Callie doesn’t say anything to that. Hines is probably waiting for her to offer him some consolation, a crumb of self-deprecation. But if Jimmy had been good enough to get the job, he would have had it, and that’s that.
“Anyways, I always give the guys in blue a free drink outta the cold case. Figured you mighta heard about that and stopped in. Please, help yourself.”
“I’m okay, but thank you.”
Gary Hines frowns, reaches around Callie and slides open a frost-coated freezer door, leans in and pulls out a root beer. “Here.”
She doesn’t want the drink but doesn’t want to squander anygoodwill either, so she takes the can from him, pops the tab, swigs. So cold and sweet it makes her teeth hurt.
“Thanks. That’s really nice of you. How long have you owned the place?”
“Came to me in ’82 after my dad died.”
“So you owned the store when a young woman named Sabrina Riley worked here.”
“I did. It was good, you know? To have a young lady behind the counter. Not to be crass, but you know how it is. The guys liked the chance to come in and talk to a pretty girl.”
A bolt of revulsion works its way through her.You know how it is. One of those things.
“Sure.” Sabrina Riley installed at one of these counters, her own kind of bait. “What do you remember about her?”
“She was charming. Sweet. Nice smile. She didn’t know anything about fishing but that didn’t matter. Most of my guys come in here knowing what they want.”
“How long did she work here?” She tries to decide if Hines is the type of man, who, on a slow day, might put his hand to the small back of his young female employee. Who might have been charming enough to convince her to sleep with him. Or the kind of man who could convince her that her job there was tenuous, take advantage of the fact she needed cash. Or who might lock the door, might not listen if she said no. Ugly thoughts, and yet. He can’t even listen to a woman when she says she doesn’t want a soda.
“About two years.”
“Why’d she quit?”
“She never told me. Just stopped showing up. I called the number I had on file for her after two no-show shifts but the line had been cut off.”
“Do you know anything about her home life? Her parents?”
“Eh, she was a teenage girl, I was in my forties then. We didn’t exactly chat much. She kept to herself, that one.”
“Any sense that there was violence or neglect going on? She evershow up with bruises or anything? Did she seem afraid to go home?” According to records, Terry Riley was killed after he crashed his car through a guardrail in Baton Rouge in March 1993. Two years after his daughter disappeared. His BAC was 0.2 percent. She couldn’t help but feel a shiver of recognition when she read about the Riley father. Sabrina Riley was a girl not unlike Callie, fending for herself the best she could, trying to find a stay against the ugliness of her home life.
“Nothing that I ever noticed.”
“Do you remember a time when she got into an altercation here? It resulted in her arrest along with a young man named Billy Fauver. Broke your front window, according to the report.”
“Mean little bastard, Fauver. He was always coming around here to talk to her. Caught him a few times slipping a bobber or a package of sinkers into his pocket, just because he thought he could.”
“Were you here the night the cops came?” From the report it seemed like it had been close to closing time. Fauver probably thought he could catch Riley alone, talk to her or threaten her or whatever he was up to. And then she fought back. Someone driving by saw them scuffling outside, pulled into the lot to see the gleaming glass.
“No. I had been up at my sister’s in Tannersville. But Frank Caputo called me himself, told me there had been a little trouble. She never came back after that.”
Callie slides the photograph out of the file she’s kept pinned under her arm. “Does this bracelet look familiar to you? Something that perhaps belonged to Sabrina?”
Hines nods. “It was the one thing that pissed me off about her. I told her from day one, no rings or bracelets. Didn’t want to risk it breaking, getting those little beads stuck in the filters of the tanks. But she’d wear it anyway.”
Finally, some traction. This small inroad. Circumstantial still, but not nothing, either. She puts the photo away, braces herself for the next question. “Is there any reason to believe she was pregnant at that time?”
Hines’s face hardens. “You’re asking about those rumors. The baby. Why didn’t you just come out and say that?”
The root beer is still so cold she has to switch hands, shakes condensation from her fingers. “Okay then. What can you tell me?”
“I can tell you that it was a damn abomination. You don’t want a child, fine. Take it to be adopted. Let someone else care for it. But to do what that woman did is the ugliest thing I ever heard.”
