Chương 9
Luis exhaled.
Daniels looked mildly surprised.
“I’ll need that in writing,” I told her.
“What?”
“That I listened to somebody.”
“I’ll notarize it.”
Owens almost smiled.
Then his phone rang.
He answered while walking into the lobby.
Daniels followed.
Ruth sat across from me.
Luis dropped into the chair beside her.
For thirty seconds none of us spoke.
Then Ruth said, “My cat’s name is Gerald.”
Luis looked at her.
“Why are you telling us that?”
“I don’t know.”
She twisted the bottle cap.
“He hates everyone.”
“Reasonable.”
“He bit a priest once.”
I looked at her.
“What did the priest do?”
“Blessed him.”
Luis laughed.
It came out too loud for the room.
Ruth laughed too.
Then, unexpectedly, so did I.
It lasted maybe five seconds.
Afterward the silence felt less hostile.
Ruth looked down at her hands.
“Michael laughed like you.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“He did.”
“He snorted.”
“So do you.”
Luis turned toward me with delighted betrayal.
“You snort?”
“No.”
Ruth smiled faintly.
“You just did.”
I was preparing a denial when Owens came back through the door.
His face killed the moment.
Daniels followed him, pale around the mouth.
I stood.
“What?”
Owens looked at Ruth first.
“The team entered the Mill Creek house.”
Her fingers stopped moving.
“And?”
“No one inside.”
“That’s good,” Luis said.
Owens did not respond.
I felt the answer before he gave it.
“What did they find?”
“A room in the cellar.”
Ruth closed her eyes.
Owens looked at me.
“Someone renovated it recently.”
“How recently?”
“Hard to say.”
“Found what?”
He hesitated.
My stomach dropped.
“Say it.”
Owens put his phone on the table.
The photograph showed a bare concrete room.
A folding chair sat in the center.
Behind it, covering almost an entire wall, were photographs of me.
At the veterans’ project.
At my house.
At gas stations.
At restaurants.
On my motorcycle.
Some were recent.
Some went back years.
Luis stopped breathing for a second.
Ruth whispered my name.
Owens swiped to the next photograph.
This one showed the opposite wall.
There were fewer pictures there.
All of Michael.
Different ages.
Different places.
Alive.
The newest image carried a digital timestamp from nine months ago.
I stared at my brother’s older face until every sound in the room disappeared.
His hair was gray.
His shoulders were thinner.
But it was Michael.
Standing beside a highway rest stop.
Alive nine months ago.
And beneath his photograph, written directly on the wall in black marker, were five words.
GRANT WILL LEAD US TO HIM.
I read the sentence three times before the meaning settled somewhere behind my ribs.
Luis leaned over the phone.
“They think you know where he is.”
“I don’t.”
Ruth looked at me.
“Maybe they think you will.”
Owens picked up the phone.
“That changes our assumptions.”
“Which assumptions?”
“That the people watching you know less than we thought.”
I stared at the image of Michael.
“Can you verify the timestamp?”
“Not from a photograph of a photograph.”
“Then verify the original.”
“The forensic team will.”
“When?”
Owens gave me a tired look.
“I’m not promising a timeline.”
Daniels stepped closer.
“The important point is that somebody wanted you to see that room.”
“Why?”
“To pressure you.”
“They could’ve sent the picture.”
“They wanted us to find it.”
Owens nodded.
“That house wasn’t abandoned in a hurry.”
He swiped through the images again.
“Somebody arranged that room.”
I looked at the wall of photographs.
The pictures of me had been printed in different sizes.
Some were grainy telephoto shots.
Others looked like ordinary phone pictures.
One showed me unloading lumber at Callahan House.
Another showed me at my kitchen window wearing a shirt I had thrown away two years ago.
My skin crawled.
“How long?”
Owens looked at me.
“What?”
“How long have they been watching me?”
“No way to know yet.”
Luis pointed toward one picture.
“That truck in the background.”
I leaned closer.
It was my old Ford.
The one I had sold four years ago.
“Four years minimum.”
Owens said nothing.
He did not need to.
Ruth looked physically ill.
“I brought this to his door.”
“No.”
I looked at her.
“You didn’t.”
“They followed me.”
“They were already watching.”
“I gave them a reason to act.”
“You gave me a letter.”
“That letter may be why they moved now.”
“Then the people who wrote threats are responsible for the threats.”
My voice sounded more certain than I felt.
Ruth heard the uncertainty anyway.
She always seemed to.
“You don’t believe that completely.”
“No.”
That was as honest as I could manage.
Luis sat back.
“What if the room wasn’t about finding Michael?”
Owens looked at him.
“What else would it be about?”
“Making Bear believe he’s the key.”
I turned toward him.
“Why bother?”
“To steer you.”
“Toward what?”
He pointed at the envelope.
“That.”
The letter sat on the table between us.
Suddenly it looked less like evidence and more like bait.
Owens’ phone rang again.
He answered.
His eyes moved toward me halfway through the call.
“Say that again.”
He listened.
“When was it deposited?”
Another pause.
“Send it.”
He ended the call.
“What?”
Owens looked at me.
“The team found a storage receipt taped under the chair.”
“For what?”
“A locker at a bus station downtown.”
Luis groaned.
“Of course.”
I looked at Owens.
“You think that’s for me too.”
“I think anything left in that room may have been intended to move somebody.”
“Us or me?”
“Possibly both.”
Daniels asked, “Locker number?”
Owens checked the incoming message.
“Three-seventeen.”
Ruth’s water bottle slipped in her hands.
I turned.
“What?”
She was staring at the number.
“Michael used 317.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“I truly don’t know.”
She pressed both hands around the bottle.
“It was on the medicine cabinet.”
“What medicine cabinet?”
“At the Mill Creek house.”
Owens stepped closer.
“You never mentioned that.”
May you like
Ruth’s voice sharpened.
“I did not inventory the building for an investigation I didn’t know would happen twenty-seven years later.”
