Chương 6
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Today?”
“I don’t know.”
Leah stood. “Do I get paid for today?”
“Of course.”
“And tomorrow?”
“We’ll talk this afternoon.”
On the bus home, she received an email from Northway Market.
The message apologized for “an upsetting customer-service interaction” and offered a two-hundred-dollar store credit while the company reviewed the matter. It asked her not to discuss “unverified technical information” concerning security procedures because public speculation could interfere with a fair investigation.
She read it three times.
Then she sent it to Marcus with one sentence.
They’re paying me in groceries to shut up.
He called immediately.
She declined the call.
He called again.
She turned off her phone.
Marcus spent the morning replacing a clutch assembly on a 2008 Harley that had been modified by three previous owners, none of whom had believed wiring diagrams applied to them. His shop occupied a cinder-block building near the freight tracks. The sign outside read KANE MOTOR WORKS, though the K had lost its lower light and glowed like an uneven H after dark.
His business partner, Odessa Price, rolled herself beneath the Harley on a mechanic’s creeper and said, “You’re tightening that bolt like it owes you money.”
“It’s stripped.”
“You stripped it.”
“It came in stripped.”
“Everything comes in stripped after you touch it.”
Marcus’s phone vibrated on the workbench. He checked it.
Odessa slid out. She was fifty-three, wore her gray hair in short twists, and had known Marcus long enough to recognize the difference between anger and fear by the way he held a wrench.
“That the girl?”
“Leah.”
“I know her name.”
“She sent the store’s email.”
Odessa held out a hand.
He gave her the phone.
She read it, then passed it back. “Two hundred is insulting.”
“It’s also evidence they know they’re exposed.”
“Or it’s a standard customer-care amount.”
“You defending them?”
“I’m defending the habit of knowing things before we say them.”
Marcus tossed the wrench onto the bench.
Odessa looked at it. “That one didn’t strip the bolt.”
He walked toward the open garage door. Freight cars clattered beyond the row of warehouses. The sound came in slow iron beats.
Odessa said, “You’re enjoying this.”
Marcus turned.
“Not what happened to her,” she added. “The part where you know who the bad man is.”
“He framed her.”
“Looks that way.”
“He put his hands on her.”
“I saw the video.”
“He would’ve kept going if I wasn’t there.”
“Probably.”
Marcus waited for the disagreement.
Odessa wiped grease from her fingers. “You’re still enjoying knowing exactly where to stand.”
He looked toward the tracks.
“When Daniel died,” she said, “there wasn’t anybody to hit. There wasn’t a store manager. No badge. No recording. Just rain and a centerline.”
“Leave him out of it.”
“You brought him in when you told the cop you were her father’s friend.”
“That’s what I am.”
“You were. Then you disappeared because she was angry, and you decided her anger was permission.”
“She told me not to call.”
“She was nineteen.”
“She told me I killed him.”
Odessa’s face did not soften. “And did you?”
Marcus’s shoulders moved once with a breath.
“No.”
“Then why have you been serving the sentence?”
He picked up the wrench.
Odessa rolled back beneath the motorcycle. “Don’t make Leah’s trouble into your parole hearing.”
By early afternoon, a reporter called the shop. Then a local television producer. Then a man claiming to represent a national civil-rights organization who could not name the organization’s director.
Marcus answered none of them.
At three twelve, an unfamiliar woman sent him a message.
My name is Marisol Vega. Todd Mercer did the same thing to my mother last November. Please don’t let Northway erase your video.
Marcus called her.
Marisol answered on the first ring. Her voice was guarded and quick.
“You’re the man from the store?”
“Yes.”
“Is Leah with you?”
“No.”
“Then I should talk to her.”
“What happened to your mother?”
Marisol was silent long enough for Marcus to hear children in the background and a television cartoon playing too loudly.
“She bought vitamins and groceries,” Marisol said. “The alarm went off. Todd said she had makeup in her purse. My mother doesn’t wear makeup. He took her into the office and kept her there until I came.”
“Did he find anything?”
“He said a lipstick had fallen under the chair.”
“Was it hers?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“My mother has arthritis. She can’t open that kind of tube. Also, it was purple. She thinks purple lipstick is for people who perform magic tricks.”
Despite himself, Marcus smiled.
Marisol continued, “They made her sign a trespass notice. Todd said he wouldn’t call the police if she agreed not to return.”
“Did she have a receipt?”
“Yes.”
“Did you report it?”
“I called corporate. They reviewed it and said there was insufficient evidence to reverse the decision.”
“Do you have anything in writing?”
“Everything.”
“Send it to Leah.”
“I don’t have her number.”
Marcus hesitated.
“You shouldn’t give it to me without asking,” Marisol said. “I just need her to know she isn’t the first.”
That sentence stayed with him.
When Leah turned on her phone outside her apartment, she had thirty-seven messages and four missed calls. Marcus’s was not the first one she opened. It was the shortest.
A woman named Marisol says Todd accused her mother last year. She has documents. I did not give her your number.
Leah read it while sitting on the second stair.
She called Marcus.
“You talked to somebody about me.”
“She contacted me.”
“You told her my name?”
“She already knew it.”
“Everybody knows it.”
“I didn’t give her your number.”
“You want praise?”
“No.”
“Good.”
A pause opened between them.
Marcus said, “She says Todd planted lipstick.”
Leah leaned against the railing. “Says.”
“She has corporate emails.”
“Saying what?”
“I don’t know. She wants to send them to you.”
“Why me?”
May you like
“Because it happened to you.”
Leah looked across the alley at the tire shop. A mechanic rolled a stack of used tires through a side door. One tire escaped and wobbled into the gravel. He chased it without urgency.
