My Favorite Suspects: Part 1

Despite all we'd done, Ghost had hit us again.

This is the first chapter in a new series of mystery/thriller stories based in Upstate New York. While revising “My Favorite Suspects” over the past few years, I decided to start publishing and marketing my work through Substack. The book’s title seemed to tie all my writing together and I adopted it as the name of my Substack.

In keeping with the experimental nature of stories on MFP such as “Where This Mystery Takes Us,” “My Favorite Suspects” combines elements from cozy mysteries, noir crime thrillers, and autobiography. It’s set in a contemporary American city and features an amateur sleuth who has his own peculiar way of profiling the subjects of his investigations.

After working over twenty years with law enforcement professionals and with criminals, I've noticed that almost any cop or thief can point to one or two experiences which set them on the path toward their current profession. It's similar to the idea that a person becomes a doctor after they lose a parent to cancer or becomes a therapist after living with a mentally ill sibling. Cops might point to witnessing some form of crime against a loved one, or something important to them, and thieves often mention the exhilaration of their first successful robbery, that moment when they cheated the system and got something they thought they deserved.

As for me, I'm not a doctor, a therapist, a cop, or a thief. I've had a lot of jobs, all centered around information technology, but not much in the way of a profession. If I had to identify a common thread through all my work, I'd call it investigation. By the way, most people call me Terry. If you're past a certain age and have known me long enough, you might know me as "Price Check." But I'm getting ahead of the story.

This is my event.

My event happened back when I was in my early twenties. I was working night crew at a supermarket in a suburb of Rochester, New York and had barely begun to think about cops and crime. It was, in a sense, my first case.

It centered around a person I'd struggled for weeks to identify. A person who had been stealing cigarettes from the supermarket. Who rarely appeared on our surveillance cameras and whom nobody seemed to be able to identify. Who had an almost supernatural ability to move in and out of our 160,000 square-foot supermarket, with all of its alarms and data gathering systems, without being detected. I mean, think about it for a moment: Most folks don't know that a modern supermarket is one big box of sensors that gather billions of data bits about you and send that data off to some huge bucket in the cloud, where it's digested and dissected by artificial intelligence, and pored over by burned-out middle managers who drink a bit too much and lie to their physician about how much they actually smoke. Think about all the ways that a retailer can monitor and track your movements throughout a store by tagging your phone, or your fitness tracker, or your credit cards, or using Wi-Fi signals and sensors to figure out how long you take to go through the cereal aisle, which products you choose, and which products you linger over as you think about buying them.

This person could bypass all that.

The night crew called this person "Ghost."

I remember waiting as Tuesday night's shift ended at the supermarket, and the rising sun pierced the picture windows at the entrance, with one question weighing on my mind: Did Ghost hit us again?

I wouldn't know until the inventory count. I watched from behind the one-way windows of the manager's office while the night manager, Miller, met the day manager at the entrance to perform the shift-change procedure. Miller was my boss. As always, by this point of the shift he looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes, his wrinkled white shirt untucked and his red tie flipped over one shoulder. The day manager looked fresher, though her shoulder-length hair was frizzed from the early morning humidity.

I didn't know the day manager well. I'd written her off as a suspect after half-heartedly looking into that possibility. For one thing, we did have a physical description of Ghost and she was about a hundred pounds over that. For another thing, she lived in Brighton, and the cops assured me that the thirty-something wife of a dentist would not steal cigarettes from a supermarket that sat across from a Marriott Courtyard on the other side of the city. Besides, she was a fast-tracker, as was Miller, and fast-trackers did not take reckless chances with their careers, lest they be tossed out on the street with few prospects other than manning a Sunglass Hut at the mall.

Miller handed a tablet to the woman. Together, they'd walk the store and formally check inventory.

The inventory check was done twice a day at every shift change, during the handoff procedure. The two assistant managers involved would walk the store, making a visual check of the inventory and verifying it against the current inventory numbers on a tablet, or, when the computers were down, a printout that we usually ordered mid-shift. It wasn't an infallible process and it mainly existed as a remnant of an earlier age before computers and smart phones. Board members liked it because they're all relics and distrust computers. And so the process lived on.

Miller followed her into the break room. I lost them on the surveillance cameras. Miller hadn't installed any cameras inside the service areas, those behind-the-scenes storage rooms and cluttered corridors where employees could vape or check their phones out of the view of customers. And, of course, there were no cameras in the restrooms.

