my pocket and showed it to him.
"Yeah, we got cameras. Hold on." He picked up the counter phone, dialed a number and then mumbled something quickly in Spanish. "The manager will be up here in a second," he said, hanging up the phone. "You want some coffee, officer?"
"Sure," I said.
"Help yourself, over there," he said, indicating the wall of gourmet coffee flavors. "It's free for cops," he added, turning to attend to some beeping indicator behind him.
My dad would have chewed him out for the word "cops", but it's pretty common these days and most people don't mean anything by it. My dad always hated it, though. In his day, I think it was a more derogatory term.
I walked over to the coffee. I had been hoping that he would offer. Lots of gas stations and restaurants had policies to comp certain small items for police officers, and I really needed a good cup of coffee. I was pouring some of the Colombian when the manager, a stocky, middle-aged Hispanic man, came out from the back to meet me.
"Hello, officer," he said, holding out his hand. "My name is Jorge. I'm the manager here. How can I help you?"
"Detective Al Hall," I said, shaking his hand. He had a firm handshake and a friendly face. "I'm wondering about that Monte Carlo out there. Do you know how long it's been here?"
"Oh, yes. I was going to call someone to tow it away today," he said, walking over toward the front door. "Yesterday afternoon sometime, I don't remember what time, a man, he parked that there and then he just walked away. I didn't think that much about it. Sometimes people leave cars a little while to go do something and then come back, you know? Then it was still here when I went home, and still when I got here today, so I started to wonder, you know?" He opened the door and we walked outside into the cold, damp, grey of the late morning.
"Was he alone?" I asked, sipping the hot coffee. It was pretty good.
"There was a little girl with him," he replied, then he got a serious look on his face. "Is something up with this guy, officer?"
"I'm not at liberty to say, you understand," I said. "Do you know the man? Have you seen him before?"
"No," he shook his head. "I don't think so. I didn't see him that well."
"And how was the girl? Did she seem normal to you? Did you get any sense of whether she seemed to be in distress?"
"She looked pretty normal to me," he said. "She just walked beside him and they walked that way." He pointed down the road toward the city limits. "I didn't see if they got in another car or anything."
"You have surveillance out here," I said, nodding at the cameras at either end of the storefront awning. "Do you keep the tapes?"
"It's all digital," he said. "It's on the disk and then they send it to corporate every night. We keep three days here."
"Would I be able to see yesterday's tape?" I asked, though not very hopefully.
"Oh, yes," he replied, smiling. "We always cooperate with the police, officer." He turned toward the door and I started to follow, relieved that it was going to be easy. "I just got to call corporate and see if we need any paperwork or anything," he continued.
'Damn!' I thought. They were sure to require forms and possibly even a warrant. I hate red tape. "Of course," I said with a sigh. "Go ahead and check it out. I'm going to make a call." He smiled and nodded, heading inside, and I turned and walked back toward the car.
When I got to the Monte Carlo, I glanced at the door. It was locked, of course. It crossed my mind to pop the locks, but I knew better. We could impound the car and check it out then. We had to be careful these days not to invade privacy and blow a case on technicalities. My dad would have been in the car as soon as he'd gotten here back in the day, but we couldn't do that sort of thing today.
I leaned in, cupping my eyes against the glass with my hands, and tried to see through the slight tinting on the window. There was nothing interesting inside, really. Looking through the front windshield, I saw a small stack of business cards tucked into an elastic band attached to the visor. They were upside down, so I craned my neck to see the words. "Simon Sayer," it said, and then "Repairman. Odd Jobs." There was a phone number. I took a pad from my pocket and jotted it down.
"Odd jobs," I muttered under my breath. "Odd jobs."
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