What She Saw

“Two large coffees to go,” said Ray. Then his eyes brightened a bit. “Say, I knew you in high school.”

She pretended not to have realized it, though she didn’t know why. “Really? Oh! You’re Ray.”

He grinned. A tall, lanky guy with a thinly growing beard, he had crooked teeth. His family had always been dirt-poor, though, so no orthodontics for him. That poverty hadn’t made his school years any easier, and Haley had often felt a twinge of sympathy for him.

She felt Claire slip behind her to get to the coffeepot as she rang up the two coffees and accepted payment. “You’re driving now?” she asked.

“Yup.”

“Good for you. It’s a great job.” She couldn’t help noticing how the other driver, a short, burly man with a balding head, kept looking the other way, as if he were uncomfortable for some reason. Nervous? Shy? What did it matter? She shrugged it off.

Claire surprised her by reaching around her to put the two coffees on the counter in front of the men.

“Thanks, Claire,” she said as she closed the register.

“I was already here,” came the response as Claire slipped past her again and headed back to her customers, pot in hand.

“See you around?” Ray said, almost hopefully.

She had no interest in him, but she managed a smile. “Sure, nearly every time you come in here now.”

Ray laughed, then he and the other guy went to the condiment bar to add sugar and creamer to their coffees. A few seconds later they were out the door and headed across the lot.

Twenty minutes later, almost as if a signal had been sent, the lot started filling with the big rigs coming from the west, all of which had made a perilous trip over the mountains from the West Coast. She put her books away and went to work, hoping that the driver called Devlin would show up again.

He wasn’t in the first wave, and soon she was busy serving everything from burgers to breakfast—large stacks of pancakes, lots of eggs and home fries, and gallons of coffee. She joked and chatted with those who were feeling friendly tonight, and kept the coffee coming. Coffee was essential, and the restaurant had four double-drip coffeemakers working constantly.

Then the place started emptying out. She filled a dozen takeout cups with coffee, and listened as the throbbing engines revved up and began to roar out of the lot.

Sometimes she imagined getting on those rigs and traveling to places she’d never been, from Denver to Chicago to St. Louis. These guys were headed all over the map, and in a small way she envied them. They had to feel free, out there on the road, aside from the need to keep to a schedule. Maybe that was part of the charm.

Just as she and Claire finished wiping the last table clean, readying for the next wave, a police car pulled up out front. Haley didn’t immediately pay it much attention. Being the only all-night place operating around Conard City, they saw cops almost as often as they saw truck drivers.

But somehow, the instant Deputy Parish and Deputy Ironheart walked through the door, she knew this was no ordinary visit. They didn’t go to the counter. They looked around, then focused on her and Claire.

Both deputies were of Native American descent, with dark eyes and equally dark hair, except for Micah Parish, who was starting to show some gray streaks in his raven hair. She had known both of them nearly her entire life.

“Hi, ladies,” Sarah Ironheart said. “Can we talk to you?”

Haley felt her heart skitter. Something bad must have happened, but it hadn’t happened here. Her mind started running over anything that might have to do with her, and discarded possibilities as fast as they occurred. She lived in a cheap, run-down apartment and all she owned was a twelve-year-old car and a laptop computer. No, it couldn’t be something like that.

She and Claire dropped their cleaning rags in the bin and joined the deputies at one of the tables. Claire looked excited by the change of pace. Haley couldn’t help feeling dread.

Life had taught her to dread. Words from a doctor, words from a cop, they weren’t often good news.

Sarah Ironheart started, “We were wondering if either of you know Ray Liston.”

“I knew him in school,” Haley answered promptly. “Most everyone knew who he was. Is he in trouble?” At least this didn’t have to do with her.

At that moment, the deep throbbing of another rig alerted her and she looked out to see a solo truck pulling in. Her heart jumped a little, hoping it was the Devlin guy. Why had she gotten so attached to seeing him?

Sarah’s voice called her back. “Did he stop in here tonight?”

Claire looked at Haley for an answer.

Haley nodded. “He and another driver came in to pick up some coffee to go.”

“Did you talk to him? Did he seem all right? Alert, not under the influence of something?”

“He seemed fine, actually,” Haley said, thinking back. “He recognized me even though we hadn’t seen each other since high school. It wasn’t much of a conversation. I asked if he was driving now, he said he was, and I said I was glad he had such a good job. Something like that.”

“So you didn’t notice anything off about him?”

Haley shook her head. “No. Why? Did he get into trouble?”

Sarah sighed. “He ran his truck off the road about ten miles east of here.”

Haley’s hands tightened on the edge of the table. She felt her heart race with shock. At that moment Devlin walked through the door and headed to his usual table. “Customer,” she said almost automatically, still trying to absorb the news. Ran his truck off the road?

“He can wait,” Micah Parish said. Then he glanced over his shoulder. “Buddy, can you wait a few?”

Devlin nodded. “No problem.”

God, he looked good, Haley thought. Better than usual, though she couldn’t say what it was about him. But she forced her attention back to the two deputies because another question, one she wasn’t sure she wanted answered, hammered at her. “Is he okay? Ray?”

Sarah and Micah exchanged glances. “No,” Micah said. “He’s dead. That’s why we need to know if you noticed anything at all unusual about him.”

“He seemed fine,” Haley repeated. “Not much different from high school, except maybe thinner. He’s dead? He’s really dead?”

It fully hit her then. A man she had been talking to a short time ago, a man she had known for her entire childhood, was dead. Tremors started to run through her and a tunnel seemed to grow around her vision.

“Focus,” Sarah said gently. “Focus, Haley. We need to know if you noticed anything at all unusual about Ray.”

“He seemed fine,” she repeated, hearing the flatness of her own voice. Her mind was trying to draw into a cocoon, she realized, just as it had when she first heard her mother’s diagnosis.

“So there was nothing off-kilter, nothing unusual?”

The restaurant, which had seemed to be receding, suddenly snapped into sharp focus as she remembered. “Not really. Not when he came in here. But beforehand…” She hesitated because it seemed so unimportant to a man’s death. An accidental death.

“What?” Micah prompted.

“I’m not sure exactly. When I came to work there were two trucks parked back-to-back. That’s unusual. They usually park side by side.”

“So he didn’t park normally.” Sarah scribbled something in a notebook.

“It’s probably meaningless,” Haley said. “It’s unusual, but there weren’t any other trucks out there at the time. They could have parked sideways for all it mattered. I thought I caught sight of them moving crates between the trucks. Just briefly, but I can’t be sure because it was so far away and with all the light in here, the parking lot isn’t easy to see.”

“Well, that wouldn’t have caused an accident farther down the road,” Sarah said and closed her notebook. “Thanks, Haley. If you think of anything else, just let us know, okay?”