After that, a private transportation company took over.
The receipts looked legitimate, but the drivers told conflicting stories about where they had traveled.
Jonah asked questions at a meeting and was dismissed as a volunteer who did not understand administration.
Someone began calling his employer about his supposed unreliability.
His hours were reduced.
He stayed involved anyway.
“He said he couldn’t be sure anyone had been hurt,” Denise recalled.
“He was sure the records didn’t agree.”
Caleb found the photocopied roster in the shoebox.
There were twenty-three names and two columns headed Vehicle One and Vehicle Two.
Most names had checkmarks under the first vehicle.
Seven were assigned to the second.
A separate page contained a bill for two full-length trips.
The invoice date was the day before the residents had supposedly left.
“Why didn’t he give this to the police?” Caleb asked.
“He showed it to an attorney,” Denise said.
“The attorney told him an invoice wasn’t proof of a crime.”
She rubbed her thumb along the edge of the paper.
“Your father kept looking for a man named Lewis Grant.”
Caleb examined the roster.
Lewis Grant was listed among the seven names under Vehicle Two.
Beside his name someone had written an unfamiliar address in blue ink.
Denise said Jonah had gone there twice and found an empty office.
He was still searching when a heart condition forced him to stop driving.
In the final months of his life, he grew more frustrated with his own body than with any of the people he suspected.
“He didn’t believe he was a hero,” Denise said.
“He thought he had failed somebody.”
Caleb sat with the paper resting on his knees.
“Maybe he was only looking in the wrong place.”
Denise reached across the table and touched his hand.
“Don’t make his search into a debt you have to pay with your own life,” she said.
“If you help, be careful and let the professionals do their work.”
Caleb promised.
He did not promise to stop.
Chapter 6: The First False Destination
Mara Keene’s office occupied the third floor of a narrow building overlooking a bus stop, not the polished downtown tower Caleb had imagined.
The reception desk was crowded with donated coats, and a handwritten note instructed visitors to speak quietly because the next room was used for confidential interviews.
Mara introduced him to her investigator, Selma Ortiz, a former municipal records analyst who had learned to distrust files that looked too perfectly organized.
