Chương 2
Travis stared at it.
Harper stepped toward the counter. “That recording may violate state law.”
“It doesn’t,” Nicole said.
“You an attorney now?”
“No. That’s why I asked one.”
She opened the evidence folder. The top page was an email from Assistant Attorney General Mara Singh acknowledging receipt of Nicole’s complaint, followed by a notice that an investigator had been assigned. Beneath it sat copies of county tax records, inspection orders, photographs of Evelyn’s bruising, bank statements, and three versions of a purchase agreement bearing three different dates.
Harper read only enough to understand that the folder had traveled beyond Marlowe.
“You went to the state?”
“My mother went to you.”
“I took a report.”
“You wrote that she tripped over a mop bucket.”
“That’s what she said.”
Evelyn’s good hand flattened against the counter.
“I said Lyle Benton pushed past me and I fell into the bucket.”
Harper looked at her. “You were upset.”
“I was bleeding.”
“You refused an ambulance.”
“I couldn’t afford one.”
The words changed the room more than Reeves’s entrance had.
Evelyn seemed to regret them immediately. She reached for a towel and began wiping coffee that had not spilled near her. Nicole watched the towel move over clean metal.
Travis’s attention shifted to the customers. Half the town knew Benton worked for Cain Development, though his paycheck came from a security company owned by Travis’s cousin. The other half knew better than to say so while Harper stood ten feet away.
“This is exactly why we should discuss it privately,” Travis said.
“No,” Evelyn replied. “Private is how you people do your best work.”
The brass bell rang again.
A woman in a navy blazer entered carrying a canvas case and a slim leather notebook. She was followed by a plainclothes man with a state identification card clipped at his belt. Neither hurried. Neither looked impressed by the uniforms already present.
Nicole had expected Mara Singh to send someone from the regional office. She had not expected Singh herself.
The assistant attorney general took in the broken cup, Evelyn’s sling, Harper’s badge, and the phone beside the folder.
“Mrs. Turner?”
Evelyn nodded.
“My name is Mara Singh. We spoke yesterday.”
Harper stepped between them.
“You should have notified my office.”
“We notified the county prosecutor.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No,” Singh said. “It isn’t.”
The plainclothes investigator asked Nicole not to touch her phone again until he could document the file. Reeves moved to a booth without being told. The customers remained where they were, held by fear and curiosity in equal measure.
Travis reached for his jacket zipper, though it was already closed.
“I have a meeting,” he said.
Singh looked at him. “Mr. Cain, you’re free to leave.”
His shoulders loosened.
“You should understand,” she continued, “that our investigator will be contacting you. Destroying or altering records after notice of an inquiry can create problems that do not exist yet.”
“I don’t destroy records.”
“Good.”
He glanced at Nicole as if she had arranged the sentence personally.
At the door, he paused beneath the brass bell.
“You think a title changes what your mother signed?”
“No,” Nicole said. “That’s why I brought documents.”
The bell gave a softer ring when he left.
Harper remained.
He looked around the diner and found no familiar face willing to offer him one. Even Otis had lowered his gaze to the ceramic pieces on the counter.
“Don,” Evelyn said, “you heard me.”
Harper’s mouth tightened.
“This town will remember who brought outsiders into it.”
Nicole stepped aside so the path to the door was open.
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s a prediction.”
Singh wrote something in her notebook.
Harper saw the pen move. He left without another word.
Through the windows, he spoke to Travis beside a county cruiser. Their bodies angled toward each other, close enough to suggest urgency, far enough to preserve the appearance of coincidence. Then Travis climbed into a black pickup parked near the alley. Harper remained on the sidewalk, staring at the two SUVs until one of the Army drivers looked back at him.
Inside, the customers began making small sounds. Chairs shifted. Someone whispered that Colonel explained the posture. Someone else said Nicole had always stood that way, even in high school, when she had made the girls’ basketball team run drills after their coach quit.
Evelyn picked up a fresh cup for Otis.
“You still owe me for that one,” she said.
Otis looked at the fragments. “It died in service.”
“It died because you’ve got butterfingers.”
That earned a few strained smiles.
Nicole bent to retrieve her mother’s glasses. One temple was twisted. A shallow scratch crossed the left lens. She held them out.
Evelyn did not take them.
“Your friend called you Colonel.”
“Daniel is my executive officer.”
“You said you worked in logistics.”
“I do.”
“You said you were coming from an inspection.”
“I was.”
“You did not say two government cars were going to pull up like the president needed pancakes.”
Reeves, seated in the booth, looked toward the window.
“One is a rental.”
Evelyn ignored him.
Nicole placed the glasses beside the coffee pot. “I didn’t know they would arrive together.”
“You didn’t know a lot of things this week.”
The accusation was quiet. It reached only Nicole.
Singh gave them the privacy of looking inside her case.
Nicole had flown into Indianapolis four days earlier after receiving a photograph from Evelyn’s neighbor. In it, Evelyn sat on the diner’s back steps with her arm held against her body and blood dried beneath her nose. The photograph had arrived without explanation at 2:13 in the morning Kabul time, while Nicole was reviewing transportation contingencies for an exercise that would move nearly six thousand soldiers across three states.
She had called her mother eleven times.
Evelyn answered the twelfth.
May you like
“I fell,” she had said.
Nicole knew a rehearsed statement when she heard one. What she had not known was how much of her mother’s life had already been organized around protecting her from it.
