The Dispatcher by Ryan David Jahn Read Free Book Online Page A

counter at the back of the narrow store stands an old man with hunched shoulders and a face like an apple core left in the sun. He smiles, revealing very white unfitted dentures. His smile is open-mouthed and the top row of teeth starts to slip from his gums, and he slams his uppers and lowers together with a clack and works his jaw, getting the dentures back into place. His hands rest on the counter. Black shoe polish has stained the fine spaces between the whorls of his thumbs and built up beneath his fingernails. A polish-stained rag lies on the counter near to hand, beside a tin and a pair of buffed shoes.
    He finishes working his jaw and says, ‘How can I help you gentlemen?’
    As the cobbler speaks his gaze drops from their faces to their feet, to their shoes, the thing by which, it is clear, he measures all men. His frown makes it clear that neither Ian nor Chief Davis meet his minimal standards.
    ‘A quick polish, perhaps?’ he says.
    ‘You hear a ruckus out front ’bout ten-fifteen minutes ago?’ Chief Davis says.
    ‘Ruckus?’
    ‘Noise.’
    ‘Scuffle,’ Ian says. ‘Maybe a scream.’
    The cobbler shakes his head.
    ‘Nothing, huh?’
    ‘’Fraid not.’
    Ian pulls his wallet from his right hip pocket and in it finds a photograph of Maggie. The edges are torn and browned from frequent handling. He looks at it a moment himself, at his grinning daughter’s first-grade yearbook photo, and then turns it around and sets it on the counter and pushes it toward the cobbler.
    ‘Ever seen this girl before?’
    The cobbler shakes his head without so much as a glance at the picture. His eyes remain dull and unfixed, looking toward some nothing in the middle of the room.
    ‘No,’ he says. ‘Ain’t seen nothing.’
    ‘You didn’t even hear nothing?’ Chief Davis asks again. The cobbler shakes his head, then taps the hearing aid hooked around the back of his ear. ‘Maybe the battery’s dying.’
    ‘Could be.’
    ‘You don’t seem to be having much trouble hearing us,’ Ian says.
    ‘Well.’
    ‘Look at the goddamn picture.’
    ‘I already told you I didn’t—’
    Ian hits the counter with the flat of his palm, creating a loud clap, and the cobbler recoils like he’s been hit.
    ‘You haven’t even bothered to fucking look yet.’
    ‘Hey,’ Chief Davis says, putting a hand on Ian’s shoulder, ‘man’s got no reason to lie.’
    Ian ignores this. He leans on the counter and glares at the cobbler, forcing him to meet his eye. The cobbler looks uncomfortable, but he stares back for a couple seconds before his gaze drops to Ian’s chest.
    ‘This is my daughter. She’s been missing for more than seven years. The picture was taken before she went missing, so she’d look different now. She’s fourteen, fifteen in September. She made a call from the pay phone out front not twenty minutes ago. Now look at the goddamn picture and tell me did you see her.’
    The cobbler looks down at the photograph. After a moment of silence he reaches out and touches it with a black-stained fingertip. He touches it gently. Ian has to fight the urge to snatch it away from the man. Instead he puts his hands behind his back. The cobbler’s face softens and his eyes find focus as he looks at the picture. He scratches his cheek.
    Without looking up he says, ‘I didn’t get a good look at the girl but this might’ve been her.’
    ‘Did you see the man she was with?’
    ‘The one who took her?’
    ‘The one who took her.’
    The cobbler nods. ‘I don’t know him. But I only been in town four years and don’t meet nobody unless they come in the shop.’
    ‘You didn’t recognize him?’
    ‘Not to name,’ the cobbler says, ‘but I think I seen him at Albertsons a few times.’
    ‘So you’d recognize a picture?’
    The cobbler nods. ‘Think so.’
    ‘In his sixties, gray hair, bald on top, busted capillaries in his nose, and about my size?’
    ‘He’s fatter’n you, but about the same height, I reckon.’