Walter Geller did not leave right away. The contractor stood beside the customer service counter with his heavy brown bifold open in his palms, carefully counting the ten fifties against the carbon copy Miller had returned to him. When he finished, he smoothed the creased yellow receipt with his thumb, laid it neatly in his breast pocket next to his carpenter’s pencil, and walked over to where Arthur was leaning against the register rail.
"Arthur," Walter said. His voice was heavy, stripped of the booming confidence he usually carried across the framing bays. "I'm sorry. I should've looked at the pocket before I let Marcus open his mouth."
Arthur Bell did not look up immediately. He was running a thumbnail along the mended seam of his right coat flap, pressing the frayed black thread down against the stiff olive canvas. "You saw what he put in front of you, Walter. A man sees his payroll on the floor, he doesn't measure the hole it came through."
"That don't make it right," Walter replied. He reached into his wallet, pulled three fifty-dollar bills from the clip, and held them out toward the old soldier’s hand. "Take this. For the trouble. For having the law called on you in the middle of town."
Arthur’s hand stayed flat at his side. He lifted his head slowly, his milky gray eyes settling on Walter’s face with a quiet, unyielding gravity. "I don't take wages for being lied about, Walter. And I don't take money I didn't frame or carry."
Walter held the bills in the air for a second longer, his jaw tightening under the graying stubble. Then he nodded once, folded the cash back into his leather billfold, and shoved it deep into his pocket. "I’ll be dropping thirty treated posts off at your place tomorrow morning, Arthur. The township delivery truck was already heading out Mill Creek way. It won't cost you a nickel for the drop."
"I pay my delivery fee," Arthur said softly.
"Not tomorrow you don't," Walter said, turning his back before Arthur could refuse again. "I'll see you on the porch, Arthur."
The contractor pushed his way through the exit doors into the humid twilight.
I stood by the service register, my hands resting on the edge of the laminate counter. My knuckles were still throbbing where I had banged them against the underside of the cabinet drawer while pulling the drive. The black thumb drive was gone, logged into Miller’s evidence bag with the yellow carbon invoice, but the empty USB port on the DVR chassis remained unlocked, its red status diode blinking in steady, measured intervals beneath the counter.
"David," Cynthia said, stepping around the end of the counter. She held a cold bottle of water from the breakroom cooler and set it beside my clipboard. "The regional office in Fort Wayne picked up on line one. Mr. Henderson wants to know why the sheriff's car was parked on our fire line."
"What did you tell him?" I asked.
"I told him Marcus Vance had an inventory discrepancy with the county authorities," she said, her glasses resting flat against her chest. "I told him the register footage was already on a state patrol server, and that you were the only keyholder left in the building who knew how to balance the evening vault."
I picked up the water bottle but didn't drink. "He'll want to know why I pulled files without a corporate work ticket."
"Let him ask," Cynthia said. "Marcus had two write-offs pending in the back cage from last month—those brushless rotary kits that vanished off the loading dock. Everyone knew the numbers didn't track, but nobody wanted their hours shaved for asking about the manifest. You didn't break that rule to steal, David. You broke it so an old man wouldn't sleep on a concrete bench in county holding."
She walked back to her station, keyed her lane microphone, and called for the next shopper in line with the practiced, level rhythm she had kept for nine years.
I turned toward Arthur. The old soldier had picked up his plastic shopping basket from the edge of the lane. Inside, the two cardboard boxes of two-and-a-half-inch deck screws sat upright beside the eight-ounce tin of red lithium grease. The price stickers were faded at the corners, curled by the store's humidity.