"Cattle on the road down by the Thorne turnoff. Couple of Jim Lekumberry's heifers got through the fence. Highway Patrol's chasing a car full of college kids from Sacramento that went through Luning at a hundred and ten." He sipped. "And Washoe County's got a teletype out on a child. Came through about ten o'clock. I don't figure it'll come to anything down here, but I'm supposed to keep my eyes open."
The spatula was in her hand. She looked at it. "What kind of child?"
"Little girl. Six years old. Grandfather took her Friday on a court visitation in Reno and didn't bring her back tonight like he was supposed to. Mother called it in at six-thirty. Grandpa's from out by Ely, so they figure he went east on 50, but they put it out wide. Old Ford pickup, 'fifty-nine, white over green with a camper shell." He took a bite of the roll she set in front of him, and chewed, and said, with his mouth full, "Kroll. Name's Kroll. Funny name. Like a fish."
"That's krill," Coralee said. "Krill's the fish."
"Is it." He considered this. "Well. Kroll. Grandpa's sixty-seven. Mother's got some history, the girl's been in and out of the grandfather's custody, I don't know all of it. Some kind of family mess. Washoe's got it as a custodial interference, which is a felony in this state, if they want it to be." He wiped his mustache with a napkin. "Those things usually end up with the old fella sitting in a motel in Elko crying. Nobody wants to put a grandpa in Carson City."
The water in the ladies' room had stopped running.
Thane looked down the counter, then, at the booth by the window, where the pie plate sat with its three forks and the two coffee cups, one empty and one with a glass of melting ice beside it and a bent straw.
"You got company?" he said.
Coralee looked at the booth too. She looked at it for what felt to her like a long time and was probably two seconds. She thought about Rory in the back seat of the Nova saying please, Mama, please slow down. She thought about Lorene in her church clothes at the foot of the hospital bed. She thought about a yellow door on Ralston Street in Reno and a woman behind it with a hundred and five days who had called the police at six-thirty and had then, what? Sat by the phone. Paced. Stood in front of the refrigerator with the door open. Coralee knew every one of those things. She had done every one.
"Trucker," she said. "He's in the john."
The radio on Thane's belt crackled. He picked it up and listened to a woman's voice say something about the heifers, and that the Lekumberry boy was out there with a flashlight but needed a hand, and Thane sighed and put the radio back and drank the rest of his coffee in one long swallow and stood up and put his Stetson on.