17 A Wanted Man

ends. It always is.’
    ‘So why did they loop back south?’
    Goodman said, ‘For some other reason, I guess.’
    Sorenson set off walking south, fast over the frozen gravel, past the back of a closed-up diner, past the back of a no-name bar, past the back of a broken-down motel, past the back of a lit-up and open convenience store.
    She stopped.
    Ahead of her was a wide gap, and then another bar, and then another cocktail lounge, and then nothing at all until the other gas station.
    She said, ‘Let’s assume they didn’t want a drink or a meal. Let’s assume they weren’t interested in a room for the night. And if they wanted gas, they’d have used the nearer station. So why did they come back this way?’
    ‘The convenience store,’ Goodman said. ‘They needed something.’
    They hustled around to its front door and went inside to bright cold fluorescent glare and the smell of old coffee and microwaved food and antiseptic floor cleaner. A bored clerk behind the register didn’t even raise his head. Sorenson scanned the ceiling. There were no cameras.
    The aisles were close-packed with junk food and canned food and bread and cookies and basic toiletries, and automotive requirements like quarts of oil and gallons of antifreeze and screen wash and clip-on cup holders and patent self-extinguishing ashtrays and collapsible snow shovels. There were rubber overshoes for wet conditions, and tube socks, and white underwear for a dollar an item, and cheap T-shirts, and cheap denim shirts, and canvas work shirts, and canvas work pants.
    Sorenson took a close look at the clothing aisle, and then she headed straight for the register, her ID at the ready. The clerk looked up.
    ‘Help you?’ he said.
    ‘Between about twenty past and half past midnight, who was in here?’
    ‘Me,’ the guy said.
    ‘No customers?’
    ‘Maybe one.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘A tall skinny guy in a shirt and tie.’
    ‘No coat?’
    ‘It was like he ran in from a car. No time to get cold. No one walks here. This is the middle of nowhere.’
    ‘Did you see the car?’
    The clerk shook his head. ‘I think the guy parked around the back. He sort of came around the corner. I guess that was my impression, anyway.’
    Sorenson asked, ‘What did he buy?’
    The guy straightened out a curling helix of register tape spilling out of a slot. He traced his thumbnail over pale blue ink, in an irregular pattern, stop and go, leaping backward from one time stamp to another, then pausing at an eleven-line entry.
    ‘Six items,’ he said. ‘Plus subtotal, tax, total, tender, and change.’
    ‘He paid cash?’
    ‘He must have, if I made change.’
    ‘You don’t remember?’
    ‘I don’t pay much attention. This is not a dream job, lady.’
    ‘What did he buy?’
    The guy examined the tape. ‘Three of something, and three of something else.’
    ‘Three of what, and three of what else? This was tonight. This is not ancient history we’re talking about here. We’re not asking for a prodigious feat of memory.’
    ‘Water,’ the guy said. ‘I remember that. Three bottles, from the refrigerator cabinet.’
    ‘And?’
    The guy looked at the tape again.
    He said, ‘Three other things, all the same price.’
    ‘What three other things?’
    ‘I don’t remember.’
    Sorenson said, ‘Have you been smoking tonight?’
    The guy went wary.
    He said, ‘Smoking what?’
    ‘Maybe that’s a question for Sheriff Goodman. You in shape for a search tonight?’
    The guy didn’t answer that. He just bounced his hand up and down, rehearsing a triumphant finger snap, waiting to remember. Trying to remember. Then finally he smiled.
    ‘Shirts,’ he said. ‘Three denim shirts, on special. Blue. Small, medium, and large. One of each.’
    Sorenson and Goodman walked out of the store and looped around to the back lot again. Sorenson said, ‘Karen Delfuenso was their hostage and they planned to use her as their smokescreen, so they couldn’t let her stay in the skimpy top. Too memorable. They knew there could be roadblocks. So they made her change.’
    ‘They all changed,’ Goodman said. ‘Three people, three shirts.’
    Sorenson nodded.
    ‘Bloodstains,’ she said. ‘Like the eyewitness told us. At least one of their suit coats was wet.’
    ‘We screwed up,’ Goodman said. ‘Both of us. I told the roadblocks two men in black suits. Then any two men. You told them any two men. But it wasn’t any two men. It was any three people, two men and a