“Go home, Clara,” I said. “Turn off your phone. If Preston calls, let it ring until eight tomorrow. Don't touch the server logs. ”
“What are you going to do? ” she asked, her voice cracking against the damp air.
“I’m going to pick up my truck tires,” I said.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
At twenty minutes past one, the perimeter fence of the Pine Ridge maintenance depot appeared out of the dark. A row of yellow halogen yard lights hummed inside wire cages along the gravel perimeter, casting sickly halos across the parked backhoes and flatbed trailers.
I cut my high beams, coasting the car onto the soft shoulder fifty yards before the main gate. A dark blue county fleet sedan sat parked near the guard shack, its windshield wipers twitching on delay. The intern was already there, just as Clara had warned. He was sitting with his engine running, warm and dry inside the cab, waiting for the six o’clock watchman shift to clear the barrier.
He didn't know about the rear drainage access. When the county expanded the Pine Ridge yard in 2011, I had drafted the easement survey myself. Frank Vance had insisted on an auxiliary gate behind the gravel wash so heavy aggregate trucks wouldn't tear up the main asphalt approach during spring thaws.
I left my car tucked behind a clump of scrub oak, slipped the brass fob into my right palm, and walked along the boundary ditch. The cold mud sucked at my dress shoes, ruining whatever polish was left, but the cut on my thumb had stopped aching. The numbness was better. It kept my hands steady.
The rear chain-link gate was chained with a heavy municipal Master Lock, protected under a galvanized steel hood to keep off the sleet. I slid Clara’s brass tag across the magnetic pad mounted under the housing. The mechanism gave a sharp mechanical thunk, the green pilot diode blinked twice, and the bolt slid free.
I stepped through, pulling the mesh frame shut behind me until the latch caught without a chime.
The maintenance yard smelled of diesel exhaust, wet sand, and hydraulic oil. I stayed in the long shadow cast by the salt storage shed, moving parallel to the row of retired dump trucks. Across the open asphalt, two hundred yards away, the headlights of the intern’s sedan pointed idly at the closed security arm of the main entrance. He was looking at his phone, the blue screen reflecting against the side glass.
The depot office was a prefabricated metal trailer set on cinder blocks next to the primary fuel pumps. A yellow security light buzz-hummed above the aluminum door. I avoided the front stairs, stepping around to the meter bank behind the transformer cage. The gray breaker box was unlocked, its rusted door held closed by a bent wire nail. I pulled the nail, reached behind the secondary main disconnect, and my fingers touched the cold, rectangular edge of Frank’s spare deadbolt key.
Inside the trailer, the air was warm, smelling of stale chicory coffee, damp canvas, and industrial floor wax.
I didn’t turn on the overhead lights. Using the small penlight on my keychain, keeping the beam shielded between my fingers, I walked behind the dispatch counter to the green fire-rated filing cabinet where Frank kept the active fleet registers.
The cabinet’s top drawer was labeled EQUIPMENT RUN LOGS – CURRENT MONTH.
I pulled it open. The drawer runners squeaked, loud as a dry axle in the empty trailer, and I froze for three long seconds, listening. Outside, only the steady hiss of rain against the corrugated roof answered.
The red vinyl-bound book lay right where it belonged, wedged between the diesel fuel manifests and the tire requisition forms. I laid it flat on the counter under the narrow circle of my penlight and flipped to page forty-eight.
There it was. Thursday, 2:10 PM.
In Frank’s tight, military block lettering, County Truck 408 was entered for four commercial-grade steer tires. Below the line, my own signature was penned in black ballpoint, followed by the dark purple oval of my right thumbprint pressed into the blue security ink Frank insisted on keeping in his drawer. Across the margin, Frank had added his own initial stamp: F. V. – 14:18 HRS.