‘This is different.’

‘Okay,’ Leighton spoke slowly. ‘Tell me what happened.’ He mentally produced a notepad. It was a visual technique he had used for years. All too often, witnesses would clam up when an investigating officer started writing down details. So he created a strategy to get around this. Instead of a physical pad, he would imagine a black leather notepad, and open it to a clean white page and record the details as he spoke to the witness. Then, in the privacy of his car, he would commit the information to paper.

‘I arranged to meet my friend off the bus yesterday afternoon.’

‘Yesterday?’ Leighton relaxed. In his head, he closed his notepad. There was nothing to worry about in this type of case.

‘Who is your friend?’ he asked.

‘Laurie… Laurie Taylor. She’s a college friend, from Barstow – well, from near to Barstow.’

Leighton suppressed a flicker of emotion. Most of the older officers associated the town of Barstow with one of their colleagues, who had raped and murdered a young woman there back in the 1980’s. He had been sentenced to ninety years, but died in jail. The association was just a trace memory - nothing more.

‘And where were you meant to meet this friend?’

‘At the bus station, but she didn’t show up,’ the woman breathed in shakily, trying to contain her tears. ‘And I know that’s nothing major, but it’s the other stuff that’s wrong.’

‘What other stuff?’ Leighton produced a neat handkerchief and gave it to the girl.

‘She told me she had booked a ticket on some new bus company. She was pleased because it was a cheap ticket.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘She sent a text message to my cell phone.’

‘Could she have changed her mind?’

‘Maybe, I guess.’ The woman’s voice took on a doubtful tone.

‘Well, have you tried calling her?’

‘I did at the bus station. Her phone rang a couple of times, then cut out.’

‘Okay. What’s your name?’

‘Victoria Reiner – Vicki.’

‘Well, if I’m honest, Vicki, it all sounds pretty normal to me. You might find that in a couple of days she gets in touch.’

‘I went home to look at the bus company’s web site, but it doesn’t exist.’

‘Maybe your friend made it up. Perhaps she was a bit strapped for cash, and invented the company.’

‘But I saw the bus come into the terminal. The doors opened, but she never got off.’

‘Could you have been mistaken? I mean, there are hundreds of buses coming through there every hour, and I know from experience a worried mind can get confused.’

‘You think I’m being stupid, don’t you?’

‘No.’ Leighton smiled. ‘Just being a good friend.’

‘It’s okay. I’m starting to doubt myself, too.’

‘Miss, I’m going to give you a card, with my number on it.’ Leighton reached into his jacket pocket, and handed the girl a plain white card, with neat, printed text on both sides.

‘That’s my office number at the top, and cell phone on the back. If your friend gets in touch in a couple of days’ time – as she most probably will – well, then you can just go ahead and toss that card in the trash, but if you still don’t hear anything, give me a call.’

‘Thank you for this,’ Vicki said, as she clasped her hands between her knees. ‘I know I could be wrong.’

‘Well,’ Leighton said, as he stood up, and brushed at nothing on his trouser legs, ‘if you’re not, we can get this passed on to the Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit, and they can get the ball rolling. Okay?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yeah, thanks, I am,’

‘Okay, good day to you, Miss,’ Leighton said, with a genuine smile, and turned and walked away.

As he got back into his Ford, Leighton felt a sense of purpose he had not known for many years. It seemed somehow timely one of his final duties as a working police officer would be to help reassure a worried member of the public. He smiled sympathetically at the petty worries of youth, and recalled a quotation from Mark Twain about how most of the troubles he had known in his life had never happened.

Pulling back out on to the boulevard, the Detective imagined over the next few days the young woman would finally be reunited with her friend, and perhaps the two of them would laugh over a couple of clinking Mojitos. Maybe the young woman would even speak fondly of the friendly old police officer, who had rightly assured her everything would turn out fine. If that turned out to be the case, then maybe Leighton could finally be the type of person he had always failed to be.

Driving home on that warm afternoon, Leighton pushed a cassette into tape player on the dashboard - it had cost him two hundred dollars to have the CD system removed. The sound of sweet sound of Son House playing “Delta Blues” filled the car. Leighton began to drum his hands rhythmically on the wheel. As he sunk into the sanctuary of the music, he was blissfully unaware his cosy vision of the future could not be further from the truth.

6

Anthony Morrelli could not believe his luck. Most weekends he would head to the bar for its 11:00 a.m. opening time, blow his wages far too quickly, and end up getting sent home in a cab before early evening. Tonight, however, he had paced himself and lasted the entire day. Having arrived at Scotty’s in the late afternoon, been fed, got drunk, and spent his cab money, he felt a vague sense of accomplishment. With no cash or options, and with the warped wisdom of drunkenness, he decided to stagger unsteadily home along the dark, dusty road leading to town.

Scotty’s Bar was a hacienda-style place four miles out of Laughlin, Nevada. It was off the beaten track, but to Anthony, and a cluster of regular patrons, it was worth the journey. The beer was cheap, the waitresses were hot, the burritos were big enough to keep you full for a day and a half, but best of all, none of the asshole tourists ever came out here. Tourists - or fuckheads, as he affectionately liked to call them - were the bane of Anthony’s life. His day job down in Laughlin involved renting jet skis and motor boats to piss about on the river. Most of them couldn’t fit into a life vests or, in some cases, a boat.

“Don’t you have anything bigger?” they would whine, day after mind-numbing day. He had even gone as far as buying in a few extra-extra-large personal fucking flotation devices, which resolved part of the problem, but the boats were still designed for reasonably fit people, so he often ended up having to assist, as they squeezed their fat asses in and out of the vessels.

It was a hot night as Anthony wandered along the desolate roadside, and his feet kicked up the dust. Above him, the stars were clear, and an occasional plane would blink a trail towards Vegas. One previous evening, after a day of drinking, he had been walking unsteadily back down to Laughlin, when a neat black triangle had blocked out the stars overhead, as it silently crossed the sky. Anthony had stood with his neck craned watching it, feeling like he was in some Spielberg movie. He imagined for a moment a blinding light would fasten onto his body and spirit him off to another world. But, then, as the angular shape moved away from him, he saw the orange glow of the stealth plane’s two afterburners.

He had walked back to town on only one other previous occasion, and that time, he had been accompanied by a guy called Trey Evans. Trey was a small guy and a big drinker. Anthony reckoned he was probably somewhere in his late forties, but it was hard to be sure. He usually sat at the end of the bar, dressed head-to-toe in faded denims, and would often be the last customer there when it closed. Usually, he would be driven back to town by Marianne – one of the more compassionate barmaids. There was nothing romantic about the arrangement – everyone knew Marianne lived in Bullhead City with another woman in a civil partnership. However, one occasion where Trey’s hands started to pay her unwanted attention, and another where he vomited on her passenger seat, was enough to end Marianne’s generosity. After that, he was required to book a cab, or take the long walk.