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I write it down. Circle it hard enough to tear the paper.

“Anything else?” I ask.

“No.”

“You got cameras?”

“We’ve got one over the register and one at the front door, but I don’t own the place.”

“Who does?”

“Pete.”

“Pete have a last name?”

“Dawson.”

I write that down too.

Randy clears his throat. “Listen, I don’t want trouble.”

People always say that after they’ve spent years stepping around trouble as if it’s a puddle.

I hang up.

Then I sit very still and run things through my mind again—how Ben’s sister ended up missing. I rub at my chest because it’s gone tight. Ben’s been dead long enough that people expect the grief to behave.

It doesn’t.

It just learns where to stand so nobody trips over it.

My phone buzzes again. This time it’s Ashby.

I answer. “What?”

“Nice to hear your voice too,” he says.

Ashby always has the sound of a man sitting in a leather chair with a glass of expensive liquor, even when he’s standing in rain outside a gas station. Smooth bastard.

“You got something?”

“I was about to ask you the same,” he replies.

I tell him what Randy just told me. “The guy could have been Tom, but the description isn’t detailed enough to be sure.”

“Where was this?” Ashby asks.

I tell him the name of the bar.

“I’ll look into the owner,” he says.

“Already have the name. Pete Dawson. You find out any financials on Tom?” I ask.

“Some irregularities.”

That means yes, but he wants documentation in triplicate before saying it.

“Ashby.”