Calvin pointed to a stretch of guardrail about forty yards away.
“That’s where they found it.”
Emily explained that she was researching the flood response.
Calvin’s face tightened.
“Aaron was a decent man,” he said.
“He carried supplies to the shelter when nobody else wanted to make the trip.”
“Did he tell you anything afterward?”
“He told me to stop leaving my keys in the truck.”
Danny exchanged a puzzled glance with Emily.
Calvin shrugged.
“I thought he was being strange.”
“Why would he say that?” Emily asked.
“He said people were using company vehicles without signing them out.”
Calvin did not remember the details, but he said Aaron had been furious when a van returned with mud in its wheel wells and no mileage record.
Emily recorded the statement with his permission.
She did not ask him to claim that the crash had been deliberate.
Instead, she asked where Aaron’s surviving papers might be kept.
Calvin suggested a mechanic named Denise Brackett, who had worked on Mercer fleet vehicles before opening her own garage.
Denise’s shop stood beside a gas station where snowplows lined up every winter.
She remembered Aaron as a man who insisted on written inspection reports even when the company tried to save paper.
“He brought me a list of vehicles he’d never driven,” she said.
“They were signed out under his employee number.”
“Did you keep it?” Emily asked.
Denise opened a filing cabinet and took out a folder with a faded blue label.
“I kept everything after my insurance company told me to.”
Inside were maintenance requests, mileage sheets, and a letter Aaron had sent asking for an investigation.
The letter was addressed to Philip Stowe at the county office.
It described two unauthorized night transports and warned that the reported passenger count could not be reconciled.
The final paragraph was underlined.
“If children were moved under my driver identification, I need that corrected before another family is told I carried them somewhere I never went.”
Emily read the letter silently.
Julian had said Aaron was accused of mishandling a bus during the flood.
The letter showed that he tried to challenge the very records used against him.
“Did Stowe respond?” she asked.
Denise shook her head.
“Aaron came back twice looking for an answer.”
“Did he mention Gideon?”
“He said his brother was busy running a company and didn’t want to believe a contractor could do something terrible under their name.”
Emily thought of Gideon’s quiet answer at Rosa’s kitchen table.
