“What’s your name?” Gail asks.
When my eyebrows lift, she quickly jiggles the paper cup in front of me, saying, “It’s for your order,” but I notice she doesn’t ask Jimmy for his name. Mm-hmm.
As we head out the door I say, “Good coffee,” without having taken a sip. “We should come back tomorrow.”
Jimmy’s still scrolling through his messages, oblivious.
Halfway down the block my phone rings.
It’s Diane and she’s in a mood. I can hear it in her voice, like gargled gravel with a hot-tar chaser. Jimmy must have done something to irritate her.
“Officer Coors from Red Bluff PD called,” she growls, “said he’s working on a case with you?”
“Yeah, what’d he say?”
Silence.
“Diane?”
“Some joke. It’s not funny … not even clever.” Gravel, gravel, gravel. “It’s actually sophomoric. You can’t do any better than that?”
“Do any better than what?”
“Knock—it—off, Steps. It’s not funny. And I’ve got better things to do, hon.”
“Okay, let’s try this again. Officer Coors. Red Bluff PD. Case. Message?”
“And I’ll say again—it’s not funny. Joke’s over.”
“Diane, you’re not making sense?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, and I’m not falling for it.”
“Uh … no, I don’t. What do you mean? What joke?”
“Come on, Steps, I’m an analyst. I know when I’m being jerked around.”
“Diane, I’m going to fly up there and take away your iPad, your coffee, and the chocolate-covered macadamia nuts you keep hidden at the back of your bottom drawer if you don’t tell me what you’re talking about.”
“Coors! He’s working on a case with you. Beer comes in a case. Coors is a beer. I even had him spell it to make sure I was hearing him correctly. C-O-O-R-S. I wrote it down.”
“Wow!” I blurt into the phone. “That—is an epic fail, Diane. Epic. That one goes on the board.” The “board” is the whiteboard in the conference room, the bottom right corner of which is devoted to a laundry list of significant screwups. Jimmy and I dominate the board, while Les has one entry and Marty has two. Diane has never made the board. Until now.
The phone is silent.
After a moment, Diane’s voice grates through the earpiece, paving the way for the words that follow. “Explain. Please.”
“Officer Coors is Danny Coors,” I respond in a pleasant, oh-so-cheerful voice. “He’s with Red Bluff PD, just like he said, and he’s trying to get some data off a dead GPS found in Ashley Sprague’s car.”
More silence.
“Diane?”
Her voice is subdued—unusual for Diane. “Well, that partially explains the second part of the message.”
“How do you mean?” I can’t help smiling.
“He said, ‘Memory’s shot,’ and ‘If beer can’t fix it, it’s hopeless.’”
I chuckle.
I don’t even try to hide it.
“Not beer as in B-E-E-R,” I say, “Behr as in B-E-H-R. She’s the lab tech.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
June 29, 12:07 P.M.
Tami pokes her head into the conference room and opens her mouth to speak, only to become transfixed by my fingers as they sort out the water chestnuts from a bowl of chicken stir-fry. “That’s the best part, you know,” she says after a second.
“Not in my book,” I reply, glancing up only briefly. “They have the texture of raw potato and no flavor to speak of. Some starving person ate one five thousand years ago and didn’t die of it, so now we’re stuck with them as accepted cuisine. It’s the same thing with snails, balut, and scores of other foods I don’t care to think about while I’m eating.”
“Balut?”
I look up from my stir-fry grudgingly. Didn’t I just say it’s something I don’t care to think about while I’m eating? “It’s a duck embryo that’s boiled alive in its shell and then eaten, starting with the broth around the embryo, which is sipped from the egg before peeling.”
Tami half gags. “That’s disgusting!”
“As I said.” My fingers are back to work on the water chestnuts.
In my peripheral vision I see her watching me, and then she slowly shakes her head. “I still say you’re missing the best part.”
“Not—in—my—book,” I say, plucking a disgusting morsel with each word. The last one I toss in her direction. Instead of dodging it, she catches it and pops it into her mouth.
As the receptionist for the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, Tami’s no stranger to odd behavior; she sees it every day … and not just from deputies and the occasional FBI tracker. To the public, she’s the face of the sheriff’s office; to the deputies, she’s a chokepoint: a filter.
She’s like an old 1940s switchboard operator, but instead of phones, she plugs people into the right slot. Sex offenders go to a Sex Crimes detective for registration, concealed firearms applicants are directed to the Records Division for fingerprinting and application submission, witnesses are handed off to detectives, those waiting for a polygraph sweat it out in a lobby chair until the examiner is ready for them, victims queue up to see the station deputy, packages are received, and Hershey’s Kisses are handed out to anyone walking by with a need for chocolate.
Tami has the place wired, and with a willow-tree waist, black hair, and a smoky tan, she has the looks to match her natural talent and charisma.
“There’s a guy in the lobby who says he needs to talk to the FBI. He wouldn’t give me any details but said it’s about Alison Lister.”