Leo opened the first manual and immediately noticed pages marked with penciled corrections. "These are yours," he said. Sully nodded.
"Been mine a long time. You can borrow them until you know more than they do." Leo looked at the notes, recognizing the kind of careful disagreement mechanics left for their future selves. His father had done the same thing in the margins of a battered service guide. He took the notebook from the box and turned to the first blank page.
"I want to write down what happened at the gas station," Leo said. Sully seemed taken aback. "For the caseworker?" Leo nodded.
"For her, but for me, too. I keep thinking I'm going to forget something or that Hank will tell it so many times his version becomes the only one anyone remembers." Sully sat beside him. "Write it while you can. Put down the things you're sure about. If you don't know something, say you don't know."
They worked for nearly an hour, Sully answering questions about when his motorcycle arrived and which riders had witnessed the confrontation. Leo wrote down the shape of Hank's truck, the words Higgins had used, and the moment the lighter was taken from his pocket. At the end he added the names Miguel, Tessa, and Ben, then underlined each one. He felt more exhausted by those pages than he had after working on the Road King, but he also felt less certain that the truth could be taken away from him.
A few days later, Nora brought encouraging news. The other children had been interviewed separately, and temporary protective arrangements were in place while their accounts were assessed. Leo asked for details she was not allowed to give him, then apologized for asking. Nora told him he did not need to apologize for caring about them. She explained that the investigation would take time and that he should prepare himself for a process in which adults might disagree about what had happened.
"Hank's good at making people like him," Leo said. "He's good at looking worried when somebody important is watching." Nora closed the file on her lap. "Then we make sure people hear the children without him standing there," she answered. "We also look at records, dates, and the things that can be checked independently. A believable story is not the same thing as a true one."
For the first time, Leo understood why Sully had been so insistent that people keep recording at the station. In Hank's house, a story belonged to the adult who had the keys and the money. In the desert, people had watched, written, photographed, and refused to let the loudest man become the only witness. Leo wondered what would have happened if the bikers had arrived ten minutes later. The thought made him sick enough that he set down his pencil and went outside to breathe.
Sully was waiting on the porch when Leo returned. He did not ask what had happened inside. Instead, he offered to show Leo something in Phoenix when the appropriate permissions were arranged. "It's a real workshop," he said.