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The barman shook his head. “I don’t really watch the news,” he said. “I work late night shifts, so.”
“You’re here during the day,” Nate said.
“Yeah?” the barman asked.
“It’s daytime right now,” Nate repeated. “Do you work days, or nights?”
“Oh!” he said, pointing at Nate as if he finally got the question. “Yeah, both. That’s why I don’t watch the news.”
Laura blinked. She wasn’t sure whether he was deliberately trying to mislead them and get them to ignore him, or whether he was just dumb and her suspicious investigator mind was working overtime.
“Here we are!” the manager exclaimed, walking out into the bar with a laptop held aloft. “I logged in already so you can see the system. It looks like there was a lot of staff turnover back then, too.”
Laura’s heart sank a little. “So, no one who worked for a long time period, like you?”
“Well, yes.” The manager sat down, showing them the screen, and clicking on one of the entries. “Just the one. This guy was a bartender here when both of the women went missing, I guess, because he worked here for three and a half years. He never made manager, though.”
“Huh,” Nate said. “I wonder why that was.”
“Some people don’t want the responsibility, I guess,” the manager said. “I can give you his details. This address might not be up to date anymore, but we wouldn’t have updated it if he moved, so it’s the best I can do. His name was Jayson Shaw.”
Nate looked at Laura, his eyebrows shooting up. She could almost read his mind, what he was thinking.His name starts with a J.Just like July and Joy.
“Jayson Shaw?” the blonde barman repeated thoughtfully.
All three of the other heads in the room swung around to look at him.
“Does that ring a bell?” Laura asked.
“Maybe.” The barman shrugged. “I don’t know. But I think I heard my sister talk about him. She’s a couple of years older than me and she used to come here with her friends. That’s why I started coming here. And then I saw the poster that they wanted bar staff, you know?”
“What did your sister say about him?” Laura asked, praying for patience.
“Um, I think she was telling her friends to stay away from him,” he said. “They were all sharing stories. I got kinda like protective big bro, you know? Only, I’m the little bro, but like, I wanted to be the big bro type. They said he was, like, not someone you could trust if you got drunk. That he tried to hit on the girls who were almost passed out and take them home.”
That was a pretty big allegation. If he was taking advantage of women…
Maybe he was also taking revenge on the ones who said no at first, by making sure no one else could have them either.
“Well, thank you for that,” Laura said. She took her notebook out of her pocket and scrawled down the address and phone number listed on the spreadsheet as she spoke. “If you do happen to run into anyone who was working here around that time, or even a regular customer who might remember it, give us a call.”
“We will, definitely,” the manager said, getting to her feet to walk them out. “If two of our customers have been victims, then we need to do something about it. I haven’t really been doing this all that long, and I never really got any training on this kind of thing. Could you tell me anything – I mean, anything that we can do to make our customers safer?”
Laura considered that for a moment. “Tell your staff to watch out for women leaving on their own, especially drunk ones,” she said. “Set up a good relationship with a local taxi service, get them to have a cab on standby at all times during the night in exchange for making sure those single women get in the cabs. Don’t let them walk home alone.”
“And watch out for spiked drinks, too,” Nate added. “Your staff are likely to be the only ones who are sober in the place, so you have to make sure that they look out for your customers who might not be paying as much attention.”
“We’re already doing most of that,” the manager said. “The taxis wait outside because they know they’ll get the business. Sometimes at the end of the night, though, there aren’t enough for everyone. I think people sometimes walk home because of that. Or because of the cost.”
“Then you might consider introducing a shuttle service back towards the center of town, since you’re so far out,” Laura suggested. “If you charge to take groups and parties to and from the bar, you might even find your attendance going up. Personally, though, I’d offer the ride back as a free service for anyone who willingly turns in their car keys instead of trying to drive home.”
“Got it,” the manager nodded. They had walked to the door already, and Laura blinked slightly at the contrast in the bright yet pale sunshine that awaited them. “I hope you catch whoever did this.”
“So do we,” Laura said, grimly.
And with all those Js lining up in a neat little row, she knew exactly where to start.
CHAPTER TEN
