“You’re joking, right? That walking piece of excrement wrecked my life. You really think I’d tell him what I found?”
Zig’s ears perked up. He shot Elijah a look.
Roddy did, too. “Mr. Elijah, what do you know about my sister?”
Elijah unwrapped another Starburst, a red one. An awkward silence hung in the air.
“Elijah, please, we’re on your side here,” Zig said. “You see what this case is doing to Nola—the way she’s sneaking around, making mistakes she never makes. You should’ve seen the way her hands were shaking. She’s clearly at the core of this . . . and you obviously have something you’re not saying . . .”
Elijah sat there silently, popping the red candy in his mouth. Did he trust these two? Not really. But in the end, if they were here to help Nola, then by extension, maybe they could help him.
“If I had answers, you’d have them already,” Elijah said. “All I’ve got is a theory, okay?”
“What kinda theory?” Zig challenged.
“When O.J. strolled in here last night, all smiles and charm, I almost— I’ll just say it pissed me off, which I’m not proud of, but that’s what it did. It’s the only reason I even took a look.”
“A look at what?” Zig asked.
“Employment records,” Elijah said. “You have to understand . . . all those years ago, when everything went down at Grandma’s Pantry, the government fired everyone who worked there—every staffer who was anywhere near the storehouse that night: the warehouse supervisor, the vaccine manager on call, the lift operator, all the security guys, of course . . . even the maintenance and janitorial staff. But last night, when O.J. left, I couldn’t help myself. I called a buddy who does surveillance work for the Pentagon—he owes me for setting him up with his second wife. The point being, I asked him to pull the staff list for Grandma’s Pantry. Accidentally, he sent me the current list rather than the old one.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” Zig said.
“You will. On the list was a guy named Axel Padilla.”
Zig made a face. The name didn’t ring a bell.
“He’s a security guard at Grandma’s Pantry,” Elijah explained. “Low-level guy, one of the many hired by the Marshals.”
“Back then or now?” Zig asked.
“That’s the kicker. Axel is a pretty memorable name, which made me look twice at it—and then I saw it, glowing on my computer screen: Axel Padilla is on the current list of guards . . . but also on the original list from five years ago.”
“I thought you said the Marshals fired everyone.”
“That’s what I thought. Except, apparently, for a guy named Axel. He’s the one and only person who was there on the night when Salty was killed, the next day, when the twenty-two million went missing—and also, for reasons that defy all logic, still somehow has a job working security there today.”
Zig sat there a moment, watching a few stray bubbles rise in his craft beer. “Think he’s a whistleblower?”
“That was my thought—though he could be anything,” Elijah said, knowing there were plenty of cases where a whistleblower was so helpful, the government brought them back to the job once the disaster passed.
“This guy Axel, where’s he right now?” Zig asked.
“I have no clue. He was a night guy, so maybe . . . at work?”
“It’s a good idea,” Zig said, taking a final swig of beer and heading for the door.
“Where the hell’re you going?” Elijah asked.