No One Saw

by Beverly Long

  “No.”

  “Do you know his wife?”

  “Not really.”

  She was not a dentist but she was pulling teeth. “Mr. Seoul, can you walk us through your day last Wednesday?”

  “I worked.”

  A.L. leaned forward. “What time did you arrive at work?”

  “Seven thirty. That’s when I always arrive. I leave my house at 7:21 and it takes me nine minutes to get there.”

  “Was anybody else at the garage when you arrived?” A.L. asked.

  “Cory Prider.”

  “What time did Davy Grace or Troy Whitman arrive?”

  “I don’t think Davy worked that day. Least I never saw him. Troy rolled in when I was taking my break. I take that from 9:00 to 9:15 every day.”

  She just bet he did. “Mr. Seoul, are you aware of any customers or other employees who might be angry with Troy Whitman?”

  He shook his head.

  “We’re aware of a complaint that came in from a Mr. and Mrs. Thompson after their car was worked on at the garage and subsequently had trouble.”

  “I didn’t work on that car.”

  “Right.”

  “Have you spoken to Troy Whitman since the disappearance of his daughter?”

  Pete Seoul shook his head.

  She was going to give it one more shot. “Anything else that you can tell us that might be helpful?”

  “Nope. But I guess I have been thinking about Troy’s storage shed.”

  A.L. put his pen down. “I’ve been to Troy Whitman’s house. There’s no storage shed.”

  “Not there. At Alcamay Corners. He rents a unit there.” The man stood up. “Just saying, it might be a good idea if somebody checked that.”

  Twelve

  Alcamay Corners. Everybody in Baywood knew the intersection of Alcamay Road and Main Street. On one corner was the Alcamay Funeral Home, the biggest and busiest funeral home in Baywood. On the second corner was a cemetery, making it a quick and convenient trip for the dead. On the third, a restaurant. They had a nice room for the funeral lunches. On the fourth and final, rows and rows of storage sheds. Maybe the dead people’s furniture got stored there.

  “Fuck,” A.L. said when Rena got back to the room after escorting Pete Seoul out. They’d hardly been able to get him out fast enough.

  “You don’t really think...”

  “I don’t know what I think. But we need to take a look. Right now,” A.L. said. “Not only do we have a storage shed that we haven’t looked at, we’ve got an unexplained absence if both Pete and Cory are right that Troy didn’t show up for work until 9:00.”

  “Are you going to call Troy? Leah?”

  “Nope,” A.L. said. They’d done a property search on their names. Standard procedure. Nothing had come up. A rental unit wouldn’t.

  “We’ll need a warrant,” Rena said. “I’ll figure out who owns those storage sheds and which unit belongs to Troy.”

  “Make it quick, Morgan. I’m going to give Faster’s office a heads-up.”

  Forty minutes later, they were on their way. The owner had agreed to meet them at Unit 49, which Troy had rented for the prior seven months.

  “I want to know but I don’t want to know,” Rena said. “Does that make sense?”

  It did. The possibilities of what they might find in the shed were enough to make the most experienced cop shaky. A.L. could feel his own stomach churning. Bad things happening to a child were horrific enough, but the idea that the parent could be responsible was so goddamn dark that A.L.’s chest felt heavy and it was work to breathe. “He’d have fooled me,” A.L. said. “I know the parents are the first place we look but I have to admit, I didn’t like either Troy or Leah for this.”

  “Same,” Rena said. “I hope our guts were right.”

  “We’ll know in five minutes.”

  Right on the edge of 7:00 p.m., they made a right-hand turn onto the property. There were rows and rows of big storage sheds, the kind that had garage door openings. Rena pointed toward the left. “Try that row,” she said, pointing at the second to last.

  It was the third from the end. There was already a white pickup truck parked by it. A man, maybe fifty, wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, got out. He waved at them.

  A.L. beached it and he and Rena got out fast. Both carried flashlights. Now that they were here, A.L. couldn’t get the goddamn shed open fast enough. “Detectives McKittridge and Morgan,” he said. “Can you open that?”

