4

A phone that rang after midnight always meant one of two things to Sigvald Sampson.

A car accident or a domestic.

Sampson threw back the bedcovers, propelled by the inevitable rush of adrenaline that hits when a ringing phone interrupts sleep.

“Sorry to bother you,” Averill Hess said, sounding uncertain, “but a couple things have come up. You may have to come out here.”

Averill Hess was the most senior of the three deputies who rotated dog shift coverage on the Redstone Township Police Department. Senior or not, if you had a real problem between 11:00 P.M. and 7:00 A.M., Averill was not the guy you’d want on the job.

“What couple of things, Averill? And come out where?” Sigvald Sampson said, reaching for his pants on the chair beside the bed even before Averill Hess answered him.

*   *   *

“Dispatch got a call just before midnight,” Averill said, breathing in short, shallow gulps. They stood inside the One-Stop service station and convenience store. Two state patrol officers had come in before Sig, and Andrea Bergstad’s dad had just pulled up out front in a pickup.

“A customer called to say the store was wide-open, but there wasn’t a clerk around. The dispatcher patched me through.” He stopped, his eyes shifting nervously. “This deal on the call didn’t sound like a problem to me. I figured Andrea was in back or whatever…”

“How’d you know it was Andrea working tonight, Ave?”

Sig said it flat, the question carrying more weight than the words deserved.

Averill’s eyes darted faster. “I always make a drive by the One-Stop. Just to check everything’s okay. Tonight I’d come by maybe, I don’t know—half hour before the call came in? It was Andrea, working, alone. Everything was fine…”

“Damn,” Sig said, just under his breath. There was no excuse anyone working alone out here at night. Especially a young woman working alone at night. He’d told Tom Fiske, the store manager, there was no excuse scheduling a clerk to work alone at night.

They get shift differential pay, is what Fiske had said, like that made it all right.

Bob Bergstad came in through the front door, his hair uncombed, looking like he had a pajama top under his parka.

“What’s going on, Sig?” Bergstad’s eyes were bright for someone who’d gotten called from his bed in the middle of the night.

“Probably nothing.” It was a reasonable answer, given what they knew right now. But it already felt soft to Sig.

“A customer called in saying the store was open, no clerk was around.” Sig tipped his head toward Averill. “Ave saw Andrea here a half hour or so before we got the call saying the store was empty. Everything was fine…”

“That’s her car out there,” Bob said, tension building in his voice.

Sig nodded. “I thought so. I’m thinking a friend called, said they’d pick her up after her shift…”

“She was on the phone when I stopped,” Averill said, sounding satisfied to back up Sig’s guess.

Sig turned to Averill. “The guy who called. The customer who found the store empty. Where’s he now?”

Averill tightened his mouth, then let it go loose again. He shifted from one foot to the other. “He was gone by the time I got here…”

Sig stared at Averill. “You asked him to stay and he left? You get his name, any ID?”

Averill wasn’t meeting Sig’s stare. “I didn’t think it was a big deal. And I was just out here, anyways. I figured it was nothing. Like you said.”

“Is that a no?” Sig said, not taking his eyes off Averill.

Averill swallowed hard enough that Sig saw him do it.

“No what?”

“No you didn’t get his name and no you didn’t get any ID on him.”

“In my professional judgment it wasn’t necessary,” Averill said, starting to sound defensive along with nervous.

Sig changed the subject to avoid showing his anger in front of the state patrol guys and Bob Bergstad.

“Bob? Who should we be calling? Someone Andrea might have gone out with after work…”

Bergstad shook his head. “You know Andrea, Sig. No way she’s gonna walk out of here and leave the place open. And it’s a school night. She knows she’d be in trouble with me going out after she’s worked a late shift…”

Sig said, “You never know what a kid’s going to do. Even a good kid like Andrea. Right now it’s more likely Andrea did something out of character than…” He stopped. Putting words to the alternative didn’t serve any purpose at this point.

In the momentary silence, Bergstad said, “Erin Moser might know something. Mike Krause would be the other one, if he was in town. But he called just before Andrea left for work. Long distance, from school. He wasn’t planning on being back until the week before Christmas. He was trying to talk Andrea into going down to the college and driving back with him then.”