I had a few minutes to wipe sweat from my eyeglasses and check to see if my brother had sent any texts.

I picked up Miller and the other assistant manager at the far side of the supermarket, in the bakery, and I followed them by flipping through different cam views on the office computer. They finally walked down the line of cash registers and stopped at the cigarette case to finish the count.

The case was a six-foot high cube with blue Plexiglass doors. It sat on an island between the aisles and cash registers. It reminded me of a shrine. I'd seen a similar cube-like object in an art history class I'd taken while dating a fine arts major.

Miller fumbled with the key ring he kept school-janitor style on a belt loop and unlocked the case. The case's thin wall shuddered and swung aside. From where I sat, it appeared to be full. All the columns of cartons sat in neat undisturbed columns. But appearance didn't matter. Only the count mattered.

Miller scowled up at me through the camera above the case.

The count had come up short.

I read his lips on the monitor: Ghost.

Despite all we'd done, we'd been hit again.

Miller fired the previous loss prevention associate a few months earlier and had given me her job. He'd said I was better with computers.

Before you ask, I did look into the previous loss prevention associate. I ruled her out. For one thing, she'd been banned from the store, so it was unlikely she would come back only to steal cigarettes. Fired employees usually chose vandalism over theft as their means of revenge. For another thing, she'd also been investigating Ghost. I'd read her notes and she'd been thorough. Finally, after Miller fired her, she moved back to Syracuse to live with her mom. So she'd been out of town.

In our corporate system, a loss prevention associate wasn't a security guard. A loss prevention associate's job was to find patterns in our losses and make recommendations. My recommendations came from the corporate loss prevention handbook and stuff I found on the internet. Miller said I would get training as soon as he could arrange it. There was a course offered from Corporate but I needed to have special approval. My attendance in that course was pending my next performance review.

Mainly, I winged it.

Following my recommendations, Miller had installed additional cameras, changed the locks on the exterior doors and the cigarette case, and fired shady night crew workers.

That didn't stop Ghost.

On Wednesday night, Miller entered the office, red-faced and sweating from unloading trucks. He aimed finger guns at me. "Counting on you, bro. Corporate says they want Ghost locked up by Saturday."

"We've been chasing Ghost for three months. How am I supposed to catch him in three days?"

"Actually, you had a week. I forgot to tell you until now."

I chalked it up to Miller being overworked. Like any retail operation, we were perpetually short-staffed, and management had to make up the shortfall in labor. I used to unload the trucks before Miller moved me into my current role. I continued to volunteer to help with unloading, but Miller said he wanted me watching the cameras. Catching Ghost was more important.

Having a deadline, however, was a new thing from Miller.

"What happens if I don't make the deadline?" I said.

Miller paused. He made a popping noise with his lips. I could tell there was something he didn't want to say. Miller and I got along well. We had similar interests. We hung out after work. He'd become a kind of surrogate older brother.

"Don't take this personally," Miller said, "but if you don't catch Ghost, I'll have to let you go."

Even though he was a surrogate older brother, he was still my manager. It took me a moment to mentally change gears. I wiped imaginary dust from my glasses.

"And if I catch Ghost?" I said, keeping my tone neutral.

Miller's expression brightened. "I'll put you on days."

I'd been on night crew for four years. Moving to days meant more pay. It meant a promotion. It meant not sleeping during the day. Having a normal life. I started to daydream the possibilities of being awake during the day and not living vampire-style inside a world tinted by artificial lights. I could make friends. I might even find a girlfriend. I'd heard they existed, though I'd mainly seen them in movies.

As if reading my thoughts, he said, "Like I've been telling you, bro. Take care of me and I'll take care of you." He looked at me expectantly, head tilted. "Got any ideas?"

"I do, but I don't want to say it."

"Why not?"

"Ghost… has to be a regular customer."

I'd worked night crew since I was eighteen. I'd gotten used to the trickle of people who shopped after hours. They were all folks who didn't quite fit into mainstream society. They had offbeat jobs, or unusual habits, or stubbornly independent personalities, and I'd begun to see aspects of my own personality and life reflected in their pallid faces.

Pleased, Miller tipped a can of energy drink toward me in a lazy salute, gulped the contents, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Who?" he said.

"I've narrowed it down to two."

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Stay tuned for part 2!