“Would you have any records?”
“Come to the office, and we’ll see.”
The main office was above the finishing room floor, and a large window overlooked the finishing line below. Ruby watched as the fresh sneakers came off the line and were inspected by a manager wearing a white bonnet, before they were tucked into boxes with crisp sheets of tissue paper.
The tissue paper, unloosened from its stacks, blew around the concrete floor, catching in the bonneted feet of the employees, who looked like a sea of legs from here. You could see the heaviness in those legs. The tiredness.
Ruby tore her eyes away from the scene to the supervisor rooting through his metal cabinets. There was nothing on the walls. There was no pride here, just work.
He pulled open a scratched drawer. “I know he gave me a card,” he said. “I keep everything, just in case. Management likes to know everything that happens.”
“When exactly did this man appear?”
“Back when it happened, after your guy got arrested.” He coughedagain, opening another drawer, this one filled with a litter of small items. “You said you come from Oregon?”
“Yes.”
“That’s headquarters. Never been there, but I hear it’s nice.”
Ruby thought of the wide, cool lobby, with its scented air and the marble statues of athletes in the corners, the soaring windows. The duck pond nearby.
“It’s nice,” she said.
“Here you go—I found it,” he said, handing over a card.
Ruby took the small business card. It saidDavid Morgan, Private Investigatoron it, and she knew just from looking at it that it was probably fake. The SOS number—from the Georgia licensing agency for investigators—was missing a digit. It wasn’t something a lot of people would know, and it didn’t take much to make up a fake business card.
“You ask for other identification?”
His face screwed up and told the answer.
“It’s all right. We seldom think of that.” She smiled at him warmly. “People see my license, they never ask for more identification.”
“Should I?”
“It’s too late now,” she joked.
She turned over the card. Whoever had made it was smart, she thought. He’d picked a name that would be impossible to track down. There were probably a thousand David Morgans in the South. There might even be a real David Morgan or two licensed as an investigator in Georgia, and she could—and would—waste valuable hours checking.
It could have been a cop, she thought, hiding what he was doing. Or, she amended, it could have been anyone.
“Were you are the bar that night?” she asked.
“Me? No, miss. I’m married.” He flashed a dull silver ring. “I go right home to the wife or there’s hell to pay.”
Ruby thought of the bar, right down the road, and the apartment building Mitchell had moved into, directly across the street. She had already stopped by there. It was a dull, depressing place, with dark hallways and burned-out lights and a bad smell. Many of the factory employees lived there, she had learned.
“I bet a lot of the employees here go to that bar,” she said.
“Sure, I guess.”
“How many got interviewed later, by the police?”
“Don’t know, miss.”
Ruby thought of headquarters, the man she had met there. “I’m going to guess the name of the man you report to. Ronald.”
His face broke open with a smile. “Well, yes, miss.”
