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“Really?” Of course really. Holly knows long stretches from at least sixty movies herself. Maybe a hundred.
“Yes. You know, you’re gonna need a bigger boat, get busy living or get busy dying, stuff like that.”
“You can’t handle the truth,” Holly can’t resist saying.
“Right, that’s a famous one. Tell you something, Ms. Gibney, in my business the customer is always right. Unless it’s kids wanting cigarettes or beer, that is. But it doesn’t stop me from thinking, does it?”
“Of course not.”
“And what I thought about this kid is that he was speedballing. I think he’d go up there, smoke some dope to get high, then chug a can of P-Co’ to put chrome on it. They quit making that soda two or three years ago, and I’m not surprised. I tried a can of it once and just jittered. Anyway, that guy was a regular. Like clockwork. He’d get off his shift, drive his blatty little moped here, buy his candy and soda, sometimes rolling papers, talk a little, then off he went.”
“And when did he stop coming in?”
“I don’t know exactly. I’ve been working at that Jet Mart a long time. Seen em come and seen em go. But Trump was running for president, I remember that because we joked about it. Seems like the joke was on us.” He pauses, perhaps thinking over what he just said. “But if you voted for him, I’m only kidding.”
Like fun you were, Holly thinks. “I voted for Clinton. You called him the bowling guy?”
“Sure, because he worked at the Strike Em Out. It was right on his shirt.”
2
They talk a little more, but Herrera can’t remember anything else of value. It shouldn’t be hard to find out the bowling guy’s name, though. Holly cautions herself that it may not mean anything. And yet… same store, same street, no car, about the same time of evening when Bonnie Rae went missing. And Drive-In Rock, where Holly herself was sitting after finding Bonnie’s earring.
She checks her iPad and sees that Strike Em Out Lanes opens at eleven AM. They’ll know the bowling guy’s name. She heads for the door, then gets another idea. Imani McGuire didn’t allow her to record their interview, but Holly recapped the high points on her phone afterward. She opens that recording now, but even as she’s about to push play, the name of Imani’s husband comes to her. Yard, impound yard.
She finds the number for the city impound and asks if Mr. Yardley McGuire is there.
“Speaking.”
“Mr. McGuire, my name is Holly Gibney. I spoke with your wife yesterday—”
“About Ellen,” he says. “Immi says you had a good talk. Don’t suppose you tracked Ellen down, did you?”
“No, but I may have stumbled across someone else who went missing a few years earlier. Might not be connected, but it could be. He drove a moped that was covered with stickers. One of them said NUKE THE GAY WHALES. Another one might have been a Grateful Dea—”
“Oh sure, I remember that moped,” Yard McGuire says. “It was here for a year at least, maybe longer. Jerry Holt finally took it home and gave it to his middle kid, who’d been yelling for one. But he tuned it up first, because—”
“Because it was noisy. Went blak-blak-blak.”
Yard laughs. “Yuh, pretty much just like that.”
“Where was it found? Or abandoned?”
“Gee, no idea. Jerry might know. And listen, Miz Gibney, it wasn’t like Jer stoled it, all right? The license plate was gone, and if there was a registration number, nobody bothered to run it through DMV.org. Not for a little kettle-burner like that.”
Holly gets Jerry Holt’s number, thanks Yardley, and tells him to give her best to Imani. Then she calls Holt. After three rings she gets voicemail, leaves a message, and asks him to call back. Then she walks around her office, running her hands through her hair until it looks like a haystack after a windstorm. Even without knowing the bowling guy’s name she’s ninety per cent sure that he’s another victim of the person she’s coming to think of as the Red Bank Predator. It’s unlikely that the predator is an old white lady with sciatica, but possibly the old lady is covering up for someone? Cleaning up after someone? Maybe even her son? God knows such things have happened before. Holly recently read a story about an honor killing where an old lady held her daughter-in-law’s legs so her outraged son could behead her. The family that slays together stays together—that type of thing.
She thinks of calling Pete. She even thinks of calling Isabelle Jaynes at the cop shop. But she doesn’t think seriously of calling either one. She wants to roll this herself.
3
The lot of Strike Em Out Lanes is big but sparsely populated. Holly parks and as she’s opening her door, her phone rings. It’s Jerry Holt.
“Sure, I remember that bike. When nobody came for it after a year—no, more like sixteen months—I gave it to my kid. Does someone want it back?”
“No, nothing like that. I just—”
“Good, because Greg wrecked it doing jumps in a gravel pit near here. Damn idiot broke his arm. My wife gave me sixteen kinds of hell.”
