She waited until Lucas returned to the counter. "That's the man from school," she said. Lucas knelt so they were eye to eye. Nora told him about the diner, the pale stain on the cuff, and the scuffed edge of the sneaker she had watched for nearly a week. He asked whether she was certain and reminded her it was all right to be mistaken. "I'm sure about the shoes," she said, "and I remember the stain."
Lucas looked toward the detained man, who had turned his face away from the child. He remembered Lily standing in a hallway long ago, asking grown people to believe what she had seen. His voice stayed steady when he asked the police officer to speak with Nora's mother before taking a formal statement. Inside him, a much older storm had begun moving again, but he would not let it reach Nora.
The arresting officer introduced himself as Daniel Greene. He had responded to accidents outside the garage before and knew enough about the Steel Vultures not to mistake a collection of leather jackets for evidence of wrongdoing. His partner photographed the storage area before disturbing anything else, while Greene took down the names of the adults who had been present. He asked whether the man had entered as a customer, a delivery driver, or someone claiming to work for a supplier.
Walsh went through the day's deliveries in his head. At three thirty, two boxes had arrived from a company called Central Performance, though the shipping label looked different from the ones they usually received. A man in gray coveralls had carried them through the alley entrance after saying the main doors were blocked. Walsh remembered signing nothing, because the man said the electronic receipt had already been processed. The explanation had seemed irritating, not threatening, and Walsh had been distracted by a wiring problem at the time.
"I left him there for maybe half a minute," Walsh admitted. His face showed the slow discomfort of replaying an ordinary decision after learning what had followed. "He said he needed to put the second box near the shelving, and I went to answer a call." Miller asked if he remembered seeing the man leave. Walsh shook his head.
It took the officers less than ten minutes to establish that the boxes had never been part of Central Performance's shipment. One contained packing paper, and the other held a few inexpensive fittings that did not match anything on the garage's order sheet. The delivery had been a reason to get through an otherwise controlled door. Someone had studied enough about the business to make the excuse plausible.
As Greene guided the intruder through the storage doorway, the man's backpack caught against a low shelf and opened. Several folded sheets slid out onto the concrete along with a phone and a printed photograph. Miller saw a house he recognized before the officer blocked the view and told everyone to step away. It was Jojo's house, photographed from the sidewalk with a date written neatly in the corner.