“You took fifty thousand dollars to sabotage a car belonging to a woman you watched grow up.”
“I was bankrupt!” Davis cried, tears spilling over his lower eyelids. “The bank was foreclosing on the garage. Sterling owned the debt. He told me if I didn't do it, he’d take the shop and ruin me. He promised nobody would get hurt.”
I reached across the desk, grabbed him by the front of his grease-stained work shirt, and hauled him out of his chair. He was a frail old man, and he felt weightless in my grip. I slammed him back against the filing cabinet. The metal dented with a loud crash.
“What was she going to the council meeting for?” I demanded, pressing my forearm against his collarbone. “What is on the hard drive?”
“I don't know the details!” Davis gasped, struggling to breathe. “I just know it’s about the Westside housing development! Sterling bought that land for pennies because it was a toxic dumping ground for his chemical plant twenty years ago. He bribed the zoning board to reclassify it. He’s building hundreds of houses on poisoned dirt, Marcus! Elena found the original soil reports. She had the proof that the water table was contaminated. If that gets out, Sterling goes to federal prison, and the city goes bankrupt.”
The pieces locked together perfectly. The rush to silence her. The desperation to find the key. If Sterling’s empire collapsed, half the politicians in the city would go down with him, including Detective Miller.
“Does Sterling know where the ledger is?” I asked.
“No,” Davis choked out. “Miller has been tearing the city apart looking for it. That’s why they hired the teenager to harass Toby. They thought maybe the boy knew where she hid it.”
I released my grip and let him slide down the front of the filing cabinet to the floor. He sat there, weeping into his dirty hands.
“You’re going to call the state police tomorrow,” I said, looking down at him with absolute disgust. “You’re going to confess to everything. If I find out you warned Sterling, I won't need a ledger to handle you.”
I turned and walked out of the office, leaving him crying in the dark.
I hurried back to my truck. I had the evidence. I knew the motive. Now I just needed to get Toby from Mrs. Gable’s house, drive across the state line, and hand everything over to the FBI. The local police couldn't be trusted.
I pulled out my phone to call Mrs. Gable and tell her I was on my way.
The call went straight to voicemail.
A cold spike of adrenaline hit my stomach. Mrs. Gable never let her phone go to voicemail. She always kept it sitting right next to her on the armchair.
I hit redial. Voicemail again.
I threw the truck into gear and sped through the wet streets, running two red lights. The rain was blinding, but I pushed the engine as fast as it would go.
When I turned onto Mrs. Gable’s quiet, tree-lined street, my worst fear was confirmed.
The front door of her small house was standing wide open. The porch light was shattered.
I slammed the truck into park on the lawn, grabbed the heavy flashlight from my glove compartment, and ran inside.
The living room was a mess. The coffee table was overturned. A lamp was shattered on the rug. Mrs. Gable was sitting on the floor near the kitchen, holding a bloody towel to her forehead. She was dazed, but conscious.
“Marcus,” she sobbed when she saw me. “I’m so sorry. I tried to stop them.”
I dropped to my knees beside her. “Who? Who was here?”
“Two men,” she cried. “A detective... he said his name was Miller. He said he had a warrant. When I asked to see it, the other man pushed me. They grabbed him, Marcus. They took Toby.”
The world seemed to stop spinning. The ambient noise of the rain faded into a high-pitched ringing in my ears.
They took Toby.
I stood up slowly. “Did they say where they were going?”
“No,” she whispered.