GRACE NOTES
Journal Entry #431
Today, Molly and I went to the gas station where Janeesa was working the night she disappeared. I brought my recorder as usual, even though it wasn’t about the Lovelorn case. You never know what might make it into the book. Besides, if I go help Molly with this case, she might come with me to some Lovelorn locations. We went late, past midnight, to get a sense of the area like it might have been that night. Molly fibbed to Travis that we were going to dinner and the movies, and then she’d spend the night at my place. He doesn’t like her out late on her own, which she thinks is sweet but I find kind of controlling. This tendency to see the man’s monitoring as care or concern is how Molly got stuck with Doug for so long, and after what happened tonight, I wonder if Travis is just another Doug, only smoother and with a better line.
The first thing we noticed is that the gas station does a good business even late at night. It must be one of the few still open because cars and trucks just kept pulling in. Most people got their gas and maybe a drink before going on their way. Only a couple of cars used the parking lot where Janeesa’s car would’ve been. We went inside the tiny convenience store, and that security camera is still in the same place in the corner. Across the street, there’s a nail salon, a sandwich joint, and a pawnshop. All three were closed, but we looked through the door in the pawnshop and it appears like they have cameras too. The one aimed at the front door would definitely capture the gas station in the background, maybe even including the convenience store. I made a note to look up whether the place had been in business six years ago. There’s no way they’d still have the tape, but I still want to talk to the owners if possible.
Molly and I sat with Slurpees in my car, right where Janeesa had parked. There were no lights on this side of the building, and it felt strange to be parked in her spot. I kept looking toward the station, like maybe I would see her coming around the corner with her keys in hand. “Why do you want to talk to the pawnshop people?” Molly asked me. She said the cameras would be useless for anything that happened when Janeesa was working here.
“Whoever took her knew exactly where the cameras were,” I reminded her. He grabbed her in that thirty-foot area between the convenience store and the parking lot. Maybe he just got lucky, but I don’t think so. That means he would’ve known about the pawn-store cameras, too. Why wasn’t he worried about them?
Molly she caught on. “Maybe because he worked around here.”
If he’d worked nearby, he would’ve seen Janeesa every day. He would’ve known her schedule as well as she did. If there’s one thing you learn from watching true crime, it’s that work can be as dangerous as your marriage sometimes. I still remember the story about the guy who showed up with a samurai sword at the grocery store in California and just started whacking people. I think about it every time I set foot in my store. These thoughts about workplace connections to crime made me confide in Molly about one of my theories on the Lovelorn case. “I’ve been thinking that the Lovelorn Killer might have hung out at O’Malley’s Bar,” I told her.
“You believe that waitress’s story about getting raped by the killer?”
I said I definitely want to talk to her. Even if her attacker wasn’t the guy, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. The Lovelorn Killer had almost a sixth sense about what the cops were up to. He knew exactly how to needle them and how to avoid the extra patrols they had set up to catch him. Maybe he was bellied up to the bar with them, listening when they had their beers and talked shop. One thing is clear, the guy can get close to them and they still don’t see him.
“I think I read somewhere Katie Duffy’s husband drank at O’Malley’s,” Molly said.
“Him and a bunch of others.”
The recording sounded like a wind turbine as Molly suctioned out the last of her blue raspberry. When she was done slurping, though, she had an interesting theory: “You know, that would’ve made a tidy way for Owen Duffy to get rid of his wife if they were having problems. He had to know the killer’s MO.”
“Yeah, everybody did. It was all over the front page of the papers.”
“But Owen Duffy would’ve known even the hidden details, right? The stuff the cops hold back from the press.”
“Maybe. I know he was questioned, and he had an alibi for that night—he was at the Halloween party, remember? Also, he dropped dead of a heart attack about a month later, he was so grief-stricken.”
“Or guilt-ridden. I’m just saying it’s a theory. And then maybe the real Lovelorn Killer stops because he’s got a copycat now. Someone’s messing on his turf, freaking him out. Ooh, or maybe he was the Lovelorn Killer! His wife found out, so he did her, too.”
“Whoa, hold on. Now you’re in Geraldo Rivera territory.” I didn’t think Owen Duffy could be the killer. I remember watching the broadcast of her funeral on local TV. That man was completely broken up over his wife’s death. Could a true psychopath fake that kind of emotion?
We were about to get going, when a pickup truck came screeching into the parking lot and blocked our exit. “That’s Travis,” Molly said, but she needn’t have bothered to tell me because he was already out of the truck and heading our way—all six and a half feet of him. You can hear him screaming on the recording. “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled at Molly through the window. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
He looked so big and mean right then that I locked the doors and windows, but Molly begged me to open them again. She swore he wasn’t going to hurt us. I’ve seen enough of those cheap reenactments on crime shows to know how that goes. I left the doors locked.
“We’re just checking out the scene of the crime,” she hollered at him through the glass. “It’s perfectly safe.”
“Safe? Some guy got shot three blocks from here last week!” He was waving his arms like a psychotic windmill. “I picked up my phone to text you good night and I saw the app said you were on the move toward this part of town. I didn’t have to guess real hard where you’d be.”
“The app?” I asked her.
“He put an app on my phone that shows him where my phone is so he doesn’t have to worry. I didn’t think he actually checked it.”
Travis’s angry face took up half my windshield. “He’s a regular hall monitor,” I replied.
“I’ll get him to calm down. Let me out.” She jiggled the door handle again, and I had no choice but to let her go or keep her prisoner in my Subaru. She practically fell out the door and into his arms. “Travis, honey, we’re fine. See? You don’t have to worry.”
His voice got all tender, like he hadn’t been screaming in our faces thirty seconds ago. “Baby, it’s not safe down here, especially at night. I know you want to play cops and robbers, but real bad guys live in this part of town.”
“I’m not playing. The Grave Diggers solve actual crimes, you know. Crimes the cops couldn’t solve on their own.”
“Yeah, but the cops carry actual guns. What are you going to do if you find the guy who grabbed Janeesa? Hit him with your notebook?”
He shifted his weight so I could see his hip for the first time, and that’s when I realized he was armed. I beeped the horn and they both jumped. I leaned out my window. “Molly, you want to get going? We can still have that sleepover.”
Travis glowered at me over his stupid sheep-farmer beard. “She can ride back with me.” His truck was still running.
Molly looked cowed. “Uh, yeah. I guess so. Just let me get my purse.” He stood there and watched her as she opened my car door and bent down inside again.
“You don’t have to go with him,” I said, moving my lips as little as possible. “He’s not the boss of you.”
“I should go. He doesn’t sleep well when I’m not there.”
“And how do you sleep?”
“Grace, don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what? Point out that your boyfriend is being a belligerent, controlling jerk?” I didn’t take my eyes off him, nor him me.
“You can’t go around thinking every guy is a homicidal maniac. Not if you ever want to be in a relationship. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have lied to him.”
She grabbed her purse to leave, but I shot out my hand to stop her. I whispered but you can still hear it on the recording. “You’ve said it yourself, Moll. It’s always the boyfriend.”
She pulled away from my grasp without a word. Outside, Travis tucked her under his enormous arm and made a show of helping her inside the cab. He even kissed her and said something in her ear that made her giggle. She took one look back in the mirror at me as they drove away, and I thought I saw regret there. Or maybe it was pity for poor, boyfriend-less me.
I drove home thinking it might be time to check into Travis’s background a little more. I can’t tell Molly who to date, but I can say who gets to come to our meetings.