There were three truck stops along I-5 just outside of Bakersfield, but only one of them had a twenty-four-hour diner, meaning it had to be the place where Willie Murphy had his breakfast at about 4:00 a.m. the morning Hayley had disappeared.
Murphy’s story still didn’t make sense. For one thing—why Bakersfield? She hadn’t been able to find any evidence that Hayley Dewalt knew anyone at all in Bakersfield—no friends, no family—and it wasn’t like it was some spring break mecca. But it was the detail that made her want to believe him. It was too random, too unlikely, to be anything but true. If he was trying to save his butt, he’d have come up with a better story.
She parked outside a low building with dented and dirty aluminum siding. A buzzing neon sign overhead read LUCY’S ALL NITE, with a red neon pie below. A gas station blazed with light on the other side of the parking lot. About fifteen trucks were parked in slanting rows between diner and diesel. It was nearly 6:30 p.m. and the regimented palm trees around the edge of the parking lot sent long shadows across the ground. In the east the sky was already a deepening blue.
She went into the diner, a bundle of sleigh bells on the door handle announcing her arrival. The inside was hot and steamy, the smell of burnt coffee and bacon hanging like a dense fog on the air. The walls were covered in cheap seventies wood paneling. Red-and-white gingham oilcloth covered the tables, and foam stuffing sprouted out of the holes in the vinyl booths like mushrooms.
A few stray travelers loitered at the tables, dragging french fries through globs of ketchup or nursing cups of coffee. At the counter, a wall of plaid flannel faced her, the backs of several men and one particularly barrel-chested woman. It seemed too quiet to Veronica, especially after all the revelry of Neptune. No one was talking except for two men in mesh-backed hats, who were arguing loudly about a boxing match.
“If his damn corner hadn’t told him he had to finish it that round, he would’ve knocked Chavez into next Tuesday.”
“You’re fucking dreaming.”
A waitress with a hard crest of bottle-red hair and a mouth ringed with lines approached Veronica with a menu. She wore a yellow puff-sleeved dress that made her look jaundiced. Her badge said her name was Geena. “What can I do for you, honey?”
“Hi. I’m … I’m hoping you can answer a few questions for me. I’m investigating a missing persons case in Neptune, and I’m trying to figure out if this guy came through here. It would have been two weeks ago—the morning of the eleventh.” She held up her phone, where she’d loaded a photo of Willie Murphy. In it he wore an aloha shirt hanging open to show off his skinny chest. A tattoo in Gothic lettering spelled out BAD DOG across his sternum. He held a forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor up for the camera in a toast. She’d gotten it from an article on Trish Turley’s blog; Turley had probably gotten it from Facebook.
The waitress looked down at the picture, then shook her head. “Lots of people come through here. It’s hard to say. Any idea what time he’d have been here?”
“It would have been early in the morning. Four or five a.m.”
Geena frowned. “Well, I work four p.m. to midnight, so I wouldn’t have seen him. You might come back tomorrow, before eight. One of the graveyard girls may know something.”
Disappointment rose up in Veronica’s gut. She hadn’t considered the time of day, but now it seemed obvious—anyone who would have been on the clock at 4:00 a.m. probably wouldn’t be serving the dinner crowd. She turned to go.
“Oh, wait!”
Geena’s eyes had gone very round. She smiled, the heavy smoker’s pucker of wrinkles bunching around her lips. She turned to look at the counter, where a pretty bronze-skinned girl wearing the same yellow dress was refilling the truckers’ coffee. “Rosa usually works the night shift but she’s covering evenings this week. Chantelle just had her baby and we had to turn the schedule on its head. Rosa, honey, we’ve got a question for you when you have a sec.”
The girl’s dark eyes flickered up over the slouching line of flannel-clad backs. She nodded, finished pouring, and put the carafe back on the warmer. Wiping her hands on the edge of her apron, she pushed her way out from behind the counter.
“What’s up, Geena?”
“This little girl has a question about someone who may’ve come through a week ago.”
“Two weeks ago,” Veronica cut in, holding out her phone. “This guy. It would have been early.”
Rosa stared down at the small screen, her brow crinkling. She was younger than Veronica—maybe even close to Hayley’s age—with round, flushed cheeks and a bow tie of a mouth. “Yeah, I remember him. He drank like fifty cups of coffee and stiffed me on the tip. It seemed like he was in a really bad mood.”
“Was anyone with him? Did he talk to anyone?”
“No. He sat right over there”—she gestured to a booth beneath the window—“kind of scowling. He just looked out the window and ate breakfast. Didn’t say anything to anyone.”
Heart beating fast, Veronica pulled one of her flyers from her bag. She showed to it both women. “Have you seen her at all in the past two weeks?”
Both shook their heads.
She thanked them for their time and gave them the flyer, just in case. Some of the people in the diner were watching her now, with hard, curious eyes. She left them to their tired dinner, the bells jingling behind her.
Veronica stood for a few minutes in the parking lot, letting her eyes drift over the surroundings. The ground was parched and cracked, with shoots of green grasping up through chinks in the paving. Across the highway a threadbare-looking motel sat like a squat unfrosted cake, the neon in the vacancy sign stuttering on and off. The hills stretched out behind it, dotted with scrub and low stunted cedars, birds wheeling overhead in the wind. Besides that, there was nothing. The air smelled faintly of manure, and of exhaust, and of something sour and unclean. She took a few steps away from the diner.
Then her eyes settled on the sign. It was one of the plain green markers the California Department of Transportation used to indicate distances. How far to the next landmark, the next rest stop, the next city.
SAN JOSE—239 MILES
SAN FRANCISCO–280 MILES
And even though it wasn’t listed on the sign, she could do the math in her head. She’d driven it dozens of times herself:
STANFORD—263 MILES