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“Becky,” Will said with feeling.

“What?” Becky snapped her gum. She looked extremely pleased with herself. “Fuck them. I hope they share the box with the suits too.”

Will snorted, caught off guard.

Becky beamed. “Oh, so he does laugh.”

“Shut up,” Will said, feeling himself blush.

“Cute,” Becky said, and reached for one of the gossip magazines.

Will retreated to go front some shelves that didn’t need it. If those officers had to come use their restroom soon, he didn’t think he’d be able to look guiltless. Best to leave that to Becky, she seemed more than capable.

###

“Will,” Becky called from the front. It was into the afternoon, but the day was crawling. There were still two cop cars in the lot, and shoppers had stayed away.

“Yeah?” Will paused in fiddling with the soup cans to make all the labels the same way. It was better than standing around, staring at the wall.

“Do you wanna work on cleaning up the stockroom? There’s a bunch of boxes that need to be broken down back there. You know, since it’s so slow today.”

“Yeah, sure,” Will said, happy to have any amount of direction.

“Thanks!” Becky chirped as Will headed toward the back.

There was a small mountain of boxes piled near the back door. Will grabbed the box cutter and went to work.

It was good, tedious labor. He cut, stacked, and compressed cardboard. It had been building up for a while, so it was nice to get to it. He was right in the middle of it when he heard a noise from the front of the store. Voices.

Quickly, Will returned the boxcutter and patted down his pants to get rid of the cardboard fibers. Just as Will went to push through the swing door and back into the main store, he heard a man speak.

It was Gary, asking for William Payton.

“What do you want with him?” Becky asked.

“We’d just like to ask him a few questions,” this came from a second voice. It was familiar, another one of the guys they’d gone to high school with who’d always taken issue with Will. Richie?

Will pressed his ear to the door to better hear.

Becky snapped her gum loudly. “If you’re askin’ about that construction stuff, he ain’t gonna know nothing. He’s not one for talkin’, ya’ll know that.”

There was an inflection to her voice, something Will hadn’t heard before. It was like her customer service voice, but sharper.

“It’s standard procedure,” Gary said. “We’ve spoken to you and Adrián, we have yet to speak to Mr. Payton.”

Becky laughed, and it was cutting. “Y’all really don’t have any leads, huh?”

“Becky,” Richie said, clearly annoyed. They dated for a millisecond in high school. Will hadn’t thought about that in years.

“It’s Ms. Dejoy to you in that outfit,” she snapped. “And don’t think you can intimidate me Richie, I’ve seen your momma beat your ass for talkin’ back. You need another lesson on manners?”

Gary made a sound like he was trying not to laugh.

“What the hell Becky–!” Richie started.

“Ms. Dejoy,” she interrupted.

“Look,” Gary said, trying to rescue Richie. “We just wanna speak to Will, real quick. Just to see if he’s seen anything.”