  “I can.” The man looked down at his feet. “If you’re looking here for the reason I think you’re looking here, I hope like hell that you’re wrong.”

  A.L. didn’t answer.

  The man handed A.L. a garage door opener. Then he went back to his truck. Likely afraid of what he might see.

  A.L. pushed the button. The door inched up.

  A.L. looked at Rena. He was pretty sure she wasn’t breathing.

  Then the door was halfway up. Dark inside. They flipped on their flashlights.

  Five more inches.

  “Jesus,” Rena whispered.

  Indeed.

  “What the fuck is this?” A.L. asked.

  Rena had no words.

  A.L. took two steps into the garage. Had to stop there. Because there was a zebra in his way. A stuffed one, that is.

  And the zebra had friends. Lions and tigers and bears. Oh my. And on the shelves that lined two walls, there were possums and squirrels and, yep, that was a hawk. She looked at A.L.

  “Close your mouth,” she said softly. She found a light switch and flipped it.

  He turned to look at her. “Take a good look around.”

  “That’s all you’re going to say?” she asked incredulously. “Take a good look around,” she repeated.

  “I don’t know what else to say,” he said.

  “You think Troy did these himself?” Rena asked. She was moving carefully among the animals, making sure that there was no five-year-old child hidden somewhere. “That he’s a taxidermist?”

  “I don’t know. Some of these seem pretty old,” he said. “Like this one,” he said, pointing at a stuffed monkey that looked as if it had seen better days. Better dead days, that is.

  “Right,” she said. “You think he forgot about this place or is this a secret he’s trying to hide?”

  “Leah never said anything about it, either.”

  “Maybe she’s embarrassed. Or maybe she doesn’t know.” Rena paused. “I’m not going to be the one to tell her,” she added.

  “Pete Seoul deliberately led us here,” A.L. said.

  “Yeah, that’s interesting,” Rena said. “I guess it’s possible that he knew about the storage shed but never had the opportunity to get a glimpse inside. Or he had and he wanted us to know that Troy Whitman had an unusual...habit, collection, fetish... Hell, I don’t know the right word.”

  “When I talked to Troy, he made it sound like he and Davy, Cory and Pete didn’t just work together but they were good friends. I sort of got that feeling from Davy, although I think he’s just a friendly type. I definitely didn’t get that feeling from Cory or Pete.”

  “Agree. Is this more of what we saw between Troy and his parents? He either can’t help but paint a rosy picture or he’s obtuse to the way things really are.”

  “Whatever, we’re done here.”

  They flipped the light off, stepped outside the garage and A.L. closed the door. They walked back to the truck, where the owner still sat.

  “Everything okay?” the man asked.

  “Yeah. Fine,” A.L. said.

  “Whew. That’s a relief. I like Troy Whitman and I’ve been feeling real bad for that family. My wife and I made a donation to the fund. We were happy to do it. We got three kids of our own. Just wanted to do something to help, you know.”
>
  “Thanks for meeting us here,” Rena said. They got into A.L.’s vehicle and drove off. “You know, in the movies, after the bad guy kills somebody, they do a flashback to when he was a kid and he killed the neighbor’s cats. That isn’t this, is it?”

  A.L. didn’t answer.

  “I saw a story once about a guy who collected toenail clippings. That would be even odder, right?” Rena said.

  Now A.L. gave her a sideways glance.

  “I’m rambling, I know,” she said. “That was just so...odd. I’ll be quiet now.” She sat for a minute. “I don’t like it that Davy Grace has a connection to Dover. That he was, in fact, in Dover the day that Emma went missing. And that he spent substantial time in Dover.”

  “Agree,” A.L. said.

  “I’m going to follow up on the uncle’s obituary.”

  “I’m going to go talk to Troy and get an explanation of where he was between 7:08, when Elaine pulled away, and roughly 9:00 when he arrived at work.”

