The office is empty when she gets back. Pete has left a note on her computer that says Rattner spotted in a bar down by the lake. On my way. Call me if you need me. Herbert Rattner is a bail-jumper with a long history of not appearing when his cases (there have been many) are called in court. Holly mentally wishes Pete luck and goes to the files, which she—and Jerome, when he gets a chance—have been digitizing. It will keep her mind off Ondowsky, she thinks, but it doesn’t. After just fifteen minutes she gives up and goes to Twitter.
Curiosity killed the cat, she thinks, but satisfaction brought him back. I’ll just check this one thing, then return to the scut work.
She finds Ondowsky’s diner tweet. Before, she was concentrating on the words. Now it’s the photograph that she studies. Silver retro diner. Cute neon sign in the window. Parking in front. The lot is only half full, and nowhere does she see the WPEN newsvan.
“They might have parked around back,” she says. Maybe true—she has no way of knowing if there are more spaces behind the diner—but why do that when there were so many available spaces in front, just a few steps from the door?
She starts to exit the tweet, then stops and bends forward until her nose is almost touching the screen. Her eyes are wide. She feels the sense of satisfaction she gets when she finally thinks of the word that’s been giving her fits in a crossword, or when she finally sees where a troublesome piece goes into a jigsaw puzzle.
She highlights Ondowsky’s diner photo and slides it to one side. Then she finds the video of the inept young reporter doing her stand-up beside the giant pine cone. The indie station’s van—older and humbler than those of the network affiliates—is parked in the turnout behind a forest green Subaru sedan. Which means the Subaru was almost certainly there first, or the positions would be reversed. Holly freezes the video and pulls the diner photo as close as she can, and yes, there’s a forest green Subaru sedan in the diner parking lot. It’s not conclusive, there are plenty of Subarus on the road, but Holly knows what she knows. It’s the same one. It’s Ondowsky’s. He parked in the turnout and then hustled to the scene.
She’s so deep in the center of her head that when her phone rings, she gives a little scream. It’s Jerome. He wants to know if she has any lost dogs for him. Or lost kids—he says he feels ready to move up to the next rung on the ladder.
“No,” she says, “but you could . . .”
She stops short of asking him if he can track down any information about a WPEN cameraman named Fred, perhaps by posing as a blogger or a magazine writer. She should be able to track down Fred herself, using her trusty computer. And there’s something else. She doesn’t want Jerome involved in this. She won’t let herself think exactly why, but the feeling is strong.
“Could what?” he asks.
“I was going to say that if you wanted to go bar-hopping down by the lake, you could look for—”
“Love bar-hopping,” Jerome says. “Love it.”
“I’m sure you do, but you’d be looking for Pete, not drinking beer. See if he needs any help with a bail-jumper named Herbert Rattner. Rattner’s white, about fifty . . .”
“Neck tattoo of a hawk or something,” Jerome says. “Saw the photo on the bulletin board, Hollyberry.”
“He’s a non-violent offender, but be careful, just the same. If you see him, don’t approach him without Pete.”
“Got it, got it.” Jerome sounds excited. His first real crook.
“Be careful, Jerome.” She can’t help reiterating this. If anything happened to Jerome, it would wreck her. “And please don’t call me Hollyberry. It’s worn very thin.”
He promises, but she doubts if he means it.
Holly returns her attention to her computer, eyes ticking back and forth between the two forest green Subarus. It means nothing, she tells herself. You’re only thinking what you’re thinking because of what happened in Texas. Bill would call it Blue Ford Syndrome. If you bought a blue Ford, he said, you suddenly saw blue Fords everywhere. But this wasn’t a blue Ford, it was a green Subaru. And she can’t help what she is thinking.
There is no John Law for Holly that afternoon. By the time she leaves the office, she