Lee Child - A Wanted Man

‘The convenience store,’ Goodman said. ‘They needed something.’

They hustled around to its front door and went inside to bright cold fluorescent glare and the smell of old coffee and microwaved food and antiseptic floor cleaner. A bored clerk behind the register didn’t even raise his head. Sorenson scanned the ceiling. There were no cameras.

The aisles were close-packed with junk food and canned food and bread and cookies and basic toiletries, and automotive requirements like quarts of oil and gallons of antifreeze and screen wash and clip-on cup holders and patent self-extinguishing ashtrays and collapsible snow shovels. There were rubber overshoes for wet conditions, and tube socks, and white underwear for a dollar an item, and cheap T-shirts, and cheap denim shirts, and canvas work shirts, and canvas work pants.

Sorenson took a close look at the clothing aisle, and then she headed straight for the register, her ID at the ready. The clerk looked up.

‘Help you?’ he said.

‘Between about twenty past and half past midnight, who was in here?’

‘Me,’ the guy said.

‘No customers?’

‘Maybe one.’

‘Who?’

‘A tall skinny guy in a shirt and tie.’

‘No coat?’

‘It was like he ran in from a car. No time to get cold. No one walks here. This is the middle of nowhere.’

‘Did you see the car?’

The clerk shook his head. ‘I think the guy parked around the back. He sort of came around the corner. I guess that was my impression, anyway.’

Sorenson asked, ‘What did he buy?’

The guy straightened out a curling helix of register tape spilling out of a slot. He traced his thumbnail over pale blue ink, in an irregular pattern, stop and go, leaping backward from one time stamp to another, then pausing at an eleven-line entry.

‘Six items,’ he said. ‘Plus subtotal, tax, total, tender, and change.’

‘He paid cash?’

‘He must have, if I made change.’

‘You don’t remember?’

‘I don’t pay much attention. This is not a dream job, lady.’

‘What did he buy?’

The guy examined the tape. ‘Three of something, and three of something else.’

‘Three of what, and three of what else? This was tonight. This is not ancient history we’re talking about here. We’re not asking for a prodigious feat of memory.’

‘Water,’ the guy said. ‘I remember that. Three bottles, from the refrigerator cabinet.’

‘And?’

The guy looked at the tape again.

He said, ‘Three other things, all the same price.’

‘What three other things?’

‘I don’t remember.’

Sorenson said, ‘Have you been smoking tonight?’

The guy went wary.

He said, ‘Smoking what?’

‘Maybe that’s a question for Sheriff Goodman. You in shape for a search tonight?’

The guy didn’t answer that. He just bounced his hand up and down, rehearsing a triumphant finger snap, waiting to remember. Trying to remember. Then finally he smiled.

‘Shirts,’ he said. ‘Three denim shirts, on special. Blue. Small, medium, and large. One of each.’

Sorenson and Goodman walked out of the store and looped around to the back lot again. Sorenson said, ‘Karen Delfuenso was their hostage and they planned to use her as their smokescreen, so they couldn’t let her stay in the skimpy top. Too memorable. They knew there could be roadblocks. So they made her change.’

‘They all changed,’ Goodman said. ‘Three people, three shirts.’

Sorenson nodded.

‘Bloodstains,’ she said. ‘Like the eyewitness told us. At least one of their suit coats was wet.’

‘We screwed up,’ Goodman said. ‘Both of us. I told the roadblocks two men in black suits. Then any two men. You told them any two men. But it wasn’t any two men. It was any three people, two men and a woman, all in blue denim shirts.’

Sorenson said nothing. Then her phone rang, and the Iowa State Police told her they had rewound their dashboard video and located Karen Delfuenso’s car. It had passed through their roadblock more than an hour ago. It had not attracted their attention because it had four people in it.

SORENSON HUNCHED AWAY from Goodman and switched her phone to her other hand and said, ‘ Four people?’

The State Police captain in Iowa said, ‘It’s a kind of shadowy picture, but we can see them fairly clearly. Two in the front, and two in the back. And my sergeant remembers the driver.’

‘Can I talk to your sergeant?’

‘Can I shut down this roadblock?’

‘After I talk to your sergeant.’

‘OK, wait one.’

Sorenson heard scratchy sounds in her ear, and the filtered rattle of an idling truck engine. She turned back to Goodman and said, ‘We were even more wrong than we knew. There are four of them in the car.’ Then she heard a cell phone change hands and a rusty voice said, ‘Ma’am?’

She asked, ‘Who was in the car?’

The sergeant said, ‘Mostly I remember the driver.’

‘Male or female?’

‘Male. A big guy, with a busted nose. Badly busted. I mean raw, like a very recent injury. He looked like a gorilla with its face smashed in.’

‘Like the result of a fight?’

‘He more or less admitted it. But he said it didn’t happen in Iowa.’

‘You talked to him?’

‘Briefly. He was polite enough to me. Nothing to report, apart from the nose.’

‘Was he acting nervous?’

‘Not really. He was quiet. And stoic. He had to be, with a nose like that. He should have been in the hospital.’

‘What was he wearing?’

‘A winter coat.’

‘What about the passengers?’

‘I don’t really recall them very well.’

‘You’re not on the witness stand here, sergeant. You’re not under oath. Anything you can remember might help me.’

‘All I have is impressions. I don’t want to mislead you.’

‘Anything at all might help.’

‘Well, I thought they were like Peter, Paul and Mary.’

‘Who?’

‘Folk singers. From back in the day. Before your time, maybe. They were all dressed the same. Like a singing group. Two men and a woman.’

‘Blue denim shirts?’

‘Exactly. Like a country music trio. I figured their trunk would be full of steel-strung guitars. I thought maybe they were heading from last night’s show to tonight’s. We see that sometimes. And the woman was all made up, like she had just come off stage.’

‘But the driver was different?’

‘I thought he was maybe a manager. Or a roadie. You know, big and rough. Just an impression, like I said.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Don’t quote me, OK?’

‘I won’t.’

‘There was an atmosphere. The woman looked mad. Or resentful, somehow. I thought maybe the shows weren’t going so well, and she wanted to quit the tour, but it was two against one. Or three, if the manager guy had a stake. It was late, but she was wide awake, like she had something on her mind. That was my impression, anyway.’

Sorenson said nothing.

The sergeant said, ‘They were the targets, right?’

Sorenson said, ‘The two men in the shirts, yes.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not your fault.’

Then the captain came back on. He said, ‘Ma’am, you told us to look for two fugitives, not some family psychodrama involving a car full of vaudeville players.’

‘Not your fault,’ Sorenson said again.

‘Can I break down this roadblock now?’

‘Yes,’ Sorenson said. ‘And I need an APB on that plate number, all points east of you.’

‘I have no units on the road east of me, lady. I had to bring them all here. Face it, ma’am, whoever those guys are, they’re long gone now.’