Chương 10
“My father worked under him,” he said.
“That’s why we didn’t tell you,” Rocco replied.
Ellis kept reading. “My father hated him.”
“People revise hatred after funerals.”
“My father is alive.”
Rocco glanced at him. “Then ask better questions.”
Ellis reached the handwritten line. “This alleges witness intimidation and obstruction.”
“It alleges a dead police chief threatened a baker in 2003,” Rocco said. “The signature can be challenged. The notary is dead. The evidence it refers to is missing.”
“You’ve checked?”
“The bank box was emptied under a forged signature.”
Ellis looked at Mara. “Today?”
“Someone accessed it six years ago.”
“Who had the key?”
“My father.”
“And?”
“Someone at the bank used their copy.”
Ellis removed his phone. “I need to call the county.”
Rocco said, “You need to decide whether your call reaches Adrian Vale before it reaches anyone useful.”
Ellis’s jaw tightened. “I’m not dirty.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You imply it every time I speak.”
“I don’t know you well enough to insult you personally.”
Mara took the affidavit back. “Ellis, can you secure the bakery and request traffic cameras for the sedan?”
“Yes.”
“Can you do that without telling Adrian?”
He glanced toward the salon next door. “For a few hours.”
“Why only a few?”
“Because he owns one of the traffic camera maintenance contracts.”
Rocco gave Mara a bleak look.
Ellis added, “I’ll call a state investigator I trained with. Not through dispatch.”
“Name?” Rocco asked.
“Not until she agrees.”
“That’s fair,” Mara said before Rocco could object.
Ellis pointed toward the affidavit. “Make copies. Do not keep the only one here.”
“We already have.”
It was a lie, but a useful one.
Rocco noticed and said nothing.
Caleb had moved the recording equipment to the rear of his workshop. The blinds were closed. Hannah and the child were gone.
On the bench sat the repaired cassette, a digital recorder, and two red flash drives.
Caleb locked the door after Mara and Rocco entered.
“I listened once,” he said. “Only to confirm the transfer.”
Rocco positioned his chair beside the bench. “Play it.”
Caleb pressed a key.
Static filled the speakers, followed by the hum of a car engine. A door slammed. For several seconds, there was only movement and wind.
Then Ray Kesler spoke.
His voice was lower than Rocco remembered. Older too, though the recording had been made when Ray was forty-three.
“You said the river house.”
Another man answered. “Tomorrow night. The boy sleeps upstairs.”
Rocco’s hands tightened around the wheel rims.
Ray said, “How do you explain two dead children in one family?”
“He isn’t a child to Victor. He’s a share count.”
A third voice entered, calm and irritated. “Keep names off the tape, Ray.”
Ray answered, “You told me to record it.”
“I told you to get proof. Not narrate.”
Caleb paused the audio.
“Who is that?” Mara asked.
Peter had not mentioned another person.
Rocco stared at the speaker. “Play it.”
The recording resumed.
The unidentified voice said, “Leon, repeat the instruction exactly as it was given.”
The other man—Leon Voss—laughed. “You think this protects you?”
“It protects everyone who chooses not to murder an eleven-year-old.”
A long silence followed.
Then Leon said, “Victor wants the boy taken to the south dock after midnight. The rail is loose. His shoes go by the water. The current does the rest.”
Ray asked, “And me?”
“You drive him there.”
“What happens after?”
“Victor says you go back to work.”
Ray laughed once.
The unidentified man said, “That isn’t funny.”
“No,” Ray replied. “It is.”
There was a scuffle, a metallic noise, and Leon swore. The recording distorted. Ray’s voice returned close to the microphone.
“If I leave tonight, will you testify?”
The unidentified man did not answer.
“Tom,” Ray said. “Will you testify?”
Rocco leaned toward the speaker.
Mara whispered, “Tom who?”
The voice answered, “Get the boy out first.”
The tape ended in a soft mechanical click.
Caleb stopped the playback.
Rocco sat without moving.
Mara watched his face for the calm mask she had seen on the sidewalk. It did not return. His eyes remained fixed on the digital display, but he was somewhere inside the sound of Ray’s voice.
At last he said, “Play it again.”
They listened three times.
On the fourth, Rocco asked Caleb to isolate the unidentified man.
Caleb adjusted levels, reducing the engine noise. The voice became clearer but not familiar to Mara.
Rocco closed his eyes.
“Thomas Bell,” he said.
Caleb looked up. “Who?”
“My father’s attorney.”
Mara searched the name on her phone. The result appeared immediately: Thomas Bell, former general counsel for Castellano Shipping, missing since November 2003. His abandoned car had been found near Newark. No body had ever been recovered.
Rocco stared at the old newspaper photograph. Thomas Bell wore wire-framed glasses and had a careful, narrow face.
“He told Ray to get me out,” Rocco said.
“Which means he may have helped,” Mara said.
“Or disappeared because Victor learned he did.”
Caleb removed the first flash drive and handed it to Rocco. “One copy.”
Rocco gave it to Mara.
Caleb offered the second.
Rocco said, “Keep it.”
Mara looked at him.
“If they search us, they’ll expect both,” he said.
Caleb’s face tightened. “I have a family.”
“You already made the copy.”
“You told me to.”
“I didn’t know you had a family in the building.”
“You saw them.”
Rocco looked toward the empty front desk. “Then don’t keep it here.”
Caleb folded his arms. “Where?”
Rocco glanced at Mara.
She understood. “Give it to Ellis.”
“No,” Caleb said.
“Why?”
“Because Ellis’s father was Samuel Vale’s deputy.”
Mara said, “Ellis’s father hated Samuel.”
“His father says that now.”
Rocco asked, “Who do you trust?”
Caleb considered the question too long.
Hannah spoke from the back doorway. “Me.”
She had returned without the child. Her raincoat was buttoned to her throat.
Caleb turned. “I told you to stay at your sister’s.”
May you like
“I took Clara there.”
“Hannah—”
