Rowe lunged forward past the stools to sweep the papers off the booth table. But I didn't stay behind the grill. I slammed the heavy steel blade of my scraper flat against the stainless service shelf right beside his wrist, the metallic crack echoing like a gunshot. Rowe jerked his arm back instinctively, his hip catching the counter edge, his face twisting into fury.
"Don't touch her evidence in my diner, Marcus," I said, leaning my chest against the stainless steel, holding the scraper upright like a cleaver. "If you want to seize documents, call the state barracks in Dalton and have them send an investigator with an impound warrant. Otherwise, keep your hands off her table."
Rowe stared at the heavy blade, then slowly shifted his eyes to my face. A venomous smile crept across his thin lips. He didn't draw his weapon, and he didn't lunge for the papers again. Instead, he took two slow, deliberate steps backward toward the front entrance, reached behind him without turning around, and threw the heavy brass deadbolt into the steel frame with a hollow thunk.
Before either of us could move, Rowe reached up with his gloved hand and snapped the toggle switch on the junction box beside the casing. The buzzing red neon "OPEN" sign above the window died instantly, plunging the dining room into yellow half-light. Outside on the dark blacktop, two blinding halogen beams cut through the driving sleet, accompanied by the low roar of a heavy diesel engine.
The Dalton connector bus was arriving ten minutes early. Nora turned toward the glass, gathering the blue slip against her chest. But the bus didn't downshift. With the neon sign dark and Rowe’s cruiser parked sideways across the shoulder with its lights blacked out, the driver saw only a shuttered diner. The massive coach thundered past the glass, throwing freezing slush against the panes, its taillights vanishing into the dark.
The engine faded into the hiss of freezing rain, leaving only the three of us inside the locked room. The certainty settled in my chest like quarry stone. No bus was coming to take Nora out of this county tonight, and Rowe had no intention of letting either of us unlock that door while those papers existed. I slipped Sarah's star and the carbon log into the steel drop-box beneath my register and locked the key inside my fist. Silence would not keep my diner standing, and pretending Marcus Rowe was just a neighbor was going to get us killed before dawn.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
"The drop-box is keyed to the bank’s night deposit service," I lied, keeping my palm clamped shut around the square brass head beneath the shelf. "The local branch holds the master tumbler. Once an envelope drops through the collar, nobody opens it until the armored courier runs the county route on Tuesday morning."
Rowe didn't blink. He took two long, deliberate strides toward the service opening, his service belt creaking with the weight of his radio, his baton, and the black leather holster riding high on his right hip. He stopped six inches from the stainless ledge, close enough that I could smell the stale tobacco and the sour, rain-soaked wool of his collar.
"Don't play junior lawyer with me over a plate of burnt potatoes," Rowe said. He reached out with his gloved index finger and pressed it against the middle of my chest, driving the blunt tip into my sternum until the bone ached. "There is no courier coming up this pass. Freezing rain took down two transmission lines past the ridge at midnight. The state plows are dead in the Dalton depot with frozen fuel lines, and the county sheriff is four hours south at a regional conference in Decatur. In this township, until six o'clock tomorrow morning, I am the only badge with radio authorization. What happens inside these four walls goes into my supplement sheet, and nobody on the commissioner’s board will question a single comma."
Behind him in booth four, Nora did not cower. She picked up the blue Dalton Towing invoice, folded it twice with her split fingers, and slid it into the breast pocket of her canvas jacket, directly over the spot where her sister’s star had been pinned.
"You're lying about the storm, Marcus," Nora said, her clear voice slicing across the counter. "The state plows didn't freeze out. The plow driver called my uncle twenty minutes ago from the junction depot. The only reason the county hasn't answered your radio check is because my uncle walked Sarah’s personal logbook into the state police barracks in Dalton at nine o'clock tonight."
Rowe froze. The pressure of his finger left my chest as his arm dropped stiffly to his side. His eyes shifted toward the booth, narrow and bloodshot under the buzzing tube lights.
"Your uncle Ray is seventy years old and half-blind from welding fumes," Rowe spat, but the blood had drained from his temples, leaving his skin the color of lard. "He runs a rogue tow yard out of a dirt barn. A judge wouldn't sign a search warrant on Ray Miller’s word if he swore the sun came up in the east. He’s been trying to squeeze the county insurance fund for fifty thousand dollars since the day Sarah’s cruiser hit the water."
"Ray didn't give them his own word," Nora said. She leaned forward, resting her forearms on the edge of the formica table. "He gave them the dispatch duplicate ticket from the state police computer terminal in Dalton. The one your cousin in dispatch couldn't erase from the mainframe server. And he gave them Sarah’s handwritten shift diary."
Rowe let out a short, jagged bark of laughter, but it caught in his throat. "Sarah didn't keep a diary. She hated paperwork. I wrote ninety percent of our joint incident sheets because she couldn't stand sitting behind a terminal."
"She didn't keep an official incident sheet, Marcus," Nora said softly, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the table’s chrome edge. "She kept a pocket spiral. She started writing in it three weeks before she died, the morning she found out twelve impounded vehicles from the south salvage lot had their catalytic converters and transmission blocks stripped before the county auction. She wrote down the stock numbers. She wrote down the wrecker call signs. And on the last page, dated the night she drowned, she wrote down that you ordered her to meet you at the old quarry gravel ramp at one o'clock in the morning to sign off on an off-book equipment transfer."