A GRIPPING half hour later, Sejal pulled up to a MoPo convenience store and parked next to a champagne-colored SUV. She got out of the car and squinted into the bright store windows.
“Hey, how you doin’ tonight?” said a voice.
There were two boys in the SUV. High-school age, maybe a little older. “I’m fine,” Sejal said, and she made an effort to smile. Americans were always smiling.
“There’s nobody in there,” said the boy in the driver’s seat as he jerked his chin toward the MoPo. “Door’s open, though.”
That seemed odd. Odder still was that the boys appeared to be opening fresh bags of crisps and sipping fountain drinks. Perhaps they had left their money on the counter.
“Well, I suppose I will go in and wait,” said Sejal.
“We got snacks. Why don’t you come with us to this party.”
“Thank you, no.”
“I gots this book I think I seen you in. The Kama Sutra of Love.”
Sejal flailed her hands. “Look here. Why do you eveteasers keep saying that? Do you even know what the Kama Sutra is?”
A flutter of doubt crossed the boy’s face. “Of course I know. It’s Indian for ‘sex book.’”
“I assure you it is not.”
“I’m…pretty sure it is.”
“Oh, pooh—I’m done with you now. Go.”
She turned toward the store, and after a moment the SUV’s engine started. “Bitch!” called one of the boys as she pushed through the jingling door.
“Yes, yes. Bitch. Very good,” she said, scanning the store. There really didn’t seem to be anyone in here. She weaved through the shelves and stepped over a spill of candy necklaces. There was a swinging plastic door the color of old tires in the back, and Sejal pushed it open a crack.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
Then, a small noise behind her, from the middle of the store. A clicking. She approached the checkout island, a stomach-high oval counter piled with impulse items and two cash registers. But there’s no one here, she thought as she leaned into the counter.
“Oh! Hello.”
A young woman sat on the floor in the center of the oval, tapping long nails like stick candy against the linoleum floor. She wore the green belted dress of a MoPo employee and the vacant look of a slightly-more-dazed-than-usual MoPo employee.
Sejal tried again. “Hello?”
The girl stirred and touched a hand to her hair. Then she looked up at Sejal, and down at herself.
“I’m on the floor.”
“Yes,” Sejal agreed. “Are you all right? Do you want me to call someone?”
“Nah…I’m all right,” said the girl with a guilty smile.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but is this the MoPo where the Ghost stopped a robbery?”
The girl nodded, then nodded harder with an ever-widening smile. “He was just here! He came back. I think…” She seemed to notice her legs, which were stretched out in a V, and pulled her knees together. “I think we did it.”
Sejal had her doubts. She tried to examine the girl’s neck, but could only see the left side. She circled around the checkout island, pulled a yearbook from her bag, and opened it to the page she’d marked.
“Did he look like this?” Sejal asked with her finger by a photo of Douglas Lee. The girl squinted.
“Yyyyyeah, but…”
“But better. I know.” There was a small spot on this side of the girl’s neck. It could have been a bug bite. It could have been anything. “He didn’t happen to mention where he was going?”
The girl stared for a moment, then shook her head.
All right then, said Sejal in her mind, as fragments of half-remembered conversations bubbled up to the surface. That’s fine. Someone had once told her where this was all going to end anyway.
“Could you direct me to Clark Park?”