Chương 8
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“Neither should half the people who are.”
“Records are being secured.”
“From who?”
“For the review.”
“Police already searched.”
“That doesn’t mean the church stops functioning.”
The woman’s name was Patricia Weller. She had taught Ethan’s third-grade Sunday school class and once made him apologize for drawing a mustache on Noah.
“Where’s Daniel?” he asked.
“He has been advised not to come onto church property.”
“Does he still have keys?”
“That is being handled.”
“Did you know about New Promise Farm?”
Patricia glanced at the attorneys. “I can’t discuss that.”
“You can. You won’t.”
“Ethan, there are legal issues.”
“My sister was locked in a farm your donations paid for.”
“We do not know that.”
“Her name was on an intake sheet.”
“A first name and last initial.”
“Anna C. Hannah Claire Bennett.”
Patricia’s face shifted. “Claire is her middle name?”
“You sent her birthday cards.”
“I didn’t remember.”
“That’s convenient.”
The attorneys began walking toward them.
Patricia lowered her voice. “Pastor Daniel told the board New Promise stored donated furniture. We approved grants for transportation and property repairs. We did not approve a residential program.”
“Who checked?”
“Our treasurer reviewed the reports.”
“Who was the treasurer?”
Patricia looked away.
Claire had held the position for three years.
Ethan laughed without humor. “My mother.”
“She resigned last month.”
“After Hannah disappeared.”
Patricia’s eyes shone. “Your mother brought us incomplete records. We thought grief had overwhelmed her.”
“You thought what Daniel told you to think.”
“That is not fair.”
“Nothing about this is fair.”
The attorneys reached them. One asked Ethan to leave.
He did, but not before looking through the open Bridge Fund office.
The desk was bare except for a yellow sticky note beneath the keyboard. Hannah’s handwriting slanted across it:
Don’t reimburse NP without original receipt.
The note had probably survived because nobody considered it important.
Ethan pointed through the doorway. “That’s hers.”
The attorney moved to block his view.
“Photograph it,” Ethan said.
“We are preserving all relevant material.”
“Photograph it now.”
The attorney reached for the note.
Ethan took out his phone.
“Do not touch it,” he said loudly enough for every volunteer in the hall to hear. “Detective Ruiz needs to see it where it is.”
The room went still.
One of the other attorneys sighed and called the police.
It was the first useful thing Ethan’s refusal to obey accomplished.
Ruiz arrived twenty minutes later and documented the note. She also took Ethan aside.
“You could have contaminated a search location.”
“I didn’t touch anything.”
“You entered without authorization.”
“I had the code.”
“That is not authorization.”
“You would rather the church lawyers packed it away?”
“I would rather you called me from outside.”
“You would have told me to wait.”
“Yes.”
“And it would still be there?”
Ruiz looked toward the office. “Maybe.”
“Then you’re welcome.”
“I am trying very hard not to arrest you for trespassing.”
“Patricia invited me to leave. I left.”
“That sentence is going to become less charming as you get older.”
Ethan almost smiled. The feeling vanished before it reached his face.
Ruiz glanced at his phone. “Did you photograph the note?”
“Yes.”
“Do not post it.”
“I deleted the last post.”
“After it spread across three states.”
“Did it help find the farm?”
Ruiz did not answer immediately.
“Did it?”
“A former resident contacted our tip line after seeing it.”
Ethan waited.
“Her name is Maren Lowe,” Ruiz said. “She remembers Hannah.”
The interview with Maren took place by video because she lived in Ohio and refused to return to Bellwether. She was twenty-two, with cropped hair and a nervous habit of rubbing her knuckles. She agreed to let Ethan listen from another room but did not want him visible.
Maren said Hannah had arrived before sunrise wearing a cream jacket over a white shirt. Daniel and Caleb called her Anna. They took her phone and necklace during intake. Daniel left after speaking privately with Caleb.
Hannah asked to call her brother before breakfast.
Caleb told her phone privileges were earned.
“She didn’t act scared at first,” Maren said. “She acted mad. There’s a difference.”
“What happened next?” Ruiz asked.
“They put her in the furniture warehouse. We cleaned donations, sanded tables, loaded trucks. They said the work paid for our housing.”
“Was she allowed to leave?”
“They didn’t use locks during the day. They took our shoes at night.”
Ethan looked down at his own shoes.
Maren continued. “Hannah kept asking about the church records. Caleb told her Daniel would handle whatever she’d stolen if she cooperated.”
“Did she have documents with her?”
“I never saw paper. She said she had copies somewhere else.”
“What made her leave after nine days?”
“A volunteer named Naomi found her trying to use a phone in the office. Caleb grabbed the cord out of the wall. Hannah started laughing.”
“Laughing?”
“She did that when she was scared. It made him angrier.”
Ethan remembered Hannah laughing at their father while he packed his car. She had been twelve. Ethan had thought she was too young to understand.
“Naomi drove the donation truck,” Maren said. “Two days later, Hannah was gone. Caleb told us her mother came for her, but I saw Naomi’s bunk empty too.”
“Do you know Naomi’s last name?”
“Price. Maybe Pryce. She had red hair and a tattoo of a moth on her wrist.”
“Where did she live?”
“I don’t know. She mentioned Terre Haute.”
Ruiz ended the call and immediately began tracing Naomi.
Ethan stayed in the observation room, looking at the black screen.
“She asked to call me,” he said.
Ruiz stood behind him. “Yes.”
“I could have told her to come home.”
“Possibly.”
“I could have fixed it.”
Ruiz rested one hand on the back of a chair. “That belief will ruin you if you feed it.”
“She was my sister.”
“You were a sixteen-year-old asleep in another room.”
“I was awake.”
May you like
Ruiz waited.
“I had headphones on,” Ethan said. “I heard a car outside. I didn’t look.”