  “Maybe he was at the casino, filming Leah who was filming Elaine,” Rena said.

  “That would be fucked up, wouldn’t it?” A.L. said, shaking his head. “After that, I think I’d better go see Barrett and Gi-Gi Thompson.”

  “I wonder if Gi-Gi is short for something.”

  “I’ll make sure to ask her,” A.L. said.

  * * *

  Troy was no longer in the garage. He was in the basement. Leah was in bed. A.L. got all this from a young FBI agent who was playing solitaire on his computer at the dining table.

  Everybody filling in hours in their own way.

  A.L. opened the basement door and walked downstairs. He saw Troy stretched out on an old leather recliner, a TV remote in one hand and what looked to be a cocktail in the other. He was flipping through channels.

  A.L. knocked on the wall. Troy looked over his shoulder. “News?” he asked, putting his footrest down.

  A.L. shook his head. “Sorry, no.” Without invitation, he sat on the couch. “Have a minute?”

  “Yeah,” Troy said, shutting off the television. “I wasn’t watching anything. Can’t concentrate.”

  A.L. was reminded of something that Doug Franklin had said about Corrine Antler’s parents. That in a week they’d aged about ten years. It had been about half that for Troy Whitman but he looked well on his way.

  His eyes were dark, his hair was unkempt, and it looked as if he was sleeping in his clothes. “Did you hear,” he asked, “that one of the drones thought they had something today?”

  A.L. had. One of the heat-seeking drones had identified an object in a barn. It had been promptly investigated. It had been a child, just two years older than Emma, watching over her dog that was having puppies.

  “Guess the good news is that they found something that was there,” Troy said.

  “Right,” A.L. said. “Nobody has given up hope.”

  Troy shook his head. “I think Leah has. She took some pills to go to sleep. Said she just can’t stand this anymore. That’s why I’m here and not out searching. I figured somebody needed to be here for the phone.”

  A.L. glanced at the empty glass. “Got to stay sober for that,” he said.

  “Stopped at two,” Troy said. “When I really wanted the whole fucking bottle.” He stared at A.L. “You got kids?”

  “A daughter. Senior in high school.”

  “So you got your own worries.”

  “Not like this,” A.L. said. “This is about as bad as it gets. We know that.”

  Troy said nothing.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally, A.L. shifted. “I need to ask you about your day on Wednesday.”

  “Okay.”

  “What time did you leave for work?”

  “After Elaine picked up Emma?”

  “Right after? Ten minutes later? An hour later?”

  “Pretty soon after,” Troy said.

  “And how far a drive is it to your work?”

  “Fifteen minutes.”

  “So you estimate that you probably arrived at Garage on Division by 7:45 at the latest?”

  “That sounds right.”

  “And what if I told you that your employees who were working that day estimate that you arrived around 9:00?”

  Troy shrugged. “They’re wrong.”

  “They seemed pretty confident.”

  “Maybe they didn’t see me. I remember I was doing some paperwork up in the office. They’re back in the bays, thinking about other things. Cars these days are complicated. You got to really be thinking about what you’re doing.”

  It seemed reasonable. The office was separate from the rest of the garage. But both Cory and Pete had seemed sure. But could either man be trusted? “You recall any customers who came in on Wednesday morning who could verify that you were there?”

  Troy shook his head. “Sorry. Nobody that I can think of.”

  “You’ve got a scheduling system of some type, right?” A.L. said. “Something that allows you to keep track of what vehicles are coming in for what type of service?”

  “Yeah.”

  “On a computer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’d like to see that for Wednesday. In fact, for all this week.”

  “I can’t access it from home,” Troy said quickly. “And I shouldn’t leave right now.”

  He could be a hard-ass and demand that they go right now. Or, he could get a warrant and they could confiscate the computer. He decided to take a more measured approach. After all, he could not forget that Troy Whitman had lost a daughter and there was still no real reason to suspect that he was anything but a grieving father here. However, if he found out that there was an unexplained absence of more than ninety minutes, all bets were off. “Then, tomorrow,” A.L. said. “Early tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll print you off a copy,” Troy said.

