The words were neither a greeting nor an accusation. They sounded like a debt finally announced after someone had spent decades hoping it would be forgotten. Nolan stood near the doorway and let Garrett see him without offering the relief of looking away.
"You know who I am," Nolan said.
"I know who you look like."
"That isn't an answer."
Garrett swallowed and glanced at Silas. "You brought him here."
"He brought himself," Silas answered. "We're here because a man named Warren Pike appears in documents connecting you to a false theft accusation against Elias. Before you decide what to say, understand that we aren't here to punish you. We need the truth, and investigators will need it from you directly."
Garrett rubbed his hands together. "Pike sent men," he said. "They were here for an hour. They wanted a tape. I told them I didn't have one because I didn't even know Elias made one."
Nolan heard the fear in Garrett's voice. Whatever loyalty the former road captain had sold had not purchased lasting protection. Pike's messengers had returned more than two decades later to remind Garrett that transactions of that kind were never fully concluded.
"What else did they want?" Nolan asked.
"Whether anybody had come here lately. Whether I knew where Elias left his files. They gave me a number and told me to call if anyone asked questions."
"And do you know where the files were kept?"
Garrett shook his head. "I knew he was gathering them. Pike knew, too. That's why all this happened. Elias had gone to Pike and given him a chance to stop. That's what Elias did with people, even people he shouldn't have trusted."
Silas looked sharply at him. "You knew Elias went to Pike directly?"
"I knew after. Pike told me. He said Elias thought he could threaten a man with paperwork and walk away from it. He laughed when he said it." Garrett stopped, staring at the carpet. "I don't remember anyone laughing after what came next."
"Tell us what came next," Nolan said.
Garrett's hands began shaking again. He explained that Pike had approached him as a man with access to club financial records and offered him money to identify vulnerabilities in the accounts. Garrett agreed, telling himself he was only helping expose a thief or settle an internal dispute. By the time he understood that Elias was the target, the payment had been promised and his cooperation was documented.
"I changed numbers," Garrett said. "Not much. Just enough to make a missing fundraiser balance look like it had traveled through Elias's hands. I thought he'd leave the club and come back after Pike settled down. I told myself he'd lose his standing for a while, not his whole life."
Nolan felt anger rise so swiftly that he had to take a step back. The idea that a few altered figures could have shaped twenty-two years of his life, and that the man who altered them could describe it as something small, was almost unbearable.
"I grew up thinking my father didn't want me," he said. "My mother worked nights so I could stay in school. When a teacher asked what my dad did, I learned to say I didn't know. All of that because you wanted money for a motorcycle?"