"Because the people who made him disappear may still believe that he possesses the original evidence. If they learn that you have found him, they may try to reach him before you do."
Marcus looked at the chief.
"Then help us get there first."
Mercer nodded.
"I'll arrange for a federal investigator to meet you at the property."
"No department officers," Marcus said. "Not until we know who can be trusted."
Mercer considered the request, then agreed.
Marcus left the office with Elena and Sloane beside him.
As the elevator doors closed, Elena looked at him.
"Do you believe Mercer?"
Marcus stared at the illuminated floor numbers.
"I believe he's frightened."
"That wasn't my question."
He turned toward her.
"I believe he knows more than he's told us. But I also believe he may be the first person inside the department who is willing to help us uncover it."
Sloane shook his head.
"Or he may be directing us toward Raines because he wants someone else to take the risk."
Marcus looked at the old detective.
"Then we'll assume both possibilities are true."
The elevator reached the lobby.
They crossed the building without stopping, returned to the car, and headed north toward the lake.
Behind them, on the executive floor, Chief Adrian Mercer remained standing beside his desk.
He picked up the telephone and dialed a number he had memorized seventeen years earlier.
Someone answered.
"It's me," Mercer said.
Silence followed.
Then a man's voice emerged from the receiver.
"What do you want?"
"They found the notebook."
Another pause.
"Who?"
"Marcus Hale."
The voice on the other end became cold.
"Did you tell him about the property?"
"Yes."
For several seconds, Mercer heard nothing.
Then the man spoke again.
"You've made a serious mistake."
Mercer closed his eyes.
"I know."
"No. You don't. If Hale reaches that building, he may discover everything."
"Perhaps that's what needs to happen."
The man laughed quietly.
"You still believe this is about justice."
Mercer gripped the telephone.
"Isn't it?"
"No, Adrian. It stopped being about justice the night Daniel Hale disappeared. Now it's about whether the people who built this system will allow anyone to destroy it."
The call ended.
Mercer stood motionless, staring at the telephone.
Then he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and removed a photograph.
It showed him standing beside Daniel Hale and Samuel Reed outside the courthouse.
On the back, in Daniel's handwriting, were the words:
Three men know the truth. Only one has told it.
Mercer placed the photograph in his pocket.
Then he walked to the window and watched the city lights flicker through the rain.
For seventeen years, he had told himself that silence was the price of survival.
Tonight, for the first time, he wondered whether silence had become the very thing that was killing them all.
The road north of the city narrowed as the three of them left the last traces of civilization behind. Streetlights gave way to dark stretches of highway, and the buildings that had once stood shoulder to shoulder along the road became scattered warehouses, abandoned gas stations, and fields swallowed by the evening mist.
Marcus drove with both hands on the steering wheel. The notebook lay inside his jacket, pressed against his chest. He had read Daniel’s final letter so many times that he could almost recite every sentence, yet each time he reached the words about Samuel Reed, he felt the same unease.
Find Samuel Reed before Victor Raines does.
The warning had seemed straightforward when he first discovered it. Now, after everything Chief Mercer had admitted, Marcus understood that Reed might be more than a missing witness. He could be the only person still alive who knew what had happened to Daniel.
Elena sat in the passenger seat, examining the photograph they had taken from the evidence depot. The image showed Daniel standing beside their father’s old toolbox, with the lake visible behind him. In the background stood a narrow wooden building with a crooked roof and a chimney that appeared to have been damaged by fire.
“Look at the windows,” she said.
Marcus glanced at the photograph at a red light. “What about them?”
“There are no curtains. No lights. And that building looks abandoned, but Daniel was standing there as if he had just walked out of it.”
Sloane leaned forward from the back seat.
“Let me see.”
Elena passed the photograph over her shoulder.
For several seconds, the retired detective said nothing. Then he leaned back and stared through the windshield.
“I know that building.”
Marcus felt his grip tighten around the steering wheel.
“Where?”
“Your father’s workshop.”
The words seemed to change the temperature inside the car.
“My father’s workshop burned down when I was fourteen.”
“That’s what the official report said,” Sloane replied. “But the building in this photograph isn’t the one that burned.”
Marcus looked at him in the rearview mirror.
“Explain.”