Chương 4
Leo drove.
That was why he had pleaded guilty to robbery and conspiracy. He had not fired the shot, but he had driven the car before and after it happened. The prosecutor had offered twelve years instead of a potential twenty-five. Evelyn Rusk had advised him to take it. With good behavior and overcrowding credits, he served six.
Darren Pike disappeared before trial.
Shawn Creel was killed in jail three months after his arrest.
Leo had spent years telling himself that he was guilty enough.
The documents in Thomas’s binder suggested the robbery had never been about copper.
The warehouse belonged to a Hale subsidiary. The locked case contained accounting records connected to county redevelopment grants. Thomas, then a senior auditor in the county controller’s office, had requested those records two days before the robbery. The night guard’s schedule had been changed without explanation. An evidence log showed the recovered gun entering police storage at 11:42 p.m., twenty-three minutes before an officer claimed to have found it in Leo’s car.
Someone had circled both times in red ink.
Leo’s stomach tightened.
The last document was a copy of an email from Thomas to County Controller Marcus Vale.
I will not alter the audit language. The transfers are not clerical errors. If the original Hale invoices are unavailable, I will state in the report that they disappeared during a burglary carried out by individuals associated with a police informant.
Below the message, someone had written in Thomas’s hand:
Sent four hours before Leo was arrested.
Leo heard a vehicle stop outside.
He shoved the documents back into the tool bag.
The side door opened.
Harold entered, breathing hard.
“Two men just went into the diner asking about you.”
“You left me alone in here.”
“I was watching the street.”
“That wasn’t the agreement.”
“We didn’t make an agreement.”
Leo held up the police report. “Did my father tell you I was framed?”
“He said you were used.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
“Was I part of the robbery or not?”
Harold hesitated.
Leo stepped closer. “Be careful.”
“He said you agreed to drive.”
Leo nodded once.
“He said you thought it was theft from an empty building. He also said you knew Darren Pike was dangerous and went anyway because you owed him money.”
Leo looked down at the binder.
That was true.
He had owed Darren eight hundred dollars for pills. He had been twenty-four, working three irregular jobs, sleeping on his father’s couch, and hiding envelopes from collection agencies beneath the passenger seat of his car. His mother had been dead two years. Thomas had started checking Leo’s pupils whenever he came home late.
The night of the robbery, Leo had known Darren carried a knife. He had known the warehouse might not be empty. He had driven anyway.
Framed was too clean a word.
Used was worse.
Harold nodded toward the door. “We have to move.”
“Where?”
“Evelyn Rusk.”
“She told me to take the plea.”
“She had reasons.”
“Everybody has reasons.”
A shadow crossed the plywood over the front window.
Harold turned off the overhead flashlight he had been carrying.
Leo held the tool bag by its straps.
Someone tested the front entrance.
The old terminal doors were locked with a chain, but metal rattled against glass.
Harold pointed toward the rear hallway.
They moved through a former employees’ area where calendars from four years earlier still hung on the walls. The rear exit opened into an alley lined with dumpsters. Leo stepped out first.
A man waited near Harold’s truck.
He wore a navy suit without a tie. His hair was cropped close, and his hands remained visible at his sides.
“Leo,” he called.
Leo stopped.
Harold whispered, “That’s the man from the cemetery.”
The man did not advance.
“My name is Adrian Cole. I work for Hale Corporate Security.”
“That supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.”
Cole’s voice was the one from outside the maintenance building. Calm. Patient. Almost polite.
“I need the bag you took from the terminal.”
Leo tightened his grip.
Cole looked at Harold. “Mr. Bennett, you’re in over your head.”
“I’ve been in over my head since before you learned to shave.”
“That’s possible.”
Cole shifted his attention back to Leo.
“The materials in that bag were stolen.”
“Then call the police.”
“I’m trying to avoid that.”
“Kind of you.”
“You’re on parole. Entering this building alone could send you back.”
“The door was open.”
“The side entrance has a chain.”
“Not a locked one.”
Cole’s mouth tightened almost imperceptibly.
Leo noticed. Prison had made him attentive to small losses of control.
“What happened to my father?” Leo asked.
Cole glanced toward the street. “Not here.”
“You followed me to his grave.”
“I followed Harold.”
“Why?”
“Because someone else is looking for Thomas.”
Leo felt Harold move behind him.
Cole continued. “Hale Development isn’t the only interested party, whatever Thomas told you.”
“He didn’t tell me much.”
“That was his habit.”
“Do you know where he is?”
Cole took a breath before answering.
“I know where he was twelve days ago.”
A horn sounded from the street.
Cole looked toward it.
Leo swung the tool bag into Harold’s chest and ran.
He vaulted a low chain behind the diner, cut through a parking lot, and reached the sidewalk. Harold shouted after him. Cole did not.
Leo ran two blocks before his ribs forced him to slow. He moved through an alley behind a pharmacy, crossed a church parking lot, and entered a grocery store through the automatic doors.
Cold air struck his face.
A teenage employee was building a pyramid of canned corn near the entrance. She looked at Leo’s property bag, his bruised face, and the canvas tool bag. Her eyes stayed on him one second too long.
May you like
Leo walked rather than ran.
He passed produce, bakery bread, a woman arguing into her phone about pasta sauce. Ordinary people filled carts and checked prices. A child sat in the bottom of one cart eating crackers from an open sleeve.