“Bob, you head on back home. Call everyone you can think of that Andrea might have gone with. First off, I want you to give Erin a call. I’d call her myself, but I’d probably scare her senseless if she hears my voice on the phone in the middle of the night. Then call Mike and see if Andrea said anything to him when they talked on the phone tonight that gives us an idea about where she might have gone…”

Bergstad nodded and started out. Then he stopped, coming back toward the cash register. “I want to check one thing,” he said, going behind the counter, where he ducked down. When he straightened up, he was holding a purse.

“She never went anywhere without her purse,” Bob said.

*   *   *

After Bob and the state patrol guys left, Sig turned to Averill.

“Let’s take a look at the surveillance cameras. See if we can get the tapes out.”

Averill found a ladder in the storeroom. They were zero for three on the first three cameras, none of which appeared to be live. The fourth camera, focused on the area in front of the cashier counter, had a lock on the cassette case. After checking out the area around the cash register without finding anything that looked like a key for the cassette case, Sig gave up.

Standing under the camera, hands on his hips, looking up, Sig shook his head in frustration. “We can’t risk damaging the tape by fooling around with it now. The first thing you’ve got to do is get hold of Tom Fiske and get him out here to retrieve the tape. Then get the tape back to the station.” He looked at Averill, who didn’t give any indication of having heard what Sig had just said.

“Averill. Heads up. I’ve got four things I need you to do, and I want you to write them down, so we’ve got half a chance at you doing them right.”

Color rose up Averill’s neck, but he took a notebook out of his jacket pocket and flipped it open.

“Number one, I want the whole place taped off as a crime scene. The building, out to the pumps, including Andrea’s car on the side of the building. Then, when you call Tom Fiske, tell him he’s closed until further notice. When you talk to him, tell him we need his help in retrieving the surveillance tapes from the video system. After you talk to Fiske, I want you to sit down and write out everything—I mean everything—that was said between you and the guy who called in. You got that, Averill?”

Averill stared at his notebook. Then, with the tip of his pen, he counted down what he’d written. “You said four things, but I count only three things…” He looked down at his notebook again. “Unless you’re counting the call to Fiske as two things. I mean, counting telling him he’s closed as one thing and asking him about the surveillance tapes as another thing…”

Sig closed his eyes, and kept them closed. “What’s important, Averill, is that you do everything I told you to do. Count them any way you want, but do them.” Then Sig opened his eyes and looked directly at Averill.

“I’m only going to ask you this next thing once, Averill.”

Averill lifted his notebook again, prepared to write. Sig put his hand on the notebook, pushing it down.

“Eye contact, Averill. I want you to look me in the eye when I ask and when you answer.”

Averill looked at Sig, then his eyes darted sideways before they returned to Sig’s face.

“When you stopped by out here, Averill. Did you do anything—anything—that upset Andrea?”

Averill looked like he was having a hard time getting Sig’s point, then he looked mad.

“Hell, no. It was just what I said. I stopped by like I always do on rounds, just to see everything was all right. I didn’t even know it would be Andrea working. I didn’t talk to her or nothing. She was on the phone, didn’t even hang up while I was here. So I left. That was it. Jeez…”

“This isn’t going to be hard to check, Averill. So if you have anything else to say, now is the time to say it.”

“Check all you want,” Averill said. “What I told you is what happened.”

“I have to ask, Averill. You’re still under written notice for what happened with the Sasser girl.”

Averill began another denial, but Sig stopped him. “Enough already. You’ve said nothing happened, I’m going to take you at your word.” Sig zipped up his parka and started pulling on his gloves as he walked toward the front door.

Without turning around to look at Averill, he said, “Now get started on that list of things I asked you to do.”

*   *   *

The bad feeling that had begun with being wakened by the ringing phone stayed with Sig as he headed back to the station. Based on what he knew so far, it was way early and all kinds of facts shy of being worth worrying about. But early and shy of facts don’t hold up against a bad feeling in your gut. Which was exactly what Sig had. A bad feeling in his gut.

Not that he had all that much experience with serious crime. He’d been on the Redstone police force for thirty-one years, the last eleven years as chief. The only homicide he’d had in all of that time had been a domestic. A husband slamming his wife’s head against a wall. She was unconscious when Sig showed up, never came to, and Sig had arrested her husband on the spot. He’d gotten a full confession from the husband within an hour of the arrest, and the husband took up residence at Stillwater State Prison within ninety days of the murder. An investigation like that, a fellow doesn’t need to waste time and energy worrying about how his gut feels.

Nothing like what his gut told him he was up against starting tonight.