GRACE NOTES
Journal Entry #421
My high school English teacher, Mrs. Frum, would be shocked to know I’m writing this book. I wish the old bat were still alive so I could tell her. Poorly argued, she wrote on my essays. Conclusions not supported. She gave me C-pluses and said the work was plain average, but she added the plus as a reminder that I was supposed to be “working up to my potential.” I guess it’s fair, wondering why a C student has the chops to write a book like this. The thing with me is, I can always tell when people are up to no good. The Grave Diggers all come with different skills. Molly can get anyone to talk. Barnes is great with computers and military stuff. Oliver knows the law. Me, I can spot a perp before he’s even made a move. The guy on the L train who keeps dropping stuff so he can bend over and look up the girl’s skirt—I see him like he’s got a spotlight shining down on his sweaty, pig-like head the minute he first takes out that pen. The kid out on the street with a can of spray paint in the back of his baggy pants, looking for a wall to tag? I see him, too. Mostly, I see the shoplifters who come into my store with their puffy jackets, giant reusable totes, or a gaggle of small children in tow. Once, I stopped a woman who had three packs of C batteries shoved down the back of her kid’s diaper. Technically, Bill’s supposed to be the one watching for the shoplifters, and he does get his share when he isn’t on a smoke break or chatting up Yolanda over in produce. But I get plenty, too. I spot them right away when they come through the doors, and it’s not what you’re thinking—they’re all shapes and colors, different ages. It’s not like they’re all poor, either. Some of them just do it for the thrill, or because they can. Well, that’s why I stop them. Because I can. I’ll tell you the secret if you really want to know. They look for the cameras. Most shoppers come in with their eyes looking for a cart or scanning the sale merchandise. The thieves? They look up in the corners for the camera angles.
Molly put up a new case for the Grave Diggers this week, before I could figure out how to say something to her about the Lovelorn case. It’s okay. I mean, it’s been more than twenty years now, so what’s another few days at this point? Plus, I think Molly knew Oliver needed the distraction with his wife starting chemo again, so she found us a good one. Janeesa Bryant, age nineteen, left her job at the gas station mini-mart one summer night and never made it home. This was six years ago, and she hasn’t come home yet. What makes this case so interesting is that there’s video from the mini-mart security camera. You can watch her selling people their scratch tickets, soda, and cigarettes all night long. Then she closes up shop and locks up—all with the camera still running. A second camera picks her up outside. She’s wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and a poofy ponytail. There’s a bounce in her step even though it’s one in the morning and she’s been on her feet all day. She walks toward the right side of the screen, where the small parking lot is for employees and customers, and disappears from view. Later, when her mother reported her missing, the cops found her car still parked in the lot. A check of the cameras from the liquor store next door showed they had a view of the gas station parking lot, and you can watch this online too. It shows people coming and going, but Janeesa’s little blue car just sits there until it’s the only one left. Whoever took her, they grabbed her in the exact twenty yards of space with no cameras watching. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
The cops didn’t think so either. They liked her boyfriend for the crime, a young do-nothing named Hector Sanchez. He and Janeesa argued a lot. She’d started classes at the junior college, training to be a dental assistant. Maybe he didn’t like her showing up his lack of ambition. Maybe he didn’t like her having other priorities. I made a comment to the group about how it’s true what Gloria Steinem said: a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Chris of course asked me if I was a lesbian, but Barnes agreed with me. He said, “There’s a reason we always say ‘look at the boyfriend’ when a woman turns up dead or missing. I don’t think I’d want to date men either.” If you look at the tape, you can see Janeesa was maybe coming to that conclusion herself. Hector and his posse dropped by the store around ten for candy and smokes. He didn’t want to pay, and Janeesa called him on it. They had a shoving match, with her yelling at him and pushing him toward the door. He left with his snacks, his money safe in his wallet, but you can see on her face that she’s had enough. That fight would’ve been the beginning of the end, I think, if Janeesa ever made it back to her little Kia in the parking lot.
The cops leaned on Hector hard. He swore he didn’t do it, and his buddies backed him up. Investigators couldn’t shake his alibi, and with no body, no blood, no proof even that she’d been harmed, there wasn’t much left they could do. Molly’s skeptical that they gave it their all. She wrote: “I bet if she was named Cindy or Lisa, if she had blond hair and blue eyes, they would’ve looked harder for her. I bet if she’d been working in Glencoe instead of K-Town, the whole city would’ve turned upside down.” Janeesa’s mom worked as an assistant manager of a Burger King. The one TV interview we found with her, she’s plainspoken but dignified. Also terrified for her daughter. She said Janeesa planned to enroll in university that fall—more proof that she was moving on from Hector. Her mother cried just as much as anyone else we’ve seen in that situation, and the salt in everyone’s tears is exactly the same.
When I watched that video of Janeesa on her last night, I saw something else: At about 8:30, there’s a small line formed at the counter. A skinny guy in long shorts is paying for three Red Bulls. A woman in a tank top standing behind him picks up a candy bar from the rack, puts it back, then picks it up again. She’s waiting to pay for a quart of milk. The third guy in line is heavy, older with a ring of thin white hair around his big round head. He’s wearing a bomber jacket despite the summer heat, and he’s not looking at the merchandise. He’s watching Janeesa. Except for this one moment when he looks right up at the camera.
I froze the video so he was looking into the screen, and I was looking back at him. Yup, he was checking out the cameras. He knew right where to look, too. The guy eventually paid cash for a bag of chips off the front rack and slipped out the door into the night. I played with the video until I got the best angle on him, and I took a screenshot. I posted it to the whole group with a message: “We have to ID this guy.”
Because that dude? He was up to no good. I can tell.