Chapter 13 - The Word Nobody Had Said
DECEASED.
I read the word six times before I called Elliot.
He came to the shop still wearing his mechanic's gloves. I showed him the document without explaining it away.
"They marked him dead," he said.
"They marked the property entry that way. We don't know why."
"The sheriff told me my son ran off. For almost a year he let me wonder if Owen was angry with me."
Elliot pressed the edge of the counter so hard that his knuckles whitened.
"I want to take this to the newspaper."
"Marsh asked us not to release anything from the review yet."
"And I asked Owen to call me when he got home. We don't always get what we ask for."
He left before I found an answer.
An hour later, Agent Rachel Alvarez from Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigation arrived with a colleague and an evidence technician. She didn't wear a dramatic black suit. Her coat was rain-stained, and she carried two notebooks.
She asked me to begin with the moment I opened the county donation sack.
We walked through the shop. I showed her where the jacket hung, where Voss stood, and where I signed the form with part of it covered. I gave her the photographs as original files, not screenshots, and signed a statement explaining when I took them. June separately explained how she'd recognized the property numbering system.
"I should have read the form," I said.
"You can tell us what happened without defending yourself," Alvarez answered.
"Does that property code mean Owen was dead?"
"It means someone selected that category. We're investigating who, and what they knew when they did it."
She explained that the original coat would matter if it still existed, but that a damaged garment alone couldn't establish when or how its damage occurred.
"Then where is it?" I asked.
"We've requested it from the sheriff's office."
When she left, June slipped her hand through my arm.
"You sounded scared."
"I was."
"You still told her about signing."
"That part belongs in the story too."
By evening, Elliot called to say he hadn't gone to the Ledger. Instead he had spent the afternoon reading every text his son had ever sent him, looking for a goodbye he might have missed.
"I keep wondering if I would've gone out to Graystone if he'd asked," he said.
"You couldn't know he needed you."
"That's the worst part. He was always the kid who said he was fine."
May you like
A county board notice appeared online after dinner. The Graystone fill-and-grade contractor planned to begin heavy excavation Tuesday morning.
Alvarez's team had five days to decide whether the site needed to be preserved.
