“In this business you deal with a lot of weirdos. Who else deals in car parts and scrap metal?” He began to tick off his fingers. “If the car hasn’t been boosted, hasn’t been used in a crime, hasn’t been owned by someone associated with crime, and the ownership is legit, you don’t question. I don’t want any trouble, Detective.”

“How much did you pay him?” Decker said.

“I gave him a lowball offer and he took it. He didn’t care about the money, what he wanted was the car trashed and junked ASAP. He came back to make sure it was done and asked me to hide it in the middle of the lot. I told him that would cost a little extra and he agreed. After he got what he wanted, he walked away from it.”

“What did you do with the parts?”

“He towed in the shell. Don’t know what happened to the car’s guts.”

“And you never did business with him before?” Eliza asked.

“I’d tell you if I did.”

Decker said, “Could you look up Mr. Jones for me? A first name would be helpful.”

“Sure.” The three of them walked over to the trailer and stepped through the door. Inside it was hot, with several humming fans going at once. Furnishings included a desk that held several neat piles of paperwork, a desk chair, four folding chairs, and a bank of files. Audi sat down and drank water out of a Big Gulp cup. He picked up one of the stacks of paper and found what he was looking for right away. He handed the yellow invoice to Decker. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.” The first thing that Decker noticed was that the date corresponded to last Saturday—the day before Terry had disappeared. So maybe he was off base. The client’s name was Atik Jones. “Unusual first name.”

“What is it?”

“Atik,” Decker said.

“Doesn’t sound familiar. He probably didn’t tell it to me.”

“So how’d you write it down on the invoice?”

“I got it from the pink slip. I’ll get it for you.” Audi swiveled his desk chair around and began rooting through files. A moment later, he was puzzled. “I can’t find it. I musta misfiled something. Give me the invoice again.”

Decker handed it back to him. Audi wrote down some numbers and again hunted through the files. “I goofed up something. Man, that’s annoying. Let me start at the beginning of J. It may take me a few minutes. I got a lot of them.”

“We’ll wait,” Eliza said.

After several minutes, Audi said, “Okay, okay, here we go. I got the name wrong on the invoice. I could have sworn he told me Jones.”

He gave the pink slip to Decker. The name wasn’t Jones but Jains. Atik Jains. Decker thought a moment. “Could this guy have been Indian?”