By midnight the rain had softened from a pounding to a steady drumming against the roof. The notebook revealed repeated truck appearances near three properties, including a closed storage complex off Route 9 and a riverfront building whose ownership was hidden behind several holding companies. There were photographs of license plates, fuel receipts, dates when vehicles arrived empty and left with their rear suspension sitting lower, and notes about charity deliveries that could not be reconciled with public records. Some of the observations were uncertain, and Eli had marked them uncertain rather than pretending he knew more than he did.
That distinction impressed Jace more than the quantity of information. "Most adults don't mark their guesses," he told the others quietly. "This kid does. He keeps the things he knows separate from the things he suspects." Rhett glanced toward Eli, now curled beneath a blanket on the couch. "Caleb taught him that," he said.
Mara recognized three of the addresses from her own abandoned investigation into the crash. Two years earlier she had traced vehicle parts invoices to a maintenance contractor connected to Hale, but the records had stopped at a wall of private accounts and sealed commercial information. She had never brought it to Rhett because she feared reopening a wound without giving him anything useful in return. Now she regretted her silence as sharply as Rhett regretted the months he had stopped asking questions.
Deak placed a fresh log on the workshop stove and returned with information from an old friend in the towing business. One of Hale's trucks had used different company names on different days while operating from the same yard. The explanation offered at the time had been ordinary subcontracting, and there had been no reason to suspect more. Eli's notebook supplied dates that made the business arrangement look less ordinary than it had seemed.
Rhett sat beside the sleeping boy, turning the watch in his hands. Four years of grief had taught him to divide Caleb's memory into manageable pieces: the friend who laughed too loudly, the mechanic who could hear a broken part before anyone else, the rider who kept his promises, and the death he had never believed. Now those pieces were shifting together around an unexpected center. A child had brought them here, carrying eight months of evidence against a man adults had been too intimidated to question.
"How many pages?" Rhett asked Jace. "Sixty-eight with writing," Jace replied. He turned the notebook over and inspected the back binding before adding, "Somebody removed three more. The paper was torn carefully, not pulled loose by wear." Rhett looked at Eli, who had been still on the couch long enough for them to think he was asleep.
"I took them out," Eli said without opening his eyes. The words startled Mara, who had not realized he was listening. Eli sat up, pulled three folded sheets from a hidden pocket in the oversized sweatshirt, and placed them in front of Rhett. "I wanted to know if you'd keep the watch before I showed you these."