  A.L. shook his head. “I’ll meet you there at 8:00 with a technician. We’ll have him or her get it off the computer.” A.L. paused. “Don’t go inside until we get there. Don’t access your computer before we get there. Trust me on this, my person will know if you did and be able to find anything that’s been modified, added or deleted.” He was willing to cut the man a little slack but he wanted to make sure there was no question that Troy understood that this wasn’t a suggestion but rather a demand.

  Troy stared at him. “Anything else?” His voice was just short of hostile.

  “Yeah. You should know that we executed a search warrant for your storage shed at Alcamay Corners. The landlord opened the door for us.”

  Troy said nothing.

  “It would have been helpful if you’d mentioned that you had a storage shed.”

  “There was no reason to,” Troy said.

  “In the spirit of good faith and all,” A.L. said. “Does Leah know about it?”

  “She knows that I have an interest in taxidermy. She does not know about the extent of my collection or the rental unit. I used to keep a few of the pieces here, in the basement, but she didn’t like looking at them when she came down to do laundry. She wanted me to sell them. I told her that I did.”

  But he hadn’t. In fact, it sounded as if he’d obtained more since that conversation.

  “You look as if you disapprove, Detective,” Troy said, a challenge in his tone.

  “Just don’t think lies are the best foundation for a strong marriage. But that falls outside the scope of this investigation. Have a good night, sir,” A.L. said. Then he walked out of the house and across the small yard. Sunset had faded into full-blown darkness. The end of another day.

  But not for him. Even though his conversation with Troy had left him with a bad taste in his mouth, there were more people to talk to.

  * * *

  Gi-Gi was short for Georgiana. “My father had been Geor
ge and was attached to the name,” Gi-Gi Thompson explained. She, Barrett and A.L. were sitting at her kitchen table.

  After learning that he was a police officer who wanted to talk about an incident that had happened at Garage on Division, the Thompsons had sent their two grade-school children upstairs to finish homework. Even though he’d arrived well after dinner, dirty dishes were still on the counter and the smell of tuna and noodle casserole lingered, at odds with the gleaming stainless steel appliances, the quartz countertops and the four thousand feet of living space.

  “Tell me about your recent interactions with Garage on Division.”

  “We’re pretty unhappy with the work that got done on our vehicle,” Barrett said. “It put my wife and my children in a bad spot. A dangerous spot. Are you here about the report that we filed?”

  “In a way,” A.L. said. “I recently had a conversation with a few people who mentioned the incident.”

  Barrett looked at Gi-Gi. “I told you it was a mistake to post something about it.” He looked at A.L. “She loves social media.”

  “That’s not where I got it,” A.L. said. “But if you could walk me through your experience, I’d appreciate it.”

  “My wife’s car had been running rough for a couple weeks. We had used Garage on Division before and had been happy with the work. On September 9, we dropped it off and they had it for hours. Five hundred and sixty-two dollars later, I was promised that the vehicle was ready for pickup,” Barrett said.

  Gi-Gi leaned forward. “Barrett dropped me off at the garage and went back to work. I drove it to pick up our young children from school. I did that and was halfway home to our house when it died. Just died. Left us stranded. Well, the first thing I did was call Barrett.”

  “I was at work. Left as quickly as I could but it wasn’t soon enough. A couple of redneck local boys stopped, supposedly to help.”

  “They had horrible teeth. You know, the kind that meth users have.”

  A.L. allowed himself to wonder how many meth users Gi-Gi Thompson encountered on a regular basis.

  “I saw Breaking Bad,” she added. “Every season.”

  There it was.

  “If Barrett hadn’t come when he did, there’s no telling what might have happened. I mean, they were looking at my kids and it was giving me the chills.” Gi-Gi stopped. Put her red-painted index finger into the air. “I just thought of something. What if... Oh, I can’t even say it.”