Mortal Danger

from the 7-Eleven said she had gotten up in the night to use the bathroom, and she’d seen all the store’s lights go off sometime between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m.
    She was shown the suspect from the security camera, but she didn’t recognize him as anyone she’d ever seen before. Disappointingly, none of the other neighboring residents recognized him either.
    Jerry Trettevik talked to Bubba Baker’s mother, who said that her son did have a “mental problem.” Bubba himself was eager to talk to the detective. He admitted that he’d been in the store on Sunday night.
    “But I left at one fifteen a.m.,” he said.
    “Were you there any other time that night?”
    Bubba nodded. “I was in the store around eleven thirty p.m., just when Julie came to work. I saw a big, black man there. He was very dark-skinned—not like me.”
    Trettevik showed Bubba the hidden camera’s pictures, and Bubba nodded his head vigorously.
    “That’s the man I seen at eleven thirty.”
    “Do you know him? Ever see him before?”
    “No, sir. I never seen him before.”
     
    The canvassing and interviewing spread out, casting a wider net over the neighborhood. Myrle Carner and Al Lima talked to patrons in nearby taverns. They showed the photo of the man in the fatigue jacket and cap to customers at the Jolo Tavern. Some of the regulars said the man was “vaguely familiar,” but no one could put a name to the face.
    They had better luck at the 19th Hole tavern at South Columbia and Beacon. The female bartender there remembered that a husky black male had been in on September 24 at 11:00 p.m.
    “He sat at the counter and ordered wine. I’d never seenhim before. He left but he came back about forty-five minutes later and bought a bottle of beer to take with him.”
    “What’d he look like? How was he dressed—beyond the jacket?” Carner asked.
    “He was about five feet eleven and weighed more than two hundred pounds. I’d say he was maybe thirty-five. Had a full mustache and a goatee.”
    Shown the photo, the woman nodded. “Yes. I’m positive that was the man who was here on the twenty-fourth.”
    The stranger hadn’t seemed nervous or angry or in a hurry. He hadn’t been back since that Sunday at midnight.
    Now more witnesses were forthcoming. Another tavern patron recalled a black man wearing a jeans jacket—but he was with another man. “I had the impression that the two men were together. The second guy wore a fatigue jacket and a blue cap with a bill. He had a goatee, mustache, glasses.”
    Carner showed him the security camera photos, and he quickly identified the man shown. “He was the second man that I saw here at the 19th Hole.”
    Larry Stewart and Jerry Trettevik received information from two patrol units that had worked First Watch on Sunday–Monday. They had been dispatched to the 7-Eleven on Beacon Hill at 4:00 a.m. Monday morning, shortly after they’d begun their shift.
    “It was a ‘suspicious circumstances’ call,” one officer said. “A passerby phoned it in. When we got there, the store was dark, and we saw no activity in or around it. We assumed that everything was all right. We figured they’d just closed up early on Sunday night.”
    Detectives located the man who’d called the police. He said he and a friend had gone to the 7-Eleven a little before 4:00 a.m. to buy cigarettes and found nobody behind the counter and the lights mostly off.
    “I walked in anyway, and this black guy wearing a green fatigue jacket and a cap came out of the back room to tell me the store was closed.
    “I told him all I wanted was a couple of packs of cigarettes, and he grabbed them and gave them to me. He charged me a dollar a pack. When I got home, I got to thinking about it, and it seemed really strange. I called 911 and asked for somebody to go by and check it out.”
    Shown the photos, both the complainant and his friend agreed that the alleged robber was the man they had seen in the store—but they hadn’t seen Laura Baylis at all.
    “The guy kept his right hand in his pocket the whole time, and he was really nervous. He kept looking back at the back of the store. The big store sign was out then, but the store lights were still on.”
    Citizens were trying to help. They searched their memories for anything peculiar or disturbing that might have happened on Sunday night–Monday morning. A Beacon Hill resident called Trettevik and Stewart to say that he, too, had gone into the 7-Eleven between 3:00