“Rewind it a bit,” Hoskins tells Davey, who twists a knob and pushes some buttons. “Look. Right there. He stops for a second. See how his head moved? Like he’s listening. Someone at the next pump said something, and he nodded. He might’ve said something, but we can’t see his face from this angle.”
“Can we look at this from a different camera?” Loren asks.
“I can do a lot better than that.” Davey pounds on the keyboard, his fingers moving faster than Hoskins can see, and then there’s suddenly a new image frozen on the screen. It’s a still of a young man, dark-haired and dark-eyed, his face a ghostly smear on the recording. “This is the guy Weber would’ve been talking to. And there’s his license plate.”
“I’ve seen him before,” Loren says, getting so close his nose is nearly touching the screen, the image is all pixelated at that distance, worthless, but Loren doesn’t back up. “He was with Sammie. At the mall. They were at dinner. He’s just a kid.”
Davey passes a slip of paper to Hoskins with the license plate number.
“Good work,” Hoskins says, patting the boy on the shoulder. “You should come work for the PD one day.”
Davey shrugs, smiles. It’s a smile Hoskins knows exactly how to read: Thanks, but no thanks.
DEAN
He’d turned his phone off the night before, so he wouldn’t be tempted to answer when she called, and checked in at a motel. It was one of those extended-stay places, where there’s a whole living room setup, and a small kitchen table. A coffee maker with the smallest pot he’s ever seen and those tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner that’re never quite enough. Life in miniature. There’s something desperately sad about a place like this, because a hotel isn’t supposed to be a home, or even a shadow of a home, but he’d gone there anyway, checked in then went to the bar next door and picked up a box of buffalo wings and brought it back to his room, flipped through the TV and couldn’t find anything because the channels were all out of order and not what he’s used to, and ended up going to bed. But he didn’t sleep, not much, because Sammie’s not there beside him. They’ve had their problems, but they’ve always slept in the same bed every night from the beginning, and he’s used to the weight of her next to him, the smell of the perfume she uses.
All of this, Sammie’s unhappiness, her infidelity, it’s because they didn’t have a wedding, he thinks. It’s not all of the reason she’s unhappy, but it’s part of it. They’d dated for eight months when he proposed, and she’d been so excited, so ready to look for a dress and a cake and then he’d had to tell her that they couldn’t afford it, it was silly to spend the money on a single day, just a few hours, really, and she’d agreed, and he’d thought that was the end of it. They signed the papers and ate a nice dinner and both of them went right back to work the next day, and he’d thought it was fine, being married was hardly different from dating, and he liked it that way. No bump in the road. But then, after they’d been married for two years, Sammie started bringing home magazines full of wedding gowns and floral arrangements, she said they could have a ceremony and renew their vows, but he’d still thought it was a waste of money, and she dropped it. Sammie didn’t nag; when she was angry she didn’t talk at all, she wanted to be alone, and he sometimes couldn’t tell when something was wrong until it was too late, and she’d scream until her face had gone an alarming shade of red and he thought she’d pass out from the effort.
She was unhappy because they didn’t have a wedding, but it was more than that. It was because he was a disappointment. Like his job. He’d worked at the same marketing firm for the last ten years, he’d never been offered a promotion or even had interest in one, because he was good at his job, he was happy, he didn’t think life was all about work, but he knew Sammie saw it as a flaw. She had girlfriends whose husbands made a lot of money, guys who were lawyers or doctors or executives, and those women went on nice vacations and had nice cars, and Sammie didn’t complain, no, that wasn’t her, but he could see it in her eyes. The disappointment.
She’d brought it up only once, when they were side-by-side in bed. The lights were all out and they weren’t touching, the blankets were tamped down between them, keeping them apart.
“I thought you were a different man when I married you,” she’d said. “I didn’t expect things to be like this.”
She wasn’t cruel about it, only matter-of-fact, and then she rolled over on her side, away from him, and went to sleep. He’d wanted to grab her shoulder, to see the startled look in her eyes when she woke up, and demand to know what she meant, that she explain how he was so different, tell him what she wanted.