August 8, 2017
As it turned out, the gods or the random universe gifted Rachel Grant a stay of execution. The following afternoon Valerie got an APB response call from motorcycle patrol officer Niall Fox up in Hamilton City. Apparently, he’d seen Dwight Jenner less than two weeks ago at a rest stop gas station on I-5, just south of Orland.
“You sure it was him?” Valerie asked.
“Pretty sure,” Fox told her. “I’d stopped in at the minimart for coffee. He was the customer behind me in line. I got the vibe.”
“The vibe?”
Fox laughed. “The little shift in his, you know, force field when he registered a cop. Ma’am, you know what I mean. We see it every day.”
Valerie did know. All but the slickest guilty had a sixth sense, alert to police presence. And if you were good police, the sensitivity was mutual. Equipped with thermal imaging goggles you’d be able to see their body temperatures rise.
“I hear you,” she said. “Was he alone?”
“He was alone when I saw him,” Fox said. “I got my coffee and went back out to the bike. Watched him come out. Didn’t see what he bought.”
“Vehicle?”
“Unknown. There’s a parking lot there but the view’s obscured. There were maybe half a dozen vehicles at the gas pumps, but he didn’t get into any of those. To be honest with you, I was going to check him out, but I got a ten-forty-six southbound.”
“You got a date for me?” Valerie asked.
“July thirty-first. I checked with Dispatch. The ten-forty-six came through just after nine forty P.M. And yeah, the minimart has CCTV.”
“Someone looking at it?”
“Ma’am, I wish I could tell you they were, but we’re a pretty small shop up here. I’m up to my neck and we’ve got a grand total of two detectives—”
“No sweat. Give me the number.”
“I’ve been trying it, but phone-answering isn’t their strong point.”
After fifteen minutes of listening to hold music courtesy of On-the-Go roadside convenience, Valerie gave up and headed for her car, knowing it was probably a waste of time. Jenner had killed Adam Grant in the early hours of August 5, four whole days after this alleged sighting. Even if Fox’s ID was sound—where did that get her? Nowhere. The good stuff, if there was any, lay in those four days.
Still, it was better than nothing. Motion was better than rest. Going somewhere was better than admitting you had nowhere to go. Between his last day at Gold Star Valet and the night of Adam Grant’s murder, Dwight Jenner’s movements were wholly unaccounted for. This would, Valerie told herself, put at least one fucking pin in the map.
Boredom on the road kept her trying the minimart’s number. She’d done a hundred miles before a clerk picked up and transferred her, after what seemed a ludicrous delay and a lot of background yelling, to the manager, who listened, understood, but insisted, in only very slightly accented English, that he would have to see her badge before releasing the material.
“It’s fine,” Valerie said. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
Pamu Ranasinghe was a weary, ironical Sri Lankan immigrant in his midfifties with a moonish face and hefty mustache. Dark eyes of amused skepticism and a small gap between his front teeth. Having spelled his name for Valerie’s notes he added, “Yes, I’m the Asian socioeconomic cliché made famous by The Simpsons.”
It took Valerie a moment to make sense of this. Then she did—and making sense of it left her not quite knowing what to say. “It’s been a long time since I saw that show,” she said, with an involuntary tone of apology, though she didn’t know what she was apologizing for, except, vaguely, the racial stereotyping inherent in American popular culture. Ranasinghe studied her, with his head on one side. This was a man, she thought, resigned to being undervalued and misunderstood. It had bred in him a remote, inert superiority. She liked him.
“So, if you could let me take a—”
“Yes, I know what you need to see. You gave me the date and time. Come this way.”
Valerie followed him to the back of the store and through a stockroom to his very small office, a scrupulously tidy place with one barred window of frosted glass.
“It’s set up ready for you,” Ranasinghe said. “Just hit Play. Since I assumed you’d like a copy on disc,” he tapped a CD case on the desk with his fingernail, “I’ve made one for you.”
