CHAPTER FOUR — THE RINK
Daniel did not cross the street.
He photographed the crate from his kitchen window and sent the image to Ortiz.
Her reply arrived quickly.
“Stay inside.”
He obeyed, though every instinct urged him toward the moving car.
Carol opened her trunk and struggled with the crate.
A young woman emerged from the passenger side, helped her lower it, then looked toward Daniel’s house.
Her hair was cropped short beneath a baseball cap, and her right hand wore a bright yellow glove.
Carol gestured angrily at the street.
The woman answered with a shake of her head.
They drove away separately, Carol in her sedan and the younger woman in a battered hatchback.
Daniel recorded the plate numbers and called Ortiz again.
At eleven that night several vehicles converged near the abandoned Willow Creek skating rink.
Daniel knew because he could hear their tires on the main road beyond his yard.
He stayed home, as promised.
At one in the morning, Ortiz phoned.
“We’ve located an item that may belong to Marianne Bell,” she said.
“We’ll contact her directly when we can verify it.”
Daniel asked about Carol.
“She’s safe for the moment,” Ortiz answered.
“Please keep your doors locked tonight.”
The next morning somebody had pushed a sealed cardboard box through Daniel’s side gate.
It was addressed to him in black marker.
Inside lay a stack of unframed photographs, all taken in different homes.
Each showed an ordinary person holding a memorial object.
There was a grandmother with a knitted blue blanket, a teenager with a carved guitar, and a father with a tiny pair of children’s rain boots.
At the bottom sat a photograph of Carol holding a polished cedar box.
Her expression was not triumphant.
She appeared to be crying.
A note in the box contained eight words.
“Ask who gets paid when nobody comes back.”
Daniel did not touch the photographs again.
He placed the entire box on his dining table and phoned the agents.
Two hours later Ortiz collected it wearing gloves.
She studied the note but said nothing about its meaning.
“Do you know who left it?” she asked.
“No.”
“Was your gate locked?”
“The latch catches badly.”
“Fix it today.”
After she left, Daniel called a locksmith and sat on his porch listening to the ordinary sounds of a Tuesday afternoon.
A delivery cyclist rang a bell at the corner.
Somebody practiced trumpet badly three houses away.
A dog barked at a sprinkler.
He wondered how many neighbors had vanished behind their front doors with small private griefs he never noticed.
Carol had complained about all of them.
Perhaps she had learned their routines while doing something very different.
At four, a man in a charcoal sports coat stepped out of a luxury sedan near Daniel’s driveway.
He introduced himself as Philip Grane, an operations consultant for Everlasting Passage.
“I understand you’ve been speaking to investigators,” Grane said.
Daniel did not invite him inside.
“I speak to people who knock on my door.”
“Then perhaps you’ll listen when I suggest you stop assisting a misunderstanding.”
“Is that a threat?”
Grane smiled without warmth.
“It’s practical advice.”
He pointed toward Carol’s house.
“Mrs. Mercer is an elderly woman doing occasional temporary storage work.”
“You wouldn’t want an argument over a camera to ruin her life.”
“I didn’t destroy the camera,” Daniel replied.
“She did.”
Grane glanced up at the empty mount above the garage.
“Then you’ve already learned how unfortunate accidents can be.”
He walked away before Daniel could answer.
Daniel watched the sedan disappear and understood that someone inside Everlasting Passage knew exactly which witness the investigators had approached.
