Chapter 8 - The Second Road
Dad was already moving before I lowered the phone.
He grabbed his coat from the chair and headed for the back door.
"You're not driving," I said.
"I know the road."
"Then you can tell me where to turn."
We were in my car thirty seconds later.
Rain had begun again, thin and hard against the windshield.
The old St. Agnes property sat behind a line of pine trees and a rusted chain-link fence, almost invisible from Route One.
The county road ended at a padlocked gate.
Dad pointed left.
"Keep going."
"There is no road."
"There is."
I saw it only when the headlights caught two strips of cracked asphalt beneath the weeds.
The private road.
Rook Holdings.
Jonathan's road.
We followed it behind the clinic to a low service building with three garage doors.
Claire's car stood outside with the driver's door open.
I stopped so hard my seat belt locked.
"Claire!"
No answer.
Dad reached beneath his seat out of instinct, then remembered this was my car and there was no weapon there.
"Stay behind me," he said.
"No."
He looked at me.
"I had to try."
The side door to the service building was ajar.
Inside, the air smelled of wet concrete, dust, and something metallic.
My phone flashlight caught old shelving, broken medical carts, and stacks of cardboard boxes collapsed by water.
Then I heard Claire.
"Evelyn!"
Her voice came from below us.
We found a stairwell behind a swinging metal door.
At the bottom, Claire was pounding on a locked records-room door from the inside.
Dad rammed his shoulder into it once.
Nothing.
Twice.
The frame cracked.
On the third hit, the door burst inward.
Claire stumbled out.
I grabbed her.
"Are you hurt?"
"No. Someone locked me in."
"Who?"
"I never saw them."
She pulled away and pointed toward the far end of the basement.
"You need to see this."
Behind a plastic curtain was a second garage bay hidden below grade.
A dusty sedan sat beneath a gray tarp.
Dad stopped breathing.
Claire pulled the cover back.
The car was a white 1994 Volvo wagon.
Our mother's car.
I knew it from family photographs before I knew how to read the faded registration sticker.
There was a crushed section along the driver's-side rear quarter panel.
Blue paint streaked the white metal.
The hood and front bumper were intact.
Dad walked around the vehicle as if approaching a body.
"This was supposed to be destroyed."
"The police report says it was released to an insurer," I said.
"It was."
"Then why is it here?"
He did not answer.
Claire opened the driver's door.
The interior smelled like mildew and old upholstery.
The brake pedal still moved under pressure.
Dad crouched near the front wheel.
His hands trembled as he reached beneath the chassis.
"The line is intact."
I knelt beside him.
"You're sure?"
"I checked it nineteen years ago."
I stared at him.
"When?"
His face tightened.
"The morning after she died."
"You told me you believed Jonathan's story."
"I believed parts of it."
"What parts?"
"Enough to stay afraid."
Claire made a disgusted sound.
"That isn't an answer."
Dad stood.
"I came back here before sunrise. I inspected the car. There was no brake failure. The impact came from another vehicle. Left rear, angled forward. Whoever hit her pushed her toward the ditch."
"And you documented that?"
He looked at the floor.
"Yes."
"Where?"
He pointed to an evidence tag wired beneath the steering column.
I reached in and pulled it free.
The paper had browned, but the handwriting remained clear.
SECOND VEHICLE SUSPECTED. BLUE PAINT TRANSFER. POSSIBLE FORCED EXIT FROM ROADWAY.
Initials at the bottom.
R.H.
My father.
The date was the day after my mother's death.
"You knew," I said.
"Yes."
"You knew this was not an accident."
"Yes."
My vision sharpened at the edges.
"And you still signed the report."
He rubbed his face.
"Jonathan had already shown me your adoption file. He told me the person who hit Margaret would disappear, the car would disappear, and if I did not cooperate, so would our family."
"Who hit her?"
Dad stared at the blue paint.
"A man named Paul Kessler."
The name meant nothing to me.
"Who was he?"
"Jonathan's investigator. Former county deputy. Did private work when Jonathan needed something that should not exist on paper."
"Did you arrest him?"
"For six hours."
Claire stared.
"What does that mean?"
"I found him before dawn. His blue Ford had damage on the passenger side. He admitted he had followed Margaret. He said Jonathan only told him to scare her, force her to pull over, get the documents back. He swore the collision was not supposed to happen."
"And then?"
Dad's eyes closed.
"Jonathan arrived."
I felt sick before he said the rest.
"You let Kessler go."
"Yes."
"You destroyed the interview."
"Yes."
"You erased him from the case."
"Yes."
Claire turned away.
Dad's voice cracked.
"I thought Margaret was already dead. I thought I could save what was left."
"You mean us."
"Yes."
"By protecting the people who killed her."
He looked older than seventy in that moment.
"Yes."
A sharp smell reached me.
Smoke.
Claire smelled it too.
"Evelyn."
Orange light moved beneath the plastic curtain.
Someone had ignited the boxes near the stairwell.
Flames climbed dry cardboard with terrifying speed.
"Move!" Dad shouted.
We ran toward the stairs.
Smoke rolled down from the ceiling.
The door at the top would not open.
Dad hit it with his shoulder.
Nothing.
Locked from outside.
Claire coughed into her sleeve.
"There's another way."
Dad turned toward the garage bay.
"Service tunnel."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Because I used it the night your mother died."
There was no time to unpack that sentence.
We pulled the tarp off the Volvo and used it to shield ourselves as Dad led us behind the bay to a narrow concrete passage.
Heat pressed against my back.
The tunnel ended at a rusted hatch beneath a loading ramp.
Dad kicked until the latch broke.
Cold rain hit my face.
We crawled out into weeds behind the building just as smoke pushed from the roof vents.
I rolled onto my back, coughing.
Claire lay beside me.
Dad remained on his knees, staring at the service building.
Sirens sounded somewhere in the distance.
I pulled out my phone.
No signal.
Then Claire touched my arm.
"Evelyn."
She was holding something.
A small evidence tag she had pulled from the Volvo before we ran.
There was a second line beneath Dad's note, written in another hand.
TRANSFER VEHICLE TO S.A. - PER JJR.
And below it, a number.
A vehicle identification number.
Not Mom's.
The blue car's.
Dad looked at it and went completely still.
"That's Kessler's Ford."
I stared at him.
"Can it still be traced?"
He did not answer.
Claire did.
May you like
"It can if someone didn't erase it."
Dad looked toward the burning building. "I erased more than the car." His voice was barely there. "I erased the man."