Smart, disappointed, and bored, Valerie revised. There was a copy of The New York Times and the latest edition of The Lancet next to the disc. It made her imagine a professional life before the U.S., before whatever upheaval had driven him here. She groped, mentally, for anything she knew about Sri Lanka. Got the word “Tamil,” along with a vague notion of civil war. Tsunami? How long ago was that? The world gobbled its news too fast. You couldn’t hold on to anything. Like millions of others she harbored the thought that one day—when she had time—she would get a grip on global current events. Her wiser self knew it would never happen. There was only one kind of current event she gave a shit about: whatever homicide had most recently landed on her desk.
“Thank you very much,” she said. “That’s very helpful.” It sounded patronizing.
Ranasinghe smiled, manifestly in a way that said he’d found it patronizing too, though the gap in his teeth gave him a look of impish delight. “There is no end to my talents,” he said. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
Cappuccino in the making, Valerie examined the footage. There was no doubt it was Jenner. Beyond that it had nothing to offer, except that even through the pixels she could see Fox was right about the vibe. Jenner entered the store with a take-no-shit buoyancy—then checked it when he saw the uniform. For a moment it looked as if he was considering turning on his heel and getting the fuck out of there. But he didn’t. He loosened his shoulders and took his place in line, hands in the pockets of his khaki combat jacket. After the officer paid for his coffee and exited (with a backward glance) Jenner bought a pack of Marlboros, then left.
Ranasinghe brought her cappuccino. “On the house,” he said, setting it down next to her.
“Thanks.”
“Officer Fox is a regular here. Hospitality by extension.” Then, seeing her look, he added: “Sorry. I was being petulant. You’re welcome.”
“Do you have external CCTV?”
The smile reappeared. “You want a vehicle,” he said. “I’m afraid you won’t find anything. But once again, with my remarkable prescience…” He reached past her, selected another video file from the desktop, hit Play. “It’s a single wide-angle,” he said. “You can see here, your suspect exits. He crosses the forecourt, and … Ah. You see?”
It was as Fox had said: The bulk of the parking lot was obscured by a combination of gas pumps and a few small trees on its border. The camera was positioned to optimize the view of vehicles taking gas. Obviously. For drive-aways without payment.
“And you’ve never seen this guy before?” Valerie asked.
“No. And I’ve checked with my team, barring one who’s on vacation. No one recalls seeing him before.”
“What about…” Valerie took out her phone and pulled up the best still of Sophia. “This lady?”
Ranasinghe studied the image. “No,” he said. “Not to my recollection. But obviously, given a fallible memory and the vast number of customers, that doesn’t prove anything. Besides, I’m not always on the shop floor. You can, of course, check with my staff, but frankly since they spend most of their time here in what appears to be a catatonic state, I wouldn’t hold your breath.”
She didn’t hold her breath, but she checked anyway. No joy. She was almost back in the city when Will called to say he’d had a fruitless day of it with the remaining escort agencies. No one recognized Sophia.
“If she’s a hooker,” he said, “she’s not on anyone’s books in the Bay Area. Now what, Sherlock?”
Valerie pulled out to pass a station wagon driven by a young black girl singing along to something with complete oblivious conviction. The sun was low and molten on the horizon.
“We’ll pull the traffic cam footage for the rest stop entrance and exit. Couple of hours either side of Jenner’s sighting. He didn’t walk there.”
“Fun viewing.”
“And I think we should try the brother again.”
“Half brother.”
“Half brother. He’s not telling us everything.”
“Maybe you should offer him sex?”
“You’ve spent too long in the world of prostitution. You at the station?”
“Will be in about fifteen. Meet you at Cornell’s?”
“Don’t bother. I can handle it.”
“I was kidding about offering him sex, you realize?”
It wasn’t entirely self-serving. Valerie did think Kyle Cornell was holding something back. Mainly though, she hoped an interview with him would take long enough to justify postponing the other interview until tomorrow. The one in which she’d have to break the news to Rachel Grant that her late, murdered husband had been, prior to his brutal departure from this mortal coil, screwing another woman.