The Last Good Guy

13

Later that Sunday, Burt and I tracked down the San Clemente 7-Eleven clerk who had seen Daley Rideout early Thursday morning. Yash Chowdhury lived on West Escalones, a few blocks from the store.

He squinted at Daley’s pictures on my phone, nodding. “She was upset. I felt bad for her. I thought of calling the police, but she seemed to know the people she was arguing with. So I decided not to. I see things all the time. There was nothing physical, no forcing. Her sister called the police, but they got here after the girl left. The sister got so angry, they almost arrested her.”

Yash was early twenties, short and slim, with a head of black curls and a mustache. His wife, Riya, was studying medicine at UC Irvine. Their house was small and neat and smelled of incense and laundry detergent. Riya retreated to the bedroom to study while we talked. Burt and I sat across from Yash in the living room.

“The girl came to the store at three ten,” he said. “I checked the time because I was bored. She was in a white van. It was a commercial van with no windows, not a minivan. Old. The driver was hard to see. A middle-aged white man. She got out and he rolled his window down and said something, but she didn’t turn around. She came inside and went down the household aisle and watched the van leave. Then she went outside and used the pay phone.”

According to Yash, Daley had been wearing skinny jeans with high cuffs, flip-flops, and a black hoodie that read “I’m not as stupid as I look” on the front. She had had a black backpack slung over one shoulder.

Yash said that Daley bought an energy drink and three candy bars — the same ones I’d seen evidence of in her home wastebasket.

“When she paid, she was distracted,” said Yash. “And maybe angry. I asked her if she was having a good morning and she said it was none of my business. She paid and put the drink and candy in her backpack and zipped it up quickly. I had been reading a fantasy novel because the graveyard shift is slow, and she saw it and said, ‘Why read that? Real life is weird enough, isn’t it?’”

Then Daley walked out, and that was when Yash had seen the punchline of the joke on the back of her hoodie: “Are you?” Daley was halfway across the parking lot when a silver SUV pulled in and a man got out and started arguing with her. He was approximately thirty years old, an Anglo, dressed in chinos and a white dress shirt. He seemed to be ridiculing her, and she “got in his face” and defended herself. There was no physical contact, just words and gesturing. Then he opened a back door and she took the backpack off her shoulder and climbed in.

Yash said that the vehicle had writing on the driver’s-side door, but he couldn’t read it with the headlight beams coming through the store windows. The SUV pulled onto El Camino Real and headed south.

The police arrived five minutes later, asking Yash if he’d seen a girl who matched Daley’s description. They described her accurately. It was three thirty-five. The officers didn’t seem particularly concerned about the girl, and they bought coffee before they left.

They were sitting in their car when a yellow Volkswagen Beetle skidded into the 7-Eleven parking lot, went straight into the handicapped-only slot, and a “curly-haired woman came flying into the store. She was maybe twenty-five. Small and pretty.”

Then the officers came back in and got into a three-way argument with the woman, and she broke away from them and started asking Yash questions about the girl. She said her sister was in trouble and she criticized him for not helping her, then she “verbally attacked” the officers for not getting there sooner, and they physically escorted her to their car and locked her in the back seat. Yash could see her, her face a blur behind the glass and the metal screen inside. Two more police cars arrived shortly. Their lights were flashing but no sirens.

They let the older sister out of the cruiser, and after a “ten-minute discussion,” the police let her come back inside the store. Yash answered her questions politely and hoped she wouldn’t start screaming at him, too. But she had calmed down by then, and Yash saw that she was not drunk or deranged at all but was very worried. She wrote her name and number on a complimentary snack napkin and ordered him, politely, to call if he saw her sister again.

I thanked Yash and handed him a business card. Told him the same thing Penelope had told him. “Or if you remember something that might help me locate her,” I added. “But call the police first.”

“Yes, of course.”

The three of us shook hands.

“You forgot something,” said Burt, looking up at Yash with his odd smile. Some of Burt’s bottom teeth show a little when he smiles, and if he’s looking up at you — which is often, because he’s short — the smile looks half jolly and half diabolical. I might know Burt well enough to say it’s mostly jolly, but I really might not. He has a strangely persuasive effect on some people.

“What did I forget?” asked Yash.

“Everyone forgets something,” said Burt.

Yash frowned down at Burt, brow furrowed, as if trying to take the man and his question seriously.

“She asked if we sell burner phones,” said Yash. “The younger sister. I just remembered that.”

“And?” asked Burt

“No, we don’t,” said Yash. “I told her to try Walmart.”

“Glad I asked.”

“And I always remember everything,” said Yash, looking puzzled. “There’s nothing else to do with a job as boring as mine.”