Lena — Tuesday, November 17, 2026, afternoon
At eleven eighteen the woman had been beside the pickup. Lena watched her step out from the passenger side and tuck something into the waistband of her trousers. Her shirt, probably. An ordinary motion made awful by its new importance.
The clerk thought it was Nadia. The view wasn't a portrait, but the clothes and appearance agreed with what Alma had given them. The man at the counter was Ray Mercer. The transaction record fixed the time. His little purchase would have taken up no space in his account of Monday if the rest of his account hadn't required Nadia to be somewhere else.
Owen put the clerk on speaker before he finished with him. The man's voice came into the room surrounded by a warehouse echo.
“I need to say again I didn't talk to her,” he said.
“We've got that,” Owen said.
“I know. It's just you keep asking what they did, and I don't want it to sound like I stood out there with them.”
Lena gave her name. “We want what you saw. The things you didn't see are useful too.”
“She got out while he was inside. That's all I can say.”
“Did she come inside?”
“I didn't see her come in.”
“Okay.”
He went quiet. Lena waited. She could hear someone asking about an order in the distance and the clerk putting a hand over the phone to answer.
“You think she was trying to get away?” he asked when he came back.
“We don't know what she was doing.”
“Because I would've said if I thought somebody needed something.”
“Tell me what made you look at her.”
“Nothing made me. There was a truck outside. I looked out. I would've waved if she'd looked at me.”
He was trying to recover a moment he'd had no reason to keep. Lena could feel how easily a different question would give him a more useful memory. She stayed with what he could give her: where he stood, what he saw, the interruption that took his eyes away. He could not put every second in order. Owen had the purchase and the images preserved.
When the call ended, Lena watched the woman on the screen get out once more. Nadia had been within sight of somebody who would have waved. It seemed a considerable distance now, between being in sight and being seen.
“You want me in when you talk to him?” Owen asked.
“Yes.”
She put a clean sheet on top of the morning notes. She had no reason to make a fresh start, and did it anyway.
“He's coming back,” Lena told Owen.
“You told him what for?”
“I said we had more questions about Monday. He asked if we'd found her.”
“What did you say?”
“No.”
She'd wanted something more expansive from Owen than the nod he gave her. He was already putting the clerk's statement beside the other work, lining up Monday's times. He tapped the new one with his finger, then left the finger there while he read what came before it.
Mercer arrived with a red mark beside one eye. She hadn't noticed it that morning.
“Fixing a sink,” he said when she looked. “My wife says to be careful after I hit my head.”
He was offering her an easy way into the room. She let the remark go by. He took the same chair as before.
“You're still here voluntarily,” she said. “You don't have to stay and talk to us.”
“I know. What is it?”
Lena put a still image where he could see it. She didn't point to the woman. He saw her immediately; his gaze moved straight past her to his own figure at the counter.
“That's Monday?” he said.
“Eleven eighteen.”
He made a small clicking sound with his tongue.
“You said you left Nadia at Wrenford at ten oh five. The final time you saw her.”
“I did leave her there.”
She waited.
“Then I saw her again.”
Owen sat back a little, giving himself room to write.
“Tell me about that,” Lena said.
“She was still waiting. She'd had no luck getting anybody.”
“How did you come to be back there?”
“I came back through.”
“After what?”
“Errands.”
He looked at her notebook, and she kept her hand still. He had begun noticing where she put things. That could mean anything. Some people watched the pen as though its movement was the injury.
“Which errands?” she asked.
He named the store, then corrected himself because that was the store on the image, the later stop. He said he'd been driving around looking for something he needed. She asked what. A part for the house. She asked which part, watched him find his way back to the beginning of that answer too.
“You understand why this matters.”
“I understand how it looks.”
“Tell me where she got out after the second ride.”
He described another short journey and another place he said Nadia could arrange a lift. Lena asked him to be exact, and he became exact in a way that gave Owen more work to do. Street, side of the street, what she was carrying. She asked what had changed for Nadia between waiting for one lift and taking another from him. He said she was cold. The word came easily, with feeling. Lena could believe he remembered a cold woman beside a road. It didn't place the woman where he needed her.
“Why didn't you tell us any of this?”
“I didn't think it made a difference. I left her the same as I said.”
“An hour later. Somewhere else.”
“I can see that now.”
He seemed embarrassed now, flushed beside the red mark. She wanted him past the embarrassment, still talking. Had something happened on the second ride that he didn't want his wife hearing about? She asked it as plainly as she could, looking at him instead of the paper.
He looked up so quickly she thought she had it.
“No.”
“Something Nadia said?”
“We talked. That's all.”
“About what?”
He started on ordinary things. Work. The weather turning. Her daughter. He stopped when he came to the daughter and looked at the image again. Lena leaned forward. The edge of the table pressed under her ribs. If she could get him to look at her again, let the image go, they might get past this.
“Did she call her sister from your pickup?”
“I don't remember.”
“You remembered her being cold.”
“That's different.”
They worked through what he claimed. He let them have numbers, places he could be reached. When she returned to the second drop he began rubbing the red mark beside his eye.
“I came here to help you.”
“Then help us with this.”
His mouth closed, and he put both hands on his knees.
She asked the question again, plainly. He gave the same answer. When he left there was no gratitude left between them.
Owen gathered the papers.
“You think he forgot?” she asked.
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
They divided checks on the new route and account. Local colleagues were pursuing what they could establish about his movements and connections. Lena called to make sure the earlier work hadn't vanished beneath the new story, then gave the fresh claims to the people who would check them.
Then she put the morning notes beside the afternoon notes. The final drop at Wrenford: she'd drawn a line beneath it, leaving a space for what came after. She kept hearing him ask whether they'd found Nadia. He had looked prepared to be sorry. She wanted to know what he'd been prepared to hear.
Owen paused at the door. “Coming?”
“In a minute.”
She watched the eleven-eighteen image once more before she shut it down. The woman tucking in her shirt, looking somewhere beyond the camera, still alive at that particular minute. They had gained an hour of Nadia's day. They needed the rest.