“What?” the man Reed presumed to be Curt snapped.
“Guy here wants to talk to you,” the waitress replied.
“About what?” Curt said, the two having a conversation without either acknowledging that the subject was standing right beside them.
“About last night,” Reed said, jumping in before the back-and-forth went any further. “I’m assisting Officer Wyatt. He asked me to come by.”
With his mouth already open, ready to lob his next comment to the waitress, no sound escaped Curt. He flicked a glance to the woman, seeming to weigh things in his mind, before disappearing completely from view.
A moment later, he emerged through the swinging doors behind the cash register. With both hands, he undid the knot holding the apron he wore around his waist. When it was free, it swung free from his neck, sliding across his bulbous torso as he walked behind the counter.
“Thanks, Alice,” he said, dismissing the waitress as he entered into the main dining room. Waiting until she had turned and left, he used the same aisle to approach.
Practically emanating wariness, he pulled up several feet short, his eyes narrowed slightly. He crossed his arms over his chest, resting them atop his paunch. Each foot he pushed out a little wider, filling the narrow passage.
As classic a power stance as ever existed.
And further proof that self-importance was a character trait no matter where one was running an investigation.
“Who are you, now?” he asked.
Reflexively, Reed reached toward his hip, preparing to grab the badge that he normally stowed in the rear pocket of his jeans. Halfway there, his hand stopped, a bit of heat hitting his cheeks as he said, “Reed Mattox. I am a detective out of Columbus, Ohio, here in town visiting my parents. Officer Wyatt asked me to help him look into what happened last night.”
As he spoke, he could see a shadow pass behind the window of the kitchen, Alice apparently intent not to let a word go by without her hearing it.
Even if it meant being occasionally caught in the act.
“Who are your parents?” Curt asked.
“Rhett and Cheryl Mattox. They just moved in out on Sunfish Lane.”
Working his lower mandible to either side, Curt considered it a moment. “Huh. Never heard of them. And Todd asked you to help?”
“He did,” Reed said.
“Why?”
Thus far, the entire conversation had been the inverse of what Reed was hoping for. Instead of offering small town collegiality, Curt had opted for the far opposite end of the spectrum, displaying open distrust for anybody from the outside.
And he had acted like Reed was the one being interviewed.
No more.
“Because I’ve worked over thirty disappearances in the last thirteen years,” Reed said, “and the worst thing this town has seen recently was a stolen tractor.”
Making sure there was enough edge in his tone to get his point across, Reed added, “And because I was pumping gas across the street when Serena happened to walk by. And I was the one sprinting down the street after her when the man that grabbed her tossed her into his van and drove away.”
Up to this point, he had been specifically vague about using Serena’s name or any exact details about what happened. Not knowing how close she and Curt were, he didn’t want to trample feelings or overshare too early.
Considering how the man seemed intent to play it, all such compunction was gone, moving straight for the knockout shot.
As expected, it landed perfectly.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Much of the bravado – along with the sanguineous pallor on his checks – had receded from Curt Walton. Seated in the first booth just inside the door, he was pitched forward at the waist, his fleshy forearms resting on the tabletop. The apron had been pulled over his head, ditto for the kerchief he was wearing, revealing thinning dark curls that matched the thicker version peeking out from the top of his v-neck T-shirt.
With one leg thrumming along like a sewing machine, Reed could feel the vibration coming up through the floor, though he said nothing as he sat and stared back.
There was no need. Guilt was so obvious, it might as well have been tattooed across Curt’s forehead.
The only question now was the reason behind it.
“So, you worked with Serena last night, right?” Reed asked.
“Yeah,” Curt said, meeting his gaze before looking away.
“Just the two of you?” Reed asked.
“Yeah,” Curt repeated, his focus shifting from the front window to the one looking into the kitchen, as if he were afraid someone might walk past and see him having this conversation.
A feeling Reed couldn’t help but share at the moment.
“We stopped serving breakfast during the week years ago, before the old man died,” Curt continued. “His son tried to get it going when he took over but couldn’t get enough people to man the floor – and heaven forbid he lift a finger. Monday through Friday, there’s just one cook and one waitress.”
Pausing, he extended a hand, twisting slightly to motion to the empty room around them. “Shocking, I know.”
Letting the quip go without comment, Reed seized on the first part of what the man said. “So, you open around lunchtime?”
“Eleven,” Curt answered. “Close at nine every night.”
Once more, he lifted a hand, flapping it toward the kitchen. “Except for Alice, the rest of the girls all either have school or a second job, so they kind of juggle things.”
“Was Serena the only one here yesterday?” Reed asked. Based on what her sister and Wyatt had said about her school and her studying, Reed doubted it, though he waited for a response just the same.
“Split it in half,” Curt said. “Alice was here until four, Serena came in and took the rest.”
Reed nodded. Without a pencil or pad, he didn’t take any notes, committing everything to memory, even if he was still unsure how any of it might fit.
“And you?” he asked.
