Audrey folded the map. "A refrigerator, I think. And maybe someone who keeps better receipts than the sheriff."
The following Friday, October ninth, Audrey took Harvey's pickup off the interstate and into the gravel lot of Exit 74 Fuel and Market. The store sat between six fuel pumps and a broad parking area where long-haul drivers slept with their engines humming. Its windows advertised coffee, lottery tickets, and breakfast sandwiches, and its old sign buzzed faintly in the morning light. Nothing about it looked like a place where a federal judge would find the next piece of a case that had already cost her courtroom access.
A patrol car stood near the building. Audrey waited in her truck until its driver went inside, bought something, and left. A second patrol car passed the lot ten minutes later without stopping. She asked a driver at the next pump whether county deputies often came here.
"Shift change," the driver said. "Like it was their kitchen. You'd be smart to mind your own business."
"I've been hearing that advice a great deal lately."
Inside, a line of refrigerated cabinets covered the back wall. Audrey walked along them as if selecting breakfast, paying attention to the doors and the labels. The third held bottled beer. A thin black ribbon had been tied around its steel handle in a precise knot, the same shape and color as the ribbon around the mile marker.
She stopped. The ribbon had no price tag, no obvious promotional purpose, and no reason to be there among bright beverage advertisements. She opened the door, lifted a brown bottle with a white label, and turned it over. A little orange sticker at the base read, "Exit 74 - $3.29."
She could not establish that this was the same brand as the bottle photographed in the station merely from her memory, although the color and shape matched. She could establish the physical possibility that had been missing from Lyman's account. The store sold cold beer in individual bottles; the price appeared on an orange sticker placed where her memory had recorded a small mark on the bottle Lyman held up beside her car.
She replaced the beer and went to the counter. The employee there was a man in his fifties, with graying black hair, a carefully trimmed mustache, and the name Sunil stitched above the pocket of his red polo shirt. His eyes moved from Audrey's face to the cooler and back. Recognition arrived slowly, and with it came concern.
"You're the woman in the sheriff's photograph," he said.
"Yes. I'd like a black coffee, please."
He poured one but left it behind the counter. "The judge," he added in a lower voice.
"I'd rather be the woman asking whether your register can retrieve a receipt."
"A receipt for what?"
"A single cold beer purchased on Friday, October second, sometime between eleven and eleven-thirty in the morning."