Nora noticed her mother and came over. "Did they find out who he is?" she asked. Rose said the detectives knew his name and were still investigating the people behind him. Nora thought about that while watching two boys race toward the cafeteria. "I saw another man near the diner," she said finally.
Rose made herself wait before asking more. Nora explained that the second man had stood by a red pickup with a cracked windshield, sometimes talking to the first one and sometimes pretending not to know him. She had assumed they worked together because they left at similar times on two afternoons. She had never mentioned him because nobody had asked whether there were two men.
Rose wrote the detail down, thanked her daughter, and called Ruiz when she reached the parking lot. She did not ask Nora to describe the second man's face from memory or guess what he wanted. The detective said the detail might help identify another person in the area and would be followed up using available evidence. Nora returned to her class with a promise that nobody would ask her to keep watch.
At the garage, Walsh was studying the business records Miller had given investigators. The false delivery had arrived in the middle of a routine parts order, but its invoice number matched a canceled shipment from three months earlier. Someone had known enough about their purchasing system to select a plausible reference. Walsh was furious with himself for accepting the boxes and even angrier at the thought that somebody had been reading the ordinary paperwork of a small business as part of a scheme against its workers.
Miller reminded him that a convincing fraud was designed to appear normal. It was not Walsh's job to imagine that every man carrying cardboard boxes belonged to an organization plotting against children. They could improve the process without making the whole shop suspicious of ordinary people. Walsh said he understood, but his voice suggested he had not forgiven himself yet.
The discussion exposed an uncomfortable problem. For years the Vultures had relied on familiarity instead of formal procedures, partly because most members had grown up together and partly because a small garage did not have the money for expensive systems. Drivers came through the alley, customers wandered between bays, and friends sometimes borrowed tools without signing them out. The openness made the place welcoming, but it also left gaps someone patient could exploit.
Miller did not want to turn a family workshop into a fortress. He liked that people could walk in with a broken bike and leave feeling they had found neighbors. Still, the old habits needed boundaries that would not depend on who happened to be watching. He asked Walsh to prepare recommendations for controlled storage access and asked Jojo to help design a sign-in process that would not humiliate customers or make small deliveries impossible.
Jojo laughed without humor. "You want me to become the welcoming face of paperwork?" Miller said he wanted him to become the face of remembering which people had been invited into the building. Jojo considered the argument. "Fine," he said. "But I'm drawing a line at making anyone wear a visitor badge shaped like a motorcycle."