"He told you he was a mechanic?" asked Hawkin.
"That's what he said. I offered to pay him, but he laughed, a nice laugh—"
"It wasn't," growled the sofa.
"—and said I should keep my money and buy my little girl a doll."
(Ah.)
"Can you believe it?" exclaimed the insulted party. "Can anyone be so sexist and archaic in this day and age?"
Trujillo was looking from fond mother to indignant daughter with a stunned expression, his mouth gaping slightly.
"Did you see how he left? His car?" Hawkin asked.
"No. Did you, Jules?"
"Yes. There was a man waiting for him on the street, in a red Grand Prix. I remember thinking the name of the car was funny because he so obviously considered himself a big prize."
"Beg your pardon, Miss?" said Trujillo, who was trying to write all this down. She looked at him pityingly.
"Grand Prix. A pun?" She sighed. "Grand Prix is French for 'big prize'."
"Oh. Right."
"It must've been his car, too, because the other man moved over into the passenger seat to let him drive."
"I don't suppose you noticed the license plate number," said Hawkin, knowing that if she had, she'd have given it to them right off.
She looked abashed. "I knew you would ask me that. No, I didn't. All I remember is that it wasn't personalized—I did look for that, I remember—and that it was fairly new."
"Was that the only time you saw him?"
"Yes," said Jules.
"No," said her mother, and looked at her daughter apologetically. "I saw him a couple of weeks ago. It must have been a Tuesday night, because I was coming in from my late class. He was just going out as I came in, so I said hello and thanked him again. He said he was glad to help. That was all."
"Which Tuesday was this?"
"Not last week. The week before, a couple of days before the storm."
The day after Samantha Donaldson was killed. Hawkin stared for a long minute at a book spine with a title he couldn't begin to pronounce, and thought. And thought. When he finally looked up the woman was looking amused.
"Sorry," he said.
"I do it all the time." She smiled, and his middle-aged heart turned over, and he wanted to stay seated at this horrid plastic table forever.
"What was he wearing?" It was nearly a random question.
"Something old, blue jeans and a dark jacket over a work shirt of some kind. Plaid, I think. Red plaid. It looked better on him than the suit did. More appropriate."
"How did he seem to you?"
"Cheerful. Excited, almost. He looked tired as well, though."
"Do you think he killed that little girl?" breathed Jules, looking curious and doubtful and more than a bit scared. Hawkin turned from her to her mother, who just looked scared. He took out his card and wrote a number on it.
"Ms. Cameron, if you, or your daughter, see the man Andrews at any time, do not allow yourself to be alone with him, and call this number as soon as you can. He may no longer have a beard." He showed them the drawings. "I would also appreciate it if you would not talk with your friends or neighbors about this conversation, not for a few days. It could jeopardize the investigation and put people in danger." He fixed Jules with a hard eye, and she put her chin up.
"I don't gossip," she said with dignity.
"I didn't think you would," he said, and stood up to go. At the door he stopped and looked down at the child and thought of poor, confused Amy up on Tyler's Road.
"So you want to go into law?" he asked.
"It's one option," she agreed.
"Would you like to see a trial some day, meet the judge, talk to the lawyers?"
"I would, very much." From the gleam in her eye he might have been offering Disneyland.
"When this case is over, if I can work a free day, we'll see what we can do."
Trujillo stared at him as if he were crazy; Jules looked at him as if he were God; Jules's mother looked him over as if he were a distinct possibility.
In the elevator Trujillo watched the numbers change with great concentration, and they had stepped out of the box and onto the ground floor before he could no longer contain himself.
"Did you really have to ask the kid to go to court with you? I mean, God, the mother, and it's probably the only way to get to her, through the kid, but still. Can you imagine her cross-examining you?" The thought was one to give him nightmares, obviously.
"I thought she was cute."
Trujillo looked incredulous. "Cute like a cobra, you mean."
"Not so bad. And look at it this way, I may convert her to aiming for the D.A.'s office. We could use a few of those on our side, don't you think?"
Trujillo just shook his head and muttered something under his breath. It sounded like "earthy immediacy."
Hawkin let him conduct the last three interviews of the evening, which were short, uninformative, and extraordinarily dull.
28
Contents - Prev/Next
Thursday involved sending people out to trudge through every garage, gas station, and body shop in that part of San Jose, with no luck. Friday they widened their search, with little hope, but within the hour one of the San Jose men found the garage. Hawkin and Trujillo were there in twenty minutes.
It was a big, sprawling work shed filled with men and cars and noise. The owner, Dan Whittier, was a giant with a huge belly and no hips, whose greasy black trousers threatened to descend with every step. He recognized "Tony Andrews" from the drawing, a guy who came in occasionally to help when they were rushed. First met him about a year ago, at a bar. Yes, it might have been the Golden Grill; he went in there sometimes. No, he didn't think anyone introduced them, just got to talking. No, he hadn't seen him for a couple of weeks. Yes, he'd tried to reach him, left a message on the answering machine like usual, but he never showed up. It had happened before; no problem, the work got done eventually. The number? Yeah, it was here, next to the phone.
It was the number of the apartment.
Trujillo asked a few more questions until it was obvious that to this man, Tony was a nice guy, an adequate mechanic who helped out occasionally in exchange for being able to use the facilities during off hours to work on his own cars. Offhand, nobody could remember any of his cars except in the vaguest of terms—a pickup, a red Grand Prix, a couple of old Dodges—but no paperwork had been kept on any of them.
Frustrated, they left, and looked back, and then came the little break that was to earn Trujillo his promotion. Among the many cars, trucks, and vans sitting inside the chain-link fence of the storage yard were two U.S. Government mail-delivery vehicles, the boxy white ones used for streetside delivery. Trujillo walked around the unmarked car to the driver's side and then paused and looked thoughtfully back over the car roof toward the storage yard.
"Have you ever noticed," he said slowly, "how people don't remember seeing things like mail vans? They're nearly invisible."
Hawkin stared at him, then stared at the two innocent white delivery trucks, and was one step ahead of him when they went back through Dan Whittier's door.
Dan Whittier was surprised and a bit annoyed at seeing them again, and followed them back into his office. Yes, they had Post Office vehicles here from time to time. Not regularly, just when the government's regular mechanics were swamped. Oh, yes, those they kept close records of. What dates were they interested in? Trujillo gave him the three dates. The first one would be from last year's books, Whittier told them, which weren't here now, but the second and third dates were very clear: yes, there was a mail van in during both those times, had come in two working days before in both cases, and yes, Andrews had worked on them, and yes, Andrews had taken them out for road tests, and come to think of it the last time, yes, he had been gone a long time, four or five hours, something wrong with the fuses, and yes, Trujillo was welcome to the license numbers if it would allow Dan to get back to his cars.