Rusk said nothing when she asked about the pictures. He sat on the metal stool near the storage doorway while an officer completed the necessary paperwork, watching the walls as if somebody might appear through them. When Ruiz asked whether he understood the allegation that he had entered a building without authorization, he nodded. When she asked why he carried photographs of the residents' homes, he looked down.
Jojo could no longer stay still. He took three steps toward Rusk and stopped when Miller put a hand across his chest. "My daughter's piano recital is in that folder," Jojo said, each word forced through a jaw held too tightly. "Somebody stood outside a school event and took her picture. Tell me why I shouldn't ask him who did it." Miller met his eyes and reminded him that every threat they made would become part of the same record they needed the police to believe.
"Because that's what he wants," Miller said. Jojo stared at him, breathing hard. The explanation did not make the anger smaller, but it gave the anger a direction that did not end with somebody injured. He stepped back, put both palms on the workbench, and asked Greene to make sure Sheila's name was included in the report. The officer wrote it down.
Rusk's sleeve had ridden up when he sat. Beneath it was an old tattoo partly covered by a more recent design, a mark shaped like a broken wing. Jojo noticed it before Miller did. Five years ago, a man named Denny Ross had worn a similar mark after leaving the Steel Vultures and joining a rival motorcycle crew. The sight brought back a piece of history that nobody had been eager to revisit.
Denny had once been a prospect in the garage, good with numbers and quick with customers, the kind of man who found opportunities in places other people saw only inconvenience. He began ordering parts in quantities the invoices did not support and quietly redirecting surplus items to buyers outside the club. When Miller confronted him, Denny insisted he deserved compensation for deals he had arranged. He had not thought of it as theft because he believed the rules had never applied to him in the first place.
Miller and the club had removed his prospect status and reported the missing inventory through the garage's business records. Denny left angry, calling them hypocrites and promising the embarrassment would come back to them. Within a few months he had attached himself to another group, surrounded himself with men who admired his willingness to bend rules, and cultivated a reputation for making problems look like somebody else's fault. The Vultures heard rumors for years, but rumors were not a reason to start a fight.