Louis was silent.
“Damn it, what do you want?” Shockey said in a fierce whisper.
“Cheeseburger,” Louis said, staring at the woman with the spatula.
Shockey turned to the woman. “Double on kaiser, Irma.”
She scowled at Louis, slapped two balls onto the grill, and smashed them down.
“I wanted a cheeseburger,” Louis said to Shockey.
“Forget it.”
Shockey slid his tray toward the register, pulling out his wallet.
“What about my fries?” Louis asked.
“Forget them, too.”
A kid in a hairnet deposited two paper-wrapped lumps on their trays, and Shockey paid. They wove through the bodies to the table by the front window. Shockey slid into the wood bench, keeping his eyes on the window and the door. Louis had no choice but to balance his ass on the small wooden swivel chair. His eyes took in the grease- stained walls and battered old tables.
“Why do you come here?” Louis said.
Shockey nodded toward the greasy paper lump. “Try it.”
With a shake of his head, Louis unwrapped the paper and took a bite of the burger. It was delicious. Even without the cheese.
Shockey was still working on his five-patty monster with a fried egg by the time Louis finished his. He was trying to decide whether he wanted to square off again with the griddle woman but decided he would wait to eat dinner later with Joe.
He got a glance at his watch. If he got out of there in the next half-hour, he could still make Echo Bay by ten.
Shockey saw him. “You got somewhere to go?”
“No,” Louis said, wiping his hands with a paper napkin. “So, why don’t you tell me why I’m here?”
Shockey set his burger down and grabbed a napkin. “Like I told you on the phone,” he said, “it’s about a missing persons case. A twenty-four-year-old woman by the name of Jean Brandt was reported missing by her husband December 4, 1980. A BOLO was put out on her ’71 Ford Falcon, which disappeared with her, according to the husband. A week later, when you were on patrol, you spotted the car parked at the Amtrak station down on Depot Street.”
Louis tried to bring the memory back, and it came slowly. It had been an icy night crammed with nuisance calls and fender-benders. He had a habit of rifling through the BOLOs and alerts, hoping to break the boredom of the shift. The old red Falcon was parked in the last space at the train station, pillowed with snow, one of the tires flat. He didn’t remember much else except the license plate. It was hanging, as if someone had tried to take it off but had given up after stripping the screw.
But one memory was clear. The plate had not been from Washtenaw County. It had been from Livingston County, north of Ann Arbor. Which meant that the missing woman’s disappearance would have been Livingston County’s jurisdiction, regardless of where her car was found. So the only way Shockey would be involved now was if her body had turned up in Ann Arbor.
“Where’d you find her?” Louis asked.
Shockey cleared his throat. “What?”
“The body. You guys found it, right?”
“No,” Shockey said.
“What about these new leads? Do you have a witness or something besides the car that connects her to Ann Arbor?”
Shockey pushed his tray away. “Not exactly.”
“So, why are you pursuing a cold case that doesn’t even belong to you?”
Shockey took a moment to grab another napkin and wipe his face. “I’m kind of in charge of the cold cases. This is one that always stuck in my craw. I met the husband, Owen Brandt, when he tried to pick up the Falcon. He was a real scumbag, and he said then he thought his wife had run off on him. My gut always told me he killed her and left the car here to make us think she left the state.”
Louis glanced at his watch.
“I’ll ask you again. You got somewhere to go, peeper?” Shockey said.
Louis looked across the table at Shockey. He was about forty but looked older. And in that moment, everything about the man seemed to crystallize. He was a dinosaur, assigned to brush the dust off a few cold cases while the young cops — the ones with diplomas — were pushing their way up in the ranks. Shockey was hearing their footsteps and was probably fighting like hell to hang on to his gold badge. Solving the case of a missing wayward wife in quiet little Ann Arbor just might help him do that. At least, for a few more years.
Louis knew, too, why Shockey had wanted to meet here instead of at the police station. He didn’t want the other cops to know he had to call on a PI to help him do his job.
“Look,” Louis said, “all I did was spot the vehicle. I sent my report to Livingston. The car was towed, and I was done. What the hell could I offer the case now?”
“You searched the car, right?”
“Of course I did. It was procedure.”
“You search it good?”
“Yeah, I searched it good.”
“You sure about that, peeper?”
What was this? He didn’t need this shit. First, he couldn’t get a cheeseburger, and now this old wash-up was on his case. But even as his body was tensing to get up and move forward, get on the road so he could see Joe, his brain was moving backward.
Back to that night at the train station, standing out in the bone-chilling sleet, chipping at the ice on the door handles so he could look inside the car. The car was unlocked, and he found nothing inside but cigarette butts and an old Arby’s bag. The trunk latch was broken, held closed by a rusted coat hanger. Cold, wet, and miserable, he had run his flashlight over the mess of tools and old newspapers, slammed the trunk shut, and retreated to his squad car to call it in.
He met Shockey’s eyes across the table. The question was still there.
“I didn’t miss anything,” Louis said.
“I still got the car,” Shockey said. He had the barest grin on his face. It pissed Louis off.
“How about if we go take another look?” Shockey said.
The impound lot was in a neighborhood of trailer parks and storage rental barns out by the airport. Shockey pulled the sedan up to the gates of the razor-wired chain-link fence, got out and hustled to the gates.
Louis watched through the slow sweep of the wipers as Shockey unlocked the heavy padlocks and swung the gate open. Louis was staring at the big yellow sign that shouted beware attack dogs as Shockey slid back into the driver’s seat.
“What about the dogs?” Louis asked.
“There’s no friggin’ dogs,” Shockey said, putting the car into gear.
Once inside the lot, Shockey parked the sedan at the side of a large metal hangar of a building. Louis got out into the cold drizzle.
A low whining noise drew his eyes up, but he couldn’t see anything in the rapidly fading light. The whine grew into an ear-splitting scream as a smudge of lights emerged from the clouds. Louis almost ducked as the jet streaked overhead and was gone.
“This way,” Shockey said.
They walked behind the building, down a row of cars, which seemed to grow older and dirtier the farther they went. They passed some motorcycles, a few boats on trailers, and an old tractor. Then came rows of old refrigerators, bicycles, and a stack of doors. The farther they went into the yard, the rustier and more random the piles of debris became. It was like some old cemetery where the fresh graves still had someone to tend them while the old ones had long been abandoned.
Louis stopped and lifted a plastic-encased tag hanging from a rusty bicycle. Written on it was a case number,
