Chapter 3 - The Man on the Billboard
I spent that night in Beth Voss’s guest room.
The sheriff offered other arrangements. A hotel under a deputy’s watch. A secure interview room while they assessed the threat.
Beth settled it over the telephone.
“If she wants a bed, we have a bed.”
Their house smelled like laundry detergent and cinnamon toast. A yellow raincoat hung beside the door. There were school photographs on the refrigerator, a dog asleep under the kitchen table, and a stack of bills held together with a clothespin.
I almost turned around.
A house like that had too much to lose.
Beth met me in the hallway wearing pajama pants and an old college sweatshirt.
“You can shower,” she said. “You can eat. You can sit in the dark. Nobody here needs you to be entertaining.”
I stared at her.
Then she put a clean towel in my hands.
At three in the morning, I woke on the floor beside the bed.
I didn’t remember getting there.
The blanket was around my shoulders. My back was against the wall. My right hand hurt from gripping nothing.
Someone knocked softly.
“Callie?”
Beth.
“I’m okay.”
“Would company help?”
I wanted to say no.
Instead, I said, “Maybe.”
She sat in the doorway with a mug of tea.
She didn’t ask about the floor.
By morning, Sheriff Voss had news.
Trevor and the other three men had ties to a local security subcontractor. The company supplied guards and drivers for development sites owned by Rusk Civic Partners.
I knew the name.
Everyone in Bellwether did.
Owen Rusk smiled down from billboards along the highway. His company sponsored baseball uniforms, a hospital wing, and the county’s annual veterans’ dinner.
BUILDING TOMORROW, TOGETHER.
I had passed his face twice a day for six years.
Voss placed a printed photograph on the kitchen table.
“Do you recognize him?”
The man in the photograph was younger than the billboard version. Darker hair. Thinner face.
He stood beside a row of shipping containers overseas.
My stomach turned.
“He used a different company name then.”
“What name?”
“North Passage Logistics.”
Voss wrote it down.
I heard my own breathing become shallow.
Rusk hadn’t searched the country and found me by some astonishing stroke of luck.
I had moved into the county where he was rebuilding his reputation.
Six years of cheap groceries and anonymous shifts, all beneath his smiling face.
“Last month,” I said.
The sheriff looked up.
“The veterans’ resource table outside the store. A volunteer took photographs. I was carrying folding chairs.”
“Did they post them?”
“I don’t know.”
Deputy Shaw checked the public event page.
There I was, half turned toward the camera.
My sleeve had ridden up as I lifted a chair.
The caption included my name because the store manager had thanked employees who helped.
Voss set the phone down.
“That gives us a place to start.”
My manager, Denise, called an hour later.
I expected questions about the incident. A warning about publicity.
Instead, she said, “Luis told me you might need a few days. We’ll work out your schedule.”
“I can’t afford to lose—”
“You have leave available. Let me do my part.”
After we hung up, I stood in the Vosses’ kitchen and cried again.
I was beginning to hate how much of survival involved crying.
My attorney, Rachel Lin, returned my call before noon.
She remembered me immediately.
“Callie. Are you somewhere you can speak privately?”
The sheriff and Beth left the room.
I told her about the parking lot.
Then Rusk.
Then the message.
Rachel was silent long enough for me to hear a door close at her end.
“I still have your file,” she said.
“All of it?”
“All the material you gave me. Including the receipt showing your supplemental statement was submitted.”
“Can we send it to the sheriff?”
“We can discuss what’s yours to disclose and arrange proper channels for anything restricted. Don’t start emailing old operational material around.”
For the first time since the attack, something felt manageable.
A next step.
A person who knew how to take it.
Before we finished, Rachel asked one more question.
“Have you heard from Lena Ortiz recently?”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“No.”
Lena had been our medic.
The third person with the tattoo.
“Why?”
“She called my office two weeks ago. She wanted to know whether you still had independent representation.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That she could leave a message for you.”
“Did she?”
Rachel exhaled.
“Yes.”
I heard papers shifting.
“She said, ‘Tell Mercer the recording wasn’t destroyed.’”
Outside the kitchen window, the Vosses’ dog chased a leaf across the lawn.
May you like
I watched it tumble through the sunlight.
Then I asked Rachel to read the message again.
