far, talking to him telepathically and not murmuring a word. Alice was getting used to having a conversation with someone verbally, while talking to Joe in her head at the same time.
They pulled up outside the restaurant and Alice saw it was located in a neat three-storey building.
“I guess the room they stayed in is up there,” Burrows said, as she looked the place over. At Burrows’ comment, they all looked up briefly and then walked into the restaurant.
“Ah... Please come in and take a seat,” the waitress welcomed them with a broad smile.
Agent Campbell showed his badge immediately. “FBI, we’d like to speak to the owners, please.”
The smile disappeared from the waitress’ face just as quickly as it had appeared and she bowed and went to the back of the restaurant to fetch someone. An Asian man who looked about 40, came out slowly, wiping his hands on a towel.
“Is this about the two men that stopped here?” he spoke very good English with a hint of an American accent.
“It is,” Campbell said, flashing his badge again. “We’ve got a few questions to ask you and your wife if that’s okay”
The owner was obviously displeased especially as the four customers he had in his restaurant stared uncomfortably at the FBI Agents. “You better come back here,” he said, and led them through to the kitchen, where his wife’s face immediately took on the same displeased expression once she saw them.
“More questions?” she asked as she stopped slicing the tomatoes in front of her. “We’ve told the other detectives all we know.”
“We’d like you to go over it one more time for us,” Agent Campbell said politely and held the sketch out to her. “You said the man who paid for the room is a Pakistani but this sketch doesn’t look very much like a Pakistani to me.”
“I am not sitting down with another sketch artist!” she said, slamming down her knife, “That drawing is as I remember him.”
There was a young boy of about fourteen washing dishes behind her, he turned to her and said, “Mam, take it easy. They just want to ask you again, that’s all.”
His father pointed to the door. “Haven’t you got homework to do?”
The boy bowed and was about to leave the kitchen when Alice stopped him. “Were you here when the two Algerians arrived?”
He looked at his father before he spoke. “I saw them but I didn’t speak to them.”
Alice put her hand in her pocket, pulled out the old army badge and started to play with it. “What’s your name, son?”
“Kim. Kim Woo.”
“How old are you, Kim?” Alice was rubbing the badge with her thumb, as if trying to polish it.
“I’m 14, officer.”
“Oh, I’m not an FBI agent.” Alice said, handing the badge to the boy. “I’m a medium, a kind of psychic; I help to find missing persons.”
The mother gave a gasp of shock, Joe giggled in Alice’s head and both Burrows and Campbell looked at her in disbelief; they weren’t sure they had heard her right but they let her go on.
“Could you read what’s written on the back of that badge for me, Kim?” Alice asked softly.
Kim turned it over and read it. “Lies can get you killed.”
Kim’s mother snatched the badge off Kim and handed it back to Alice. “He didn’t see anything Miss, he was asleep.”
“Oh really?” Alice asked with a friendly smile.
“My son sleeps in the front,” the father said to Alice. “The two guests had a room on the top floor at the back. He couldn’t have seen a thing.”
Alice, with her eyes still on Mr. Woo, asked the boy, “Is that right, Kim?”
“I didn’t get up... It was too early for me so I went back to sleep.”
“So you did hear them then?”Alice turned to look at him, still playing with the badge.
“I heard the banging on the side door and thought it was deliveries.”
Alice turned back to Mr. Woo. “Mr. Woo, we really need your help. It’s important that we find the two young men that stayed here.”
“They