PART 18:

The PDF was 63 pages long and written in the cramped associative style of someone who had been adding to a document for decades without stopping to edit the earlier sections. Adrienne read it all before noon. Laurance investigators had approached the search the way investigators approached most searches, backwards from the present, looking for official records, digital footprints, institutional connections.

Social Security, IRS, DMV, property records. The 2004 search had confirmed the last known address as a rooming house in Gary, Indiana, circa 1975. The 2011 search had pushed that slightly further. A possible sighting at a construction site in rural Tennessee in 1979, reported by someone who claimed to have recognized Welder from a Motorsport magazine photograph and described him as a thin man who knew a lot about stress loads.

That was as far as either investigator had gotten. Adrienne read the 2011 report three times, focusing on the Tennessee lead. It was thin. The investigator had noted it as low confidence and moved on, but there was a detail in the description that stayed with him. The source had said Welder had been consulting on a bridge repair project, not working construction, consulting, which meant he’d still been using his structural engineering training, which meant there might be a thread to pull if you knew where to look. He called Deborah Shanks. “I know

you feel like you owe me,” he said. “I’m going to let you make it up to me.” She laughed, short and a little pained. What do you need? Engineering records, he said. Specifically, bridge repair projects in Tennessee late7s and early8s. Any project where the consultant records are available. I’m looking for a name welder or any variant or someone who matches his description and background.

That’s going to be a significant archive search, Deborah said. I know, he said. I know it’s not your area. It’s not, she said. But I know people in structural engineering history who might know where to start. A pause. Can I ask why? He might be alive, Adrienne said. The line was quiet for a moment.

Francis Welder might be alive, she said slowly. 82 years old. Disappeared from the record in 1975. But there’s a possible Tennessee sighting in 79 that the investigators dismissed because they were looking for official records and he’d clearly stopped leaving any. He paused. Someone who knows engineering archives might look differently than someone who knows how to find people.

Give me a few days, Deborah said. Thank you, he said. He spent the rest of Tuesday going through Lauron’s own notes, which were more useful than the investigator reports in a different way. Lauron had been collecting fragments of welders professional history for decades. Not personal information, but technical information, mentions in obscure motorsport publications.

A brief acknowledgement in a 1972 Racing Federation technical bulletin. A single photograph scanned and included in the PDF showing the Caldwell Rice garage in 1973 with four men visible, one of whom Lauron had labeled possibly FW in a note that suggested this was his best guess rather than confirmed identification.

Adrienne looked at the photograph for a long time. It was low quality. The way photographs from that era were when they’d been scanned from deteriorating originals. The man Lauron had labeled possibly FW was standing slightly apart from the other three looking at something off camera. He was lean, not tall, but the posture of someone who spent a lot of time looking at things closely.

He was wearing a work shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and there was something in his hands, a piece of paper or a thin book, impossible to tell. He looked like someone who was in the middle of thinking about something else. Adrien understood this quality. He forwarded the photograph to Deborah with a note. This might be him. 1973.

Evelyn came that evening, not with the thermos, but with a box of leftover pie from the diner, which she explained was the end of day surplus that Ronny’s would otherwise throw out, which was Ronnie’s single greatest moral failing in her opinion. It was apple pie, slightly overbaked on the edges in a way that didn’t affect the taste.

They ate it in the kitchen because it was too cold for the garage without the space heater going. And Mason, who had already had dinner, negotiated a slice with the focused diplomacy of a child who has learned that I already ate dinner is not actually a disqualifying condition. Adrienne told Evelyn about the Tennessee lead.

She listened with her fork held loosely in one hand, leaning slightly forward in the way she did when she was tracking something carefully. “A bridge consultant,” she said. “It’s thin,” he said. The investigator dismissed it. But it fits. She said he was a structural engineer first. Racing was the detour, not the career. She thought about this.

If he wanted to disappear but couldn’t stop doing the work, you’d go back to what you knew before the thing that hurt you. Adrienne looked at her. That’s a specific kind of observation. She shrugged slightly. People go back to their foundations when they’re in pain, she said. It’s what they know before everything got complicated.

She ate a bite of pie. Is Deborah looking? She’s finding people who know Tennessee Engineering Archives. He said it’s slow. What else can you do while she looks? I’ve been thinking about the Chicago angle. He said the fire at the Caldwell Rice Storage Facility. The fire is the thing everyone accepted. The reason nobody looked for the car too hard after 1974.

But I haven’t been able to find a fire report. Evelyn looked up. No fire report. I found a reference to the fire in three different places. a motorsport newsletter from late74, Laurent notes, and the Chicago Racing Federation archive that Deborah pulled the build log from, but none of them site a specific date or location. Nobody references an actual fire department report.

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