A vehicle had just pulled off the county road and turned up my driveway. The deep, rolling baritone of a modified exhaust rattled through the soil, far heavier than the standard patrol engines of Miller and Hayes’s cruisers. It was the dual-exhaust rumble of Arthur’s personal Silverado.
I grabbed the dispatch log, the cassette, and the chain-of-custody tag, sliding them inside my utility vest against my ribs. I shoved the brass padlock back into the hasp, clicked it shut, and killed the penlight.
From directly above my head, on the gravel apron twenty feet away, a car door slammed with the solid, unmistakable thud of a truck door being kicked shut. Then came my father’s voice, rough and deliberate, cutting through the damp night air:
"Miller. Kill your damn headlights. He’s not in the front room."
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
"Then he’s listening," Arthur replied. The elder Walker’s voice possessed that gravel-heavy resonance that had commanded county commissioner hearings and sheriff’s association banquets for twenty years. "Tyler was trained by me before the Marine Corps ever touched him. If he’s in the perimeter, he’s watching the rear treeline or he’s below the joists. Hayes, cut the terminal screen. You’re lighting up the entire south clearing like a county fair."
The blue glow washing across the intake grates abruptly vanished. Darkness settled thick and absolute across the drainage tunnel.
I crouched lower against the cold limestone ledge, pressing my shoulder blades into the damp brickwork. Inside my utility vest, the rigid edges of the county highway dispatch log cut into my ribs, while the micro-cassette tape rested securely in the zippered pocket over my heart. The evidence in that ammo crate changed the nature of every order Arthur had ever handed down to me. For six months, I had carried the shame of an unsolved fatal hit-and-run on Route 9, believing our department had simply run out of leads on a phantom tractor-trailer that vanished into the state forest. Now, the yellow paint transfer on that shattered Silverado headlight housing told an entirely different story.
Arthur’s personal truck was a 2018 silver Silverado. Six months ago, three days after the collision, he had traded the front clip and quarter panels at a private collision shop across the state line in Belmont County, claiming a fallen oak branch had crushed the passenger side during an August storm. He had paid for the repair with an untraceable cash receipt drawn against his farm equipment account.
I needed to hear what was on that micro-cassette before Arthur realized the ammo box had been unlocked.
Casting a look toward the rusted rung ladder that led back up to my laundry room hatch was out of the question. If Arthur stepped onto the back porch, he would see the half-inch lift on the iron hatch ring. But thirty yards behind me, following the downward pitch of the nineteenth-century masonry, the overflow sluice drained through an iron bar grate into the dry creek bed running parallel to Old Quarry Road. The township had abandoned the intake line decades ago, but the county drainage ditch remained open to the county culvert.
I dropped onto my hands and knees in the four-inch sludge of standing rainwater, keeping my head below the ledge level. The cold water soaked instantly through my wool socks and denim trousers, sending a sharp, icy ache through my kneecaps. I moved in total silence, sliding my palms forward along the slippery algae of the channel floor, dragging my weight without letting my belt brass click against the curved brick walls.
Behind me, from the laundry room hatch above, came the metallic groan of the iron ring bolt being lifted. A shaft of white tactical flashlight cut down through the vertical access shaft, striking the water where I had knelt sixty seconds earlier.
"Hatch is cracked," Arthur’s voice boomed down the masonry pipe, hollowed and magnified by the curved walls. "He went into the retention line. Miller, take the culvert head on the north side of the asphalt. Hayes, drop your cruiser down to the highway junction and hold the bridge. If he comes out of the ditch, do not engage him over the open radio. You use the department car-to-car frequency only. Understood?"
"Understood, Chief," Miller replied from the yard.
The heavy hatch cover clanged shut, cutting off the flashlight beam.