“All day,” Curt said. “There’s only two of us that man the grill. I work four ten’s, Monday through Thursday, guy named Larry Alton works ten on Friday and fifteen on Saturday and Sunday.”
Again, Reed nodded. The scheduling made sense. It gave both men their requisite forty hours, entitling them to full benefits, while still affording extended weekends every week.
If one had to be hourly, it wasn’t a bad way to go. Considering the crowd Reed was now staring at, he imagined the most difficult thing would be the lengthy bouts of occasional boredom.
And he could see how the owner would prefer it, never having to pay a third person to be on hand in the back.
Leaning forward, Reed matched Curt’s pose. He rested his elbows on the table, closing the gap between them to no more than a foot.
“Let’s start with Serena,” Reed said. “Not last night, but in general. What can you tell me about her?”
Leaving it purposely vague, he said nothing more, allowing Curt to answer however he chose.
Filling his cheeks, Curt allowed his brows to rise. With an audible gasp, he slowly shoved out the air, his features solemn.
“Where to start...” he muttered, shaking his head once before returning his gaze to Reed. “You know how there are some people that folks just go on and on about? Oh, Becky is so great. Or, Sarah is just the sweetest thing you’ll ever meet? To the point that you almost end up hating that person, thinking there’s no way they can be all that?”
Easily the most cogent thing Curt had said since they sat down, Reed knew exactly what the man was talking about. Allowing his chin to dip just slightly, Reed grunted, signaling for him to continue.
“Well, Serena really was that girl. She was putting herself through school, helping her mom, tending to her sisters. If there was anybody alive that had reason to be pissed at the world, it was her.
“And still, she was nice to everybody.”
It appeared there was more he want
ed to say, though he pulled up. Leaning back, he glanced out the window again, giving his head a shake.
“And I’m not just saying that because she’s my friend. You can ask Alice. She’ll say the same thing, and she doesn’t like anybody.”
In most any other situation, Reed would have allowed himself to smile, if not outright chuckle. The brief encounter he’d had with Alice cemented what Curt had claimed, the woman the walking definition of cantankerous.
“You guys were friends?” Reed asked.
“Work friends,” Curt said. “When you’re stuck here with only one other person to talk to, you can’t help but get to know each other.”
“Work friends?” Reed asked, the comments Maisie Gipson had made earlier about her sister’s social life drifting to the front of his mind.
“Yeah,” Curt replied. “We’ve all invited her to do stuff before, but like I said, the girl had a lot on her plate. She was never mean about it, never made it seem personal, but she was pretty protective of her time.”
“Dating life?” Reed asked.
“Not that I ever seen,” Curt answered. “Like I said, fiercely protective of her free time.”
Bit by bit, an image of Serena Gipson was starting to form in Reed’s mind. A woman in her mid-twenties, she was strapped to her situation for the time being, keeping her head down, working hard.
What her plans were thereafter, he couldn’t be sure, but right now she seemed to be on the straight and narrow. The odds of her having been spotted out at a bar or club one night were slim. Same for her having a jilted lover who was somehow lying in wait for her.
“Alright,” Reed said, “let’s talk about last night. She came on at four?”
“Yup,” Curt said, dipping his head in a nod, strips of pale scalp peeking out through his hair. “Same as every Wednesday. That’s cleaning day, so Alice always makes sure to bounce before the end of the night.”
At the mention of her name, Reed glanced over to see a flash of auburn move past the window, the woman still lingering within earshot at all times.
“Which was at nine?” Reed asked.
“Yes,” Curt said.
“Was she here when you left?”
The same look returned to Curt’s face as he glanced away. Tinged with guilt, he set his jaw, staring out the window before turning to face Reed.
“Yeah,” he said.
Knowing there was more coming, that the man’s reaction was too telling for there not to be, Reed opted for one of the greatest tools afforded to a detective conducting an interview.
Silence.
The better part of a minute passed, Curt sitting and ruminating, before lifting his focus to Reed. When he did, his eyes were tinged red, though no moisture was visible.
“Last night was game five of the Western Conference Finals. OKC and Golden State. If I hurried, I could make it home for the second half, so at 9:01, I popped out and asked if she wouldn’t mind locking up.
“She was still mopping at the time, but her being Serena, gave me her standard catchphrase response. Never even thought twice about it.”
Reed had never been a huge basketball guy, most of his sports fandom occurring during the fall, though he had seen plenty of regalia in the OKC airport to make him aware that the series was going on. And the story fit with the time he was sitting at the gas pumps across the street.
Not to mention, he now had a handle on the look that had settled over Curt’s features since he’d arrived, the young man beating himself up over the way things went down.
A far cry from what Reed might have hoped for, even if it did manage to restore some shred of his faith in humanity.
“Catchphrase response?” Reed asked.
“Yeah,” Curt replied, nodding slightly. “I got this. Said it all the time, whenever there was some shitty chore we had to do or a customer was giving her a hard time. Something she and her sisters came up with, I think.”
Having been to their home, hearing their backstory, Reed could see how such a thing would occur. In the face of adversity, people often needed something, no matter how random, to galvanize them.
