CHAPTER EIGHT B: THE RED CAP
The young worker’s name was Theo Marsh.
He lived with his grandfather and took repair jobs while attending night classes in industrial design.
When inspectors located him, Theo assumed Simon had accused him of stealing tools.
He arrived at the interview with photographs of his workbench and receipts for the equipment he owned.
Ruiz explained that the inquiry concerned vehicles brought into the warehouse.
Theo stopped defending himself.
“I thought you were here about the van,” he said.
He described how Simon had ordered him to clear the back room late one Friday.
A white medical van arrived after closing.
Two men rolled a narrow stretcher through the loading bay, although Theo never saw a patient on it.
One man carried a cooler with a silver lid.
Theo recognized it because the lid had a dent shaped like a crescent.
“Was the cooler heavy?” Ruiz asked.
“Not when he set it down,” Theo replied.
“It rattled like there was something loose inside.”
Theo had been told to sand the paint from a set of metal panels.
He refused after noticing that the panels carried the same lettering as the van.
Simon sent him home without pay.
The next day, Theo returned for his tools and found the panels gone.
He had kept quiet because Simon knew where his grandfather lived.
Ruiz asked whether Simon had threatened him directly.
“He said accidents happen to old houses,” Theo replied.
“My grandfather’s house has bad wiring, and Simon knew I worried about it.”
Theo looked at the table.
“I should have told someone.
”
Ruiz reminded him that fear did not make his observations worthless.
Theo offered to show inspectors the area where the panels had been stored.
He also produced a sketch of the warehouse from a school assignment.
The drawing included a small service door that Mark had not noticed.
CHAPTER EIGHT C: THE WAREHOUSE NEIGHBOR
The printing company beside Simon’s warehouse had been operating for thirty-two years.
Its owner, Margaret Lin, knew the alley’s usual sounds well enough to notice when something changed.
She remembered the dark delivery truck because it had blocked her loading dock twice in one week.
The driver refused to move until she threatened to call a towing company.
Margaret described him as a broad man with a baseball cap and a noticeable limp.
Ruiz asked whether she could identify him from a photograph.
Margaret said she could try, but she warned that she had mostly seen his profile.
The investigators showed her a properly arranged set of photographs without indicating whom they suspected.
Margaret selected one and said she was moderately confident.
The photograph belonged to Randall Sykes.
Ruiz recorded the level of certainty exactly as Margaret expressed it.
Then she asked about the truck’s cargo.
Margaret remembered hearing metal objects striking each other inside the vehicle.
“It sounded like somebody loading empty shelving,” she said.
She had also seen Simon carrying a cardboard box through the service door.
The box was too small to hold vehicle panels, but its bottom had been reinforced with tape.
Margaret remembered the detail because the tape caught on the doorframe and Simon cursed loudly.
When Ruiz asked whether Margaret had kept security recordings, she said the cameras were overwritten every thirty days.
“I wish I’d known it mattered,” Margaret said.
Ruiz told her that her observations still mattered even without a recording.
Margaret then remembered an invoice from a late paper delivery that established when she had been in the alley.
She found it in her accounting system while the inspectors waited.
The time placed her outside the warehouse shortly after the van appeared on Mark’s damaged camera.
