“But I can do it alone.”
“I can do shit alone too, but you’re always there to help me,” he says while he gets dressed in the first clothes he comes across: a long-sleeved shirt and a hoodie with jeans instead of the slacks and button-up he usually wears to work. I do the same, dressing for warmth, having learned from our experience earlier today.
With coats, gloves, and scarves—which I would normally never wear since they offer such an easy way for someone to choke me, but Gabriel wrapped it around my throat and smiled at me so I vow to never remove it—we go out the door.
Gabriel is half asleep the entire drive as I head toward the zoo.
“The Christmas lights are so pretty at night. We should decorate our house.”
“I’ll have someone over to do it tomorrow,” I promise.
“We can do it ourselves.”
“Any free time should involve you naked, and it’s too cold for you to put up lights naked… but now I’m envisioning you on the ladder with your ass on display. And then I’m fucking you on the ladder. Yes, we will do it together tomorrow.”
“What are our neighbors doing in all of this?” he asks.
“If the ninety-year-old great-grandma wants to watch, then let her watch. There are so few places left to rent porn on VHS that she’s probably watched them all and grown bored.”
Gabriel oddly seems less than interested in giving the granny a show, but I have no reservations. I’ll just blackmail any officer who would consider writing us up.
I drive past the zoo and reach the botanical garden where I stop on the road to look. “That right there is the old entrance.”
“Yeah? Why would Zach come through there or even beableto come through there?”
“If he had keys he could leave through there,” I say.
“Man, my brain is tired and struggling to keep up. Okay, so you’re saying that Zach planned to leave through that gate but was killed inside before he could?”
“Possibly.”
“So you think his car is in this area.”
“Yes, I’m just not sure where. Somewhere dark.”
“And he was hiding his car over here because…”
“Because of Nadine.” I point to the bus stop. “Bus stop is right there. Nadine leaves through that gate. Whether or not she’s supposed to, I’m not sure. He waits for her out here.”
“Why did he end up back inside?”
“I don’t know why. Maybe he was watching her? Trying to talk to her… I’m not certain yet.”
Gabriel sets his hand on my arm. “Okay, let’s pause for a second. Are you in the realm of ‘He has a crush on Nadine so he’s waiting outside with the hope of bumping into her to ask her out to coffee’ or ‘He was waiting for Nadine to take her’?”
“She’s missing, isn’t she?”
“I’m just… so he takes her and then goes back inside and someone kills him? Or someone sees him take her and kills him? I’m confused how we suddenly have two crimes intersecting.”
“I don’t know. Let’s find his car.”
“Alright. The way the door is, she’d likely cut this direction through the garden and come out here,” Gabriel says. “Can you turn the car around? I want to look at this alley. No matter what, he has to cross the road, right? But at the time of night she’d be leaving, most of this area would be dark. If he waited until the bus picked up and left, he’d be pretty alone. That late, the bus probably only stops here maybe once an hour, you think?”
“Possibly, I’ll have to look,” I respond as I turn the car around and head down the alley. Gabriel “hmms” when he doesn’t see the vehicle in the alley, but Zach probably wouldn’t want to leave it someplace that it could block traffic and call attention. When I reach the other end, I find myself in a small public parking area that’s completely empty besides one lone car matching the description of Zach’s vehicle.
“Huh,” Gabriel says.
“Huh is right. I’ll inform the department that we’ve found the vehicle. I’m getting the trunk open in case Nadine is inside.”
