J. J. Hanna © 2024
While I waited for the facial recognition results to come back, I weeded through the store’s security camera footage one of my agents had gotten. Then I returned to Amanda. She was pacing when I let myself into her room. She looked over at me and a myriad of emotions flew across her face. Annoyance, relief, fear, all fighting for dominance over her features.
“Sorry about the wait,” I said. “We’re making progress, though. Slowly. If I show you some photos, could you identify these people?”
“I only know first names.”
“Oh come on, Amanda. You speak with every person who comes through your drive-through. I’m sure you know more about these people than you think.”
She sighed. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll try.”
I sat across from her and pulled up the photos on my phone. I started with the photo of George. “What can you tell me about this man?”
Amanda looked at the photo. “That’s George. He’s particular but kind. He always gets the same drink, a traditional latte.”
“What do you mean, particular?”
“He likes his drink made a specific way. Very light foam. If there’s too much he’ll have us remake it. He’s one of the first regulars everyone in the shop knows, he comes by two or three times a day.”
“What does he do for work?”
“I have no idea.”
I waited for her to go on. Sometimes the most powerful tool in an interrogation was silence.
“I don’t know,” she repeated. “He’s often on the phone, often shouting at the person on the other side. But he’s always kind to us.”
“What does he shout about?”
“No idea, he always hangs up before he rolls down the window to order.”
“Have you ever seen him go inside?”
“No.”
I thought for a moment. I needed something that could actually connect George to the crimes or we were dead in the water. “When you see him on the phone, what kind of phone is it?”
Amanda took a sip of her latte, buying time to think. “It’s usually the smart phone he has on the dashboard.”
“You said he always gets the same thing. He never changes it up, not even a little?”
“Sometimes he adds a muffin in the morning. And sometimes he gets a cookie in the afternoon,” Amanda said. “Despite his particular taste in latte, he’s one of our favorite customers. I can’t imagine him being involved with anything illegal.”
“In all your conversations, he’s never told you anything about himself?”
“No. Just that he’s on the way to work. He comes by so often he asks about how our days are going more than we ask about his day.”
That sounds like deflection like I do with you. I switched to the next photo, one from the store’s security camera above the window. “Do you know her?”
“Yeah. That’s Olivia.”
“What can you tell me about her?”
Amanda shrugged. “She’s sweet—to me. I guess I’m the only one who routinely makes her drink correctly. That quickly made me her favorite, too.”
I sighed. “You don’t know anything else about her?”
“I mean, she has a couple cute grandkids. She waits to drink her hot chocolate until she gets to work, that’s why she likes it so hot. But that’s it. I don’t know what she does or where she goes after she leaves my drive-through. I don’t know these people, Lucielle. Just like I didn’t know you worked for the… who do you work for?”
I smiled and showed her another photo. “What about him?”
Amanda took a breath. “That’s Adam.”
I waited. She got the message.
“He always gets shots of espresso. Some days he gets a quad shot. Sometimes he gets a double. He’s permanently exhausted. I think he works the night shift somewhere and stops for caffeine to get him home. But that’s a guess. We don’t talk much. He’s too tired to talk. So we make jokes about being exhausted and running on caffeine and move on. I don’t see how any of this will help you find a criminal.”
“How strangers interact with each other gives us good insight into the kind of person someone is. Though maybe you’re right. Maybe you don’t know anything that will help us. But your disappearance from work stirred things up today. George was inside when I got there, typing away on an older model of phone. What’s more interesting is that the security cameras in the store didn’t catch his face.”
“I’m sure that happens a lot.”
“He avoided them strategically. Adam did, too, though he was more nervous about the whole thing. Both broke from their routines when you did. And that might be a coincidence, but to me, that’s something worth looking into. And because of the drive-through, we have their faces, their license plates, and their full identification details. Everyone else, except Olivia, moved on with their days.”
Amanda shook her head. “I think you’re putting too much stock into how much they may care about me. At the end of the day, I make their coffee. And I do it well because it’s my job.”
“Yes. But you do your job so well you had three regulars who disturbed their whole day because you weren’t there. Have you ever seen this man?” I pulled another photo up on my phone from Amanda’s apartment complex. Someone else, like me this morning, had been wandering around near her block dressed as a delivery man. Except his truck was unregistered, and he did not have employee records with UPS.
She shook her head. “That looks like a delivery man.”
“Were you expecting any deliveries?”
“No. But sometimes my friends send me things as a surprise gift. Really, I think you’re reading too much into these things. They’re just random events.”
“Random events that can all be tied to you. That makes them orchestrated. Amanda, we have been after this criminal organization for months. They are professionals. They clean up after themselves routinely. This is the closest thing we’ve had to a lead in a long time. That lead is interest in you. I want to make sure you stay safe in all of this. I really hope you’re right. I hope I’m overreacting and seeing things that aren’t there. But if I’m right, you could be in danger. I don’t want—” A knock on the door interrupted me. “Come in.”
“Denver PD just got a location on one of the computers we were trying to track down.”
“And?”
“It matches the home address of one of the people you just ran through facial recognition.”
Amanda sunk in her chair. That clearly wasn’t the news she’d wanted him to share. But I felt vindicated. I followed the agent out into the hall. “Who was it?”
“Adam Jenkins.”
This story, segments of this story, and ideas from this story are not to be duplicated or replicated in any way. This content belongs to J. J. Hanna alone.
Please note: This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real events is unintended by the author.
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J. J. Hanna is a writer and reader from Colorado. She loves suspense stories above all else, and is currently working on a debut novel of her own. When she’s not writing, you can find her making YouTube videos and Online Courses about the publishing industry. Go find her on social media @authorjjhanna and @jjhannaacademy to keep track of her most recent reads, current adventures, and to get the most up-to-date news on all things publishing. She also runs a freelance marketing business to help authors achieve their own goals. Learn more or hire her at Hanna Book Solutions.
J. J. Hanna, Author 