When I pushed for a home address where I could speak to Pelo, Adrian told me he didn’t know how to find the clerk and that the address line on Pelo’s job application had been inadvertently left blank.

“What about his I-9 form?” I’d asked, and Adrian went into the office at the rear of the store. Came out five minutes later and apologized. Told me Christian hadn’t yet filled out his I-9.

“You’re a real hustler,” I remember Adrian saying to me. “Thirty-three bucks and a drink and you’ve been back here three times. My view of the whole Mason Falls PD is changed for the better.”

I slipped my foot out from under Purvis. Got up and grabbed a hard rubber ball that I’d bought for Beau.

Pacing around the dining table, I bounced the ball, trying to shake the rust from my memory of those days. Across the room, Beau lifted his head, but then dropped it, falling back asleep on the couch once he realized I wasn’t playing with him.

John Adrian, the Golden Oaks day manager, was always wanting to talk outside. This was something I’d told Remy recently.

“You mind if I smoke while we chat?” he’d say, and let one of his employees take over the register.

At the time, I read this as nerves, which a lot of folks get when talking to a cop. But now I figure he might’ve been trying to get me away from the hatch that Remy and I had found behind the register. The hatch that led under the store, to whatever illegal activity was going on back then.

I thought of the powder that Remy and I found inside the empty boxes under the liquor store.

I’d never had it tested, but had transferred it to an evidence bag two days ago when I came home from the liquor store. The next time I headed into the precinct I had to figure a way to have Alvin Gerbin test it.

Staring at the short interview I’d done with the clerk, I thought about Christian Pelo on that first day. He had just begun working at the liquor store and told me he didn’t really fit in so far. That maybe the robbery was a sign to find something new to do.

Pelo was from southeast of Atlanta, and I wondered if he had left the area and gone home.

I went online and joined one of those research databases that P.I.’s use, finding one that took my credit card, but promised a free three-day trial. Within minutes I was perusing public records. Of course, we had tools like this at work, but they left a paper trail behind. A trail that someone like Lauten Hartley could follow.

I began by looking into all men named Pelo in the southeastern United States.

Was it possible that Christian was living in Georgia still? Or Florida or Alabama?

As I found the number of each man named Pelo, I wrote it down on my yellow legal pad. And when I found a woman named Pelo, I wrote it on my white legal pad. Maybe Christian Pelo was married now, and a phone or address was under his wife’s name.