Chương 3
Leo folded the page along its existing creases.
His hands had stopped trembling.
That frightened him more than the trembling had.
“Who’s Hale Development?” he asked.
Harold picked up his cap and placed it on his head. “Largest private employer in Bellwether County. Warehouses, highway contracts, the new medical center, half the apartments downtown.”
“And the SUV?”
“Registered to one of their security companies.”
“You checked?”
“Your father did.”
“Who was at the cemetery?”
“I don’t know the men’s names. The one who spoke has been following me for six weeks.”
“And you still went to work every day?”
“I’m seventy-two. People my age can’t start new lives every time somebody frightens us.”
Leo almost told him that was exactly what Thomas had done.
Instead he got back into the truck.
The Bellwether bus terminal had closed four years earlier, after the regional line moved its stop to a gas station near the interstate. The brick building remained downtown between a laundromat and a furniture store that advertised permanent liquidation sales. Plywood covered two windows. The clock above the entrance had stopped at 6:17.
Harold parked behind a diner across the street.
“We shouldn’t go in together,” he said.
Leo looked at him. “You think I’m letting you leave?”
“I think two men entering an abandoned terminal attract more attention than one.”
“So does a seventy-two-year-old groundskeeper kidnapping a parolee.”
“I didn’t kidnap you.”
“My parole officer may disagree.”
Harold glanced at the plastic property bag. “Do you have a phone?”
“They don’t issue phones with your belt.”
“I have one.”
“That they can track.”
“They can track yours too, once you buy one.”
“I don’t have one.”
Harold removed a battered flip phone from his jacket.
Leo stared at it. “What year do you think it is?”
“The year nobody can convince me to type on glass.”
Despite himself, Leo nearly smiled.
It vanished before it formed.
Across the street, a woman came out of the laundromat carrying a basket against her hip. A little boy followed her, dragging one sock along the sidewalk. Traffic moved through the intersection. Nobody looked at Leo. Nobody knew he had spent six years waiting for this ordinary world, only to return and discover that the dead had been lying to him.
“Locker 214,” he said.
“The side door is chained, but the chain isn’t locked. Your father arranged it.”
“Three months ago?”
“Earlier.”
“He’s been planning this a long time.”
“Yes.”
Leo opened the truck door.
Harold caught his sleeve. “If someone is inside, walk away.”
“What if it’s my father?”
Harold looked toward the terminal.
“He wouldn’t meet you there.”
“You sound sure.”
“He told me he wouldn’t.”
“My father told you a lot.”
The terminal smelled of dust, pigeon droppings, and old rain. Sunlight entered through gaps in the plywood, laying narrow bars across the tile floor. Rows of molded plastic seats remained bolted to the ground. A faded route map hung behind the ticket counter.
Leo found the lockers along the rear wall.
Most stood open. A few had been forced and bent. Number 214 was low to the ground, its green paint scratched around the keyhole.
The brass key turned.
Inside was a canvas tool bag.
Leo carried it to a bench. He expected money, a gun, perhaps another letter. Prison had narrowed his imagination toward objects that could be hidden, traded, or used.
The bag contained three binders, an old smartphone sealed in a plastic pouch, a portable charger, a spiral notebook, and a child’s blue lunchbox.
Leo touched the lunchbox.
He had carried it to school in second grade. A faded astronaut floated across the lid. Thomas had bought it at a yard sale and replaced the broken latch with a piece of copper wire.
Leo opened it.
Inside lay six hundred dollars in twenties, a driver’s license issued to Thomas under the name Edward Martin, two motel key cards, and a silver ring Leo recognized as his mother’s wedding band.
He had not seen the ring since her funeral.
Thomas had told him it was lost.
Leo sat on the bench.
The old smartphone turned on when he connected the charger. There was no cellular service, only a lock screen showing the lake where the photograph had been taken. A note taped to the back displayed a six-digit code.
Leo entered it.
The phone contained no contacts and no messages. There were forty-seven photographs, nine audio recordings, and one video.
He opened the video.
Thomas appeared seated against a blank wall. His hair was longer than Leo remembered, nearly white at the temples. He had lost weight. A bruise darkened the skin beneath his left eye.
For several seconds Thomas simply looked into the camera.
Then he said, “Leo, I don’t know how to begin this without asking you to trust me, and I have not earned that.”
Leo lowered the phone.
Footsteps scraped behind the ticket counter.
He stood so fast the bench legs screeched across tile.
A pigeon flew from the rafters.
Leo swore under his breath.
The bird circled once and disappeared through a hole near the roof.
He listened.
Only traffic outside.
He sat again but did not resume the video. He opened the binders.
The first contained invoices, property deeds, canceled checks, and printed email chains. The second contained police reports from Leo’s case. The third held photographs of burned buildings, construction sites, and men meeting in restaurant parking lots.
Leo recognized one man: Grant Hale, president of Hale Development. Hale had appeared on local television during election seasons and charity drives. He had paid for the football stadium at Leo’s high school and put his father’s name above the entrance.
The police reports were more familiar.
May you like
Leo had read versions of them until the words seemed printed on the inside of his skull.
Six years earlier, a security guard named Miguel Santos had been shot during a warehouse robbery. Leo had driven two men to the warehouse believing they were stealing copper wire from an empty building. At least that was what he had told the detectives. The men, Darren Pike and Shawn Creel, entered with masks and a gun Leo claimed he had never seen. Santos surprised them. Creel fired once. They fled with a locked case from an office on the second floor.
