"You're dead in this county, Cole!" Miller screamed, spittle flying from his lips onto the leg of the bench. His face was mottled dark purple beneath the buzzing shop lights. "The Sheriff signed off on every haul from Black Creek! You think Donald Albright is going to let you walk into the courthouse with that paperwork? He’ll have state troopers pull you over before you hit the borough line!"
Cole stood over him, sucking in ragged lungfuls of solvent fumes, his uniform shirt ripped down the seam of the left breast. He reached down with a steadying hand, unclipped Miller’s sidearm from its retention holster, cleared the chamber into his palm, and tossed the brass round into the waste-oil burner. Then he unhooked Miller’s portable Motorola radio from its shoulder epaulet and snapped the power knob off against the edge of the desk.
"Donald Albright hasn't looked at a maintenance ticket since his bypass surgery three years ago," Cole said quietly, wiping a smear of engine soot from his forehead with the back of his wrist. "You ran the fleet barn because he was too tired to check the mileage. You told him Jesse was drinking because Jesse wouldn't forge the front-end sign-offs."
Cole turned to me. His face was pale, his lip split where Miller’s elbow had caught him, but his hands had finally stopped shaking. "Get in 404, Clara. We have twenty-two minutes before the morning shift keys the repeater."
We ran out into the drafty chill of Bay Two. The waste-oil burner was still roaring, throwing orange tongues of fire toward the galvanized rafters, but the cassette was already gone, reduced to a black puddle of burnt resin in the bottom of the hopper. I didn't care about the tape anymore. The spiral ledger was tucked beneath the heavy canvas of Jesse’s barn coat, and the folded plastic sleeve of Work Order 404-B was pressed hard against the sole of my left foot inside my boot.
Cole hit the wall button for the overhead bay door. The rusty chain hoist screeched, rolling the corrugated iron upward into the frosty fog. We piled into the front bucket seats of Cruiser 404. When Cole turned the ignition key, the big V8 engine rumbled to life, the red dashboard indicators flickering across the center console where the auxiliary radio tap had been ripped out.
Cole didn't activate the lightbar or the siren. He kept the headlights on low beam, creeping the patrol car out through the maintenance yard gate and swinging the long black hood toward the southern approach of Route Nine.
The drive into town took fourteen minutes through the thickest river valley fog I had ever seen. The road hugged the limestone bluffs above Black Creek, the yellow guardrails flashing past in the gray predawn gloom like teeth. Every time the front tires hit a patch of washboard gravel or black ice, the steering column shuddered with an unnatural, dry rattling sound—the exact mechanical vibration Jesse had documented in his ledger ten days before he was killed.
"Feel that pull?" Cole asked, his knuckles white against the textured vinyl of the steering wheel. He didn't look at me; his eyes were locked on the centerline. "Kyle took the die grinder to the inner tie-rod threads right on the hoist. He knew Jesse’s route home took him down the five-percent grade into the ravine. When Jesse tapped the brakes on the bridge approach, Kyle pushed him from behind with this bumper. The tie-rod snapped under the weight, the front right wheel buckled outward, and the steering locked solid. Jesse never had a chance to counter-steer."
I looked down at the dark front quarter-panel through the passenger window. Down on the chrome push-bumper, right where the heavy steel tubular guard bolted through the frame, there was a jagged two-inch gouge through the black enamel, revealing a streak of weathered, oxidized blue paint. Jesse’s Ford Ranger had been royal blue.
"You knew about the paint," I said, my voice barely louder than the hum of the heater fan.
"I saw it the morning after the wreck," Cole whispered. "Kyle was out behind the salt shed with a can of black lacquer, spraying over the scratches before the state accident reconstruction team arrived from Charleston. He told me if I opened my mouth, he’d tell the grand jury I was the one who met the timber truck at the landing." Cole swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing against his open collar. "I was a coward, Clara. I stayed quiet because I wanted to keep my house."
"You're not quiet anymore," I said, staring at the flashing yellow caution beacon that marked the borough line. "Keep your foot on the gas."