For some, that was a particular totem, a song, maybe even a tattoo.
For the Gipson girls, apparently, it was a catchphrase.
“How about before closing?” Reed asked, nudging things forward. “Did Serena mention anything? Seem overly nervous at all?”
Flipping his palms upward, Curt shrugged. “I mean, she mentioned having a big final coming up. Anatomy, or something like that.”
Once more, Reed thought on his visit with Wyatt to the Gipson home, the information matching up.
“Any unusual customers? You had me pegged as an outsider the second I walked in. Anybody like that come in last night?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Reed didn’t expect the short walk across the street to the Sinclair Station to reveal much about the night before. Seeing as how he and Billie had been present for the entire sequence of Serena Gipson leaving work and eventually being abducted, he knew the likelihood of the clerk seeing anything they hadn’t was low.
What the man did have, though, was untold months of observation, even if he didn’t realize that was what he was doing.
The man standing behind the counter went by ‘Herc,’ short for Hercules, a name that his father had saddled him with. A real history buff - and fan of Greek mythology in particular - he had hoped it would set his son up for a life of physical prowess and achievement.
A prominent high school gridiron career punctuated by a trip down the road to Norman to play for the Sooners. Possibly a stint up north with the Oklahoma State Cowboys if nothing better came along.
After that, a first-round pick with the favored Texans to the south in Houston.
Start to end, the man had his son’s life planned out, himself always just out of frame, taking a nice twenty percent off the top as payment for his managerial skills.
The only part he hadn’t considered was that his son would be born with a rare neurological disorder that made physical contact of any type a life-ending risk.
Having met the night before, Reed had heard all of this while they waited for Wyatt to finish filling out his reports. At the time, Reed had been slightly annoyed by it, his spiked adrenaline and his own detective instincts telling him he should be doing twenty different things, none of them involving hearing some gas station attendant’s life story.
Now eighteen hours later, he still wouldn’t say he was glad to have sat through the entire thing, though at least it now came with the good fortune of having already developed rapport.
And it had also established him as a detective, skipping the unnecessary posturing session he’d been forced to endure with Curt Walton.
Looking to be right around twenty, Herc was dressed in jeans and a comic book T-shirt for a character Reed had only passing familiarity with. Almost as tall as Reed’s six-foot-three, he had narrow shoulders and thin forearms, his fawn-colored hair hanging in a shaggy sprawl around his head.
At the sound of the bell on the front door, he looked over as Reed entered, raising his chin in greeting. Doing the same, Reed turned to the left, scanning the interior of the mart.
Three other customers were already inside as he made a quick lap along the perimeter. Two of them – a teenaged girl and a bald man in his sixties – were both in line, each offering no more than a glance to Reed as they paid for their purchases and exited.
The third was a woman hovering around forty, loading a hot dog that had been grilled beyond recognition with a triple helping of every available topping. Adding to it a bag of Cheetos and a Diet Coke, she paid for her food and headed out, barely making it to the door before beginning her assault.
In the wake of her exit, Herc stood behind the counter watching her go, making no effort to hide the expression on his face, the look an equal mix of repulsion and amazement.
“It always gets me how these guys come in here, throw down two thousand calories and
a pound of salt, but insist on the Diet Coke at the end,” Herc said. “Like, seriously? Just go for the full throttle at that point.”
Unable to stop the smile that came to his face, Reed sidled up to the front counter. “So that’s a regular occurrence, I take it?”
“Oh, yeah,” Herc said, his gaze still aimed out the front window, watching as the woman climbed into her SUV but made no attempt to drive away, still working at her impromptu dinner. “She’s here two or three times a week. We’ve got some that are here more than that.”
The image of the empty diner across the street played across Reed’s mind, bringing with it the thought that Hanley couldn’t appreciate the local filling station having more regulars than they did.
A moment later, the clear disdain Curt had displayed toward the owner also came to the fore, offering at least one possible explanation as to why that was.
“That’s actually kind of why I was stopping by,” Reed said. Trying his best to keep his tone at least somewhat jovial, he watched as Herc turned to face him.
“The eating habits of the locals?” the young man asked, a crease forming between his brows.
“No,” Reed said, raising a hand to wave off the question, “regular occurrences. Patterns, that sort of thing.”
Little by little, he watched as the statement settled over Herc, his mind processing what was just said.
The night before, it had already been pointed out that the place didn’t have cameras beyond a single view looking straight down over the pumps. A couple of passes through the footage had shown Reed pulling up and grabbing the cans from the rear of the SUV and a minute later he and Billie both tearing away, though nothing useful outside of nailing down an exact time was gained.
Not even the shadow of Serena Gipson walking past.
“This for business or pleasure?” Herc asked. Any trace of his smile was gone, the corners of his mouth tugging downward, matching the slope of his shoulders.
“Business,” Reed replied. “I guess the chief isn’t taking this too seriously, so Wyatt asked me to help him look into things quietly on the side.”
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