“About that, I am.”
At midnight, Sarah finally slept.
She dreamed of a man she could not quite see sanding a wooden horse. In the dream he kept saying it was not finished, and she kept telling him she did not mind.
When she woke, there were tears on the pillow, but the fear had loosened enough to let her breathe.
Saturday brought blue sky and a call from Velez asking them to come to the hospital. Owen was stable. He had agreed to speak with investigators again, and he wanted Diana there for part of it.
Sarah asked whether she could come.
“Yes,” Velez said. “If you want to.”
She did not ask Hank to join them until he was putting on his jacket in the hall.
“You can come too.”
He looked at her.
“If the detective says it's okay,” she added.
He smiled a little. “Fair condition.”
Owen looked older than any photograph Sarah had imagined. His hair lay flat against his skull, his skin thin over the bones of his face. A bruise spread along one cheek. An oxygen tube rested beneath his nose, and his hands trembled even when he laid them flat on the blanket.
He saw Diana first.
“I thought you wouldn't come,” he said.
Her mother stood beside the bed.
“So did I.”
His eyes moved to Sarah.
For a moment his face changed with a bewildered tenderness.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, you look like him.”
Sarah stayed near the foot of the bed.
“I know now.”
Owen closed his eyes.
Velez sat where he could see her without turning his head. She explained the recorder, asked whether he understood, and waited for his answer.
Then she began with the letter.
Owen had meant to deliver it in 2002. Michael gave it to him the day before the warehouse meeting, along with copied records and instructions to contact Sloan if Michael did not come back. Owen put the letter in a drawer and the papers in a locked cabinet.
Then Cutter came.
“He didn't need to hit me,” Owen said. “He knew my boy's name.”
Sarah looked at his shaking hands.
“I had a son in high school. Thought he was grown. He still asked me for money for movies.”
His mouth trembled.
“Ray told me what route he took home.”
Diana turned toward the window.
“So I gave him the papers,” Owen said. “I told myself Mike must have another set. Told myself I was saving my boy. Maybe I was. But I left Diana with nothing.”
“Not nothing,” Diana said without turning. “A baby. A missing husband. A man who came to my door.”
Owen nodded painfully.
“Yes.”
“Did you know he was dead?”
“I knew what Ray said.”
“What did he say?”
Owen looked at Sarah.
She held his gaze.
“Don't leave me out because I'm younger than the rest of you.”
He shut his eyes briefly.
“He said the mechanic wouldn't be making more copies.”
Velez waited until he opened his eyes again.
“Did you see Michael after September nineteenth?”
“No.”
“Did you see his body?”
“No.”
“Then we'll keep that distinction clear.”
Owen nodded.
The first set of papers had been more extensive than those in the box. Owen kept accounts for Bayline. He had access to payment schedules, warehouse leases, names behind several smaller companies. He had known some entries were false before Michael confronted him. He had told himself it was not his job to ask why.
Then a driver named Luis Moreno died after a brake failure on a steep road.
Michael had signed the repair request.
Somebody else had marked it completed.
“Owen,” Velez said, “did you alter that record?”
He stared at the blanket.
“Yes.”
Sarah felt Hank go still behind her.
“I didn't know someone would die.”
Diana turned from the window.
“But when someone did, you still kept the job.”
Owen's chin shook.
“Yes.”
He did not ask them to understand. Sarah was grateful for that. Fear was a reason. It was not a clean cloth that wiped every other fact away.
Velez asked about the men who took him from his house.
He named Aaron Pike and described the second man. They put him in the back of the SUV and drove him south. Pike asked about the letter, about whether Diana had replied, about whether Sarah knew where Michael stored the copies.
“How did they know Sarah's name?” Velez asked.
“Ray knew. He knew where she worked.”