to the store chimes and we both look to see another customer entering the store. The customer sees I’m about to leave, so he holds open the door. The clerk speaks to the man holding the door for me. “Louie, you heard of any police chase or suicide in the last couple weeks?”
I pause and stare at the man he just called Louie.
Louie looks from me to the clerk and laughs. “Not around these parts. We haven’t had a self-inflicted death since 2014. Been even longer than that since we had a police chase.”
I feel my insides begin to buzz with anxiety. I shake my head. “But…something happened on my road. In the middle of the night. A detective came to my door…”
Louie looks me up and down. “A detective? We don’t have a detective, ma’am. You from Los Angeles or something? You a reporter?”
“No. I’m a writer…fiction. Not a reporter.” I reach into my purse and pull out my phone. My fingers are trembling. I scroll quickly through my screen until I find my private folder. Two nights ago, I took a selfie of me and Saint and hid it in my phone. I wanted to remember what he looked like.
I hold the phone up to Louie and show him the picture of Saint. “Is this guy a police officer in this town?” I ask.
Louie takes the phone from me. He stares at Saint’s picture and then laughs. “Honey, we got two policemen who patrol this area, and both of them only wish they could look like this man.”
This can’t be right.
Louie looks at the clerk and waves me over to him. “Ask Bill. He’s the only gas station around, so the man has probably been here to the store for gas or what-not. Unless he drives a Tesla,” he mutters.
I walk back to the register and hold the phone for Bill, the clerk. “Do you know who this is?”
Bill shakes his head. “Don’t know him. But I’ve seen him. That’s a face that’s hard to forget. Tall guy. Drives a black car.”
I grasp on to that morsel of information. “Where did you see him? Here?”
Bill nods. “Yeah. He’s come in a couple times in the past week. I reckon he’s staying in one of the rentals because I’ve never seen him before last week.”
“Maybe he’s new to the area,” I say, trying to rationalize all of this. “Maybe he just started working here as a detective.”
Louie can sense I’m starting to panic. His eyebrows draw closer together and he steps forward, letting the door fall shut behind him. He folds his hands over his belly when he says, “Ma’am. I don’t know who this man is to you…but I can assure you he is not from around here. And he definitely don’t work around here. Me and Bill know everything about everyone in this town, unless they’re here on vacation in one of the cabins.”
I shake my head, refusing to believe Saint isn’t a detective in this town.
If he isn’t a detective, what is he?
Where did he come from?
How do these two not know who he is?
Why was the police chase not written about in the paper?
I feel like I might be sick from all the unanswered questions. I push open the door and rush outside. I can hear Louie calling after me, but I walk straight to my car. I don’t bother getting gas. I drive as fast as I can to the cabin because I need to get there before Saint shows up.
I need my computer.
I need to figure out who he is before he figures out I know who he isn’t.
• • •
When I searched the name Nathaniel Saint, I came up with nothing. A few dead ends, but no social media presence, no birth records or marriage licenses. At least not for a Nathaniel Saint younger than eighty years old.
He lied about his name. I know that much.
My leg is bouncing wildly under the table. I’m on edge, so I stand up and begin to pace. To focus.
If Nathaniel Saint isn’t his name, how am I supposed to figure out what his real name is? I have nothing to go on. No information. I’ve never even asked him what his wife’s name is.
The picture!
I have the selfie I took with him. Maybe I can do an image search on Google.
I sit back down to my laptop and email the image to myself. I open it up on my laptop, download it, then upload it