Chương 4
He stopped.
For three years, prison staff had told him when to stand, sit, eat, shower, sleep, speak, and stop speaking. Now everyone seemed to be waiting for him to decide where his own feet should go.
Nora leaned close. “The car is twenty yards away.”
Finnley looked at the crowd, then at Walter.
“Walk with me,” he said.
Walter put on his cap.
They stepped outside together.
The first night of freedom, Finnley slept on the hotel room floor.
The bed was too soft, the white comforter too clean, the space beneath it too large to see at a glance. He dragged one pillow beside the wall and lay down fully dressed, Camden’s portrait facing him from the carpet.
Beth had left a prepaid phone on the desk along with a bag of groceries and written instructions for using the hotel’s electronic key card. Finnley read the instructions twice. He understood them, but the green light on the door lock still made him uneasy. In prison, green lights meant a door might open. They did not mean it would remain open for him.
At 2:11 in the morning, the phone vibrated.
He flinched hard enough to strike his elbow against the wall.
The message came from Nora.
Storage unit warrant approved. Search begins at eight. You are not permitted on site. I’ll update you.
Finnley typed, Why not?
He deleted it.
He typed, Is Walter going?
Deleted that too.
Finally he set the phone facedown.
Outside the window, traffic moved along the interstate. Red taillights gathered, separated, and disappeared. He listened to tires pass over wet pavement and tried not to count the seconds between them.
At breakfast, he took two apples from the hotel buffet and slipped one into his pocket before realizing no one cared.
A television above the coffee station showed footage from the courthouse. Reagan’s face filled the screen, her emerald gown bright against the officers’ dark uniforms. The caption beneath her photograph called Finnley “the wrongfully convicted heir,” though no one had used the word heir while he was washing trays for seventy-two cents an hour.
Two men near the waffle maker noticed him.
One of them stared.
The other whispered something.
Finnley left without eating.
Nora picked him up at nine in a small hybrid car cluttered with legal folders, coffee cups, and a child’s purple backpack.
“My daughter’s,” she said when he looked at it.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were looking.”
“I’m allowed to look at things now.”
Nora considered that. “Fair.”
She handed him a paper cup of coffee.
He tasted it and made a face.
“That bad?”
“It has vanilla in it.”
“You used to drink vanilla coffee.”
“I was twenty-nine.”
“You’re thirty-two.”
“Exactly.”
She laughed, then seemed guilty for doing it.
Finnley took another sip anyway.
The storage unit stood on the industrial edge of Bellweather, behind a fencing company and a warehouse that sold restaurant equipment. Police vehicles blocked the front gate. A local news helicopter circled high enough to be useless and loud enough to irritate everyone.
Nora parked across the street.
“I thought I wasn’t permitted on site.”
“You aren’t. We’re staying here.”
“Then why did you bring me?”
“Because you asked for updates every four minutes, and I was going to drive into a tree.”
They sat in silence.
Finnley could see the long rows of orange metal doors inside the facility. Unit numbers had been painted above each entrance. He could not make out 108.
“What are they looking for?” he asked.
“Financial records. Original devices. Anything connected to your father’s disappearance or your prosecution.”
“What if there’s nothing?”
“There was enough in the recording to vacate your conviction.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Nora stirred her coffee though it had a plastic lid. “Then we deal with what exists.”
A white evidence van arrived. Two technicians carried equipment through the gate. Finnley watched them disappear between the rows.
Camden had rented storage units for practical reasons. He kept tools, old contracts, replacement fixtures, and furniture salvaged from renovated apartments. He hated throwing away anything that still possessed a possible use. As a child, Finnley once found seventeen identical faucets in their garage and asked why they needed so many.
“Because someday a tenant will break the eighteenth,” Camden said.
Unit 108 had been paid for forty-one months.
Camden disappeared thirty-nine months earlier.
The math would not leave Finnley alone.
At ten twenty, Ruiz crossed the street toward Nora’s car. She wore jeans, boots, and a dark coat instead of her courtroom suit. Her hair had been pulled into a loose knot.
Finnley lowered the window.
Ruiz stopped several feet away. “Mr. Dennis.”
“Finnley.”
“All right.”
“What did you find?”
“We’re still documenting the contents.”
“That means something.”
“It means I cannot discuss evidence before it is properly collected.”
Nora said, “Elena.”
Ruiz exhaled. “There are boxes of business records, several encrypted drives, and what appears to be a second recorder. We also found clothing that may have belonged to Camden.”
Finnley’s hand went still on the coffee cup.
“What kind of clothing?”
“A coat.”
“Blood?”
“We don’t know.”
“You looked.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“There are dark stains. That is all I can responsibly tell you.”
Finnley opened the car door.
Ruiz stepped in front of it. “You cannot enter the facility.”
“That was his coat.”
“We haven’t established that.”
“He had a gray wool coat with wooden buttons. One was cracked.”
Ruiz said nothing.
Finnley pushed the door wider. “Is that what you found?”
Nora reached across him and turned off the engine.
Ruiz glanced toward the officers at the gate. “A gray coat. Wooden buttons.”
“The second button was cracked.”
“Yes.”
The air seemed to leave the car.
Finnley sat back.
Ruiz lowered her voice. “There is something else. A document addressed to you.”
“Give it to me.”
“It must be processed.”
“It has my name.”
“It was found with potential evidence in an active investigation.”
May you like
“My father wrote it.”
“We do not know that yet.”
