Chương 9
“Vey’s men?”
“I recognized one from Hale Security. Not Cole.”
“What did they take?”
“Nothing. I did not have the records.”
“What did they want?”
“Rebecca’s location.”
“Did you give it to them?”
“I didn’t know it.”
Cole spoke. “They left him in the bathroom. The motel manager called me because I had paid for the room under another name.”
“Why would he call you instead of an ambulance?”
“Because I paid him to.”
Leo rubbed both hands over his face.
Every answer opened onto another arrangement Thomas had made with compromised people.
“Where’s Rebecca?”
Thomas’s gaze returned to the ceiling.
“She missed the meeting.”
“Dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you call her?”
“She used prepaid phones.”
“Email?”
“No.”
“Family?”
“She has a sister in Oregon, but contacting her could expose Rebecca.”
Evelyn moved closer to the cot.
“What exactly does she have?”
“Original ledgers from Hale Development’s internal accounts. Signed authorization sheets. Payment codes matching transfers to Vey and Vale. She also recorded Grant Hale discussing the warehouse burglary.”
“Why hasn’t she gone to federal authorities?”
“She tried three years ago. An assistant U.S. attorney requested documentation, then declined to proceed after Hale’s attorneys claimed she had stolen records and embezzled money. She was fired. Hale threatened civil and criminal charges. She disappeared.”
“Why trust you?”
“She didn’t. She trusted Leo.”
Leo looked up.
Thomas reached toward the folding table.
Janice handed him a folder.
Inside was a letter addressed to Rebecca Sloan in Thomas’s handwriting. Attached were copies of Leo’s prison records, photographs from the warehouse, and a statement Thomas had signed.
Leo read the first paragraph.
My son made serious mistakes. Those mistakes allowed powerful men to use him. I am asking you to help expose what they did, not to pretend he did nothing wrong.
Leo stopped.
“Why would that make her trust me?”
“Her son went to prison,” Thomas said. “He died there.”
Leo closed the folder.
Thomas continued quietly.
“He was convicted of embezzlement based partly on records Grant Hale provided. Rebecca believed the records were altered. She could never prove it.”
“So I remind her of him.”
“Yes.”
“That’s your plan?”
“It was part of it.”
“You keep using people’s dead children.”
Thomas’s face tightened.
No one spoke.
In the corridor, the generator changed pitch. Rain began tapping against the boarded window, light at first and then steady.
Janice checked Thomas’s temperature.
“You need antibiotics through an IV,” she told him.
“I know.”
“No, you keep saying you know while continuing to act like knowledge is treatment.”
Thomas almost smiled.
Janice did not.
Leo watched the exchange. It was the first sign that his father had existed in these missing months as something other than a frightened witness. He had irritated nurses. He had chosen meals. He had slept and woken. He had been alive during every night Leo lay in his bunk imagining him dead.
The anger returned with such force that Leo had to stand.
“I’m leaving.”
Thomas tried to sit up.
Pain stopped him.
“Leo.”
“I found you. That’s all I came for.”
“You came for the truth.”
“I came because you wrote my name on an envelope.”
“You need Rebecca’s evidence.”
“You need it.”
“It could reopen your case.”
“My case is done. I served the time.”
“A conviction follows you.”
“So does this.”
Leo pointed at him.
Thomas’s mouth opened, then closed.
Leo walked into the corridor.
Harold followed.
“You don’t have anywhere to go,” the old man said.
“I’ll find somewhere.”
“With what identification?”
Leo turned sharply.
Harold raised both hands. “I’m not insulting you.”
“You’re doing a good impression.”
“I’m saying the practical parts don’t disappear because you’re angry.”
“I learned that in prison.”
“And your father spent six years imagining he could fix practical things without touching the human ones.”
Leo looked back toward the room.
Harold’s voice softened.
“Don’t become him just to punish him.”
Leo left the convent anyway.
He walked down the long drive in the rain. No one followed at first. His boots filled with water. The canvas property bag slapped against his leg. By the time he reached the road, his hair was dripping into his eyes.
Cole’s SUV rolled up beside him.
Leo kept walking.
The window lowered.
“There’s no town for five miles,” Cole said.
“Then I’ll have time to think.”
“You’ll have pneumonia.”
“I heard prison provides medical care.”
Cole drove beside him at walking speed.
“That joke needs work.”
“It wasn’t a joke.”
“No. Those are usually the ones that need work.”
Leo stopped.
Cole stopped too.
“Why did you help my father?” Leo asked.
“I told you.”
“For a deal.”
“Yes.”
“Not enough.”
Cole looked through the windshield.
Rain moved over the glass in wavering sheets.
“I spent eleven years making problems disappear for Grant Hale. Most were legal problems. Employees stealing. Contractors threatening lawsuits. Reporters asking questions. I paid people, frightened people, found photographs their spouses had not seen.”
“You want sympathy?”
“No.”
“Then keep going.”
“Four years ago, a building burned on Mercer Street. Hale had been paid county money to remove asbestos. He didn’t. Three squatters were inside when it burned. One was sixteen.”
Leo waited.
“I found security footage showing a Hale foreman entering with gasoline. Grant ordered me to erase it. I did.”
Cole’s voice remained flat.
“My daughter was sixteen that year.”
“That changed you?”
“No. I kept working for him.”
Leo looked at him.
Cole nodded. “That disappoints people when I tell it honestly.”
“Then what changed?”
“Thomas found a backup of the footage.”
“And blackmailed you.”
“He told me I could help him expose Hale or be exposed with him.”
“That sounds like my father.”
“He didn’t appeal to my conscience. He understood I had trained mine not to answer.”
Cole unlocked the passenger door.
“Get in.”
Leo did.
May you like
They drove back to the convent without speaking.
Thomas was asleep when Leo returned. Evelyn sat at the folding table reviewing the binders. Harold had found a deck of cards in a cabinet and was playing solitaire on the floor.
