Part 19:
You will meet them in a place they pick. You will bring the records, all of them. Not copies, originals. They will bring an envelope. That will be the end of it. Are we clear? Yes, sir. Ryan. Yes. One more thing. Yes. I want to make sure we understand each other. You’re a father. I’m a father. I have a son in college, Rhode Island. Good school, good kid.
I understand what it is to want to take care of them. I’m not angry at you for coming in here. I’m glad you came to me instead of anyone else. I think you made a smart decision today. I just need you to stay smart. Are you going to stay smart? Yes, sir. All right, then. He stood up. Ryan stood up. Sharp walked him to the door of the office.
At the door, he put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. Not in a friendly way. In the way a man puts a hand on something to see how heavy it is. Ryan. Yes. Take care of yourself now. Yes, sir. Ryan walked to the elevator. He pushed the button. He waited. The elevator took forever. He did not let himself look back at Sharp’s office. He did not let himself breathe.
He kept his face, the face of a man who had just made a bad deal out of desperation. The elevator came. He got in. The doors closed. He rode down three floors without moving. When the doors opened on the lobby, he walked out past the woman at the front desk. She was back on the phone. She did not look up.
He walked out through the glass doors into the cold, clear October morning. He walked across the parking lot past the gray Camry, which he did not look at, to his truck. He unlocked it. He got in. He closed the door. He put his hands on the steering wheel. He sat there for a second. Then, very quietly, he said one word for the benefit of the technician two blocks away with the headphones on, “Burlington.
” There was no response in his ear because he was not wearing an earpiece. But he didn’t need one. He knew on the other end of the wire people were moving. He started the engine. He put the truck in gear. He drove out of the parking lot and down the road and onto the highway. And when he hit the on-ramp, he realized his hands were still shaking and had been shaking the whole time.
He drove south toward Montpelier with the heater running and the radio off and one phrase repeating in his head over and over in Sharp’s voice, “I am glad you came to me instead of anyone else.” He had him. He had him on tape. He drove for a long time without speaking and somewhere around the second rest stop, he started to laugh quietly.
Not because anything was funny, but because his body had to do something with what it was carrying and when the laugh finished, he was crying a little. And he let himself cry for about 30 seconds. And then he wiped his face on his sleeve and kept driving. When he got back to the building outside Montpelier, Delia was waiting for him at the door and Marcus was behind her and a young man with a tablet was behind Marcus.
And they walked him down the hallway three abreast without saying a word. And in the conference room at the end of the hallway, Celeste was already sitting at the table with a pair of headphones pushed down around her neck and a face that he could not quite read. She looked up at him when he came in. She stood up. She did not smile.
Her eyes were very bright. Ryan? Yeah. Sit down. He sat down. She sat down across from him. She folded her hands on the table. She looked at him for a long moment. You did it, she said. I did it. You did it very well. It didn’t feel very well. It felt like I was going to throw up. That is what doing it well feels like.
He almost laughed. She reached across the table. She put her hand on top of his hand briefly, the way Emma had done at the kitchen table 3 weeks earlier. Her hand was not sticky. Her hand was very cold. She left it there for maybe 4 seconds, then she took it back. Now we finish, she said. The call came on Saturday afternoon.
Ryan was on the couch in the apartment on Birch Street with Emma sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him braiding yarn into a bracelet she was making for her teacher. The television was on, but nobody was watching it. Something about a cooking competition. The apartment smelled like the leftover tomato soup he’d heated up for lunch.
His phone buzzed on the arm of the couch. Unknown number, Vermont area code. He looked at Emma. She was concentrated on the yarn, the tip of her tongue between her teeth. He got up quietly and walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Hello. Ryan Hale. It was a woman’s voice, not a voice he recognized. Speaking.
I’m calling for a mutual friend. He told me you’d be expecting a call. Okay. Tomorrow, 4:00 p.m. There’s an unpaved turnoff on Route 12A, about 3 miles north of Northfield. Old logging road. You’ll see it. Drive in exactly a quarter mile and stop. Don’t get out of your vehicle. Bring the records. Okay. Don’t bring anyone. Don’t tell anyone.
If If we see another car on that road inside 90 minutes of your arrival, the meeting is off and our mutual friend is going to be unhappy with you. I understand. 4:00 p.m. Don’t be early. Don’t be late. She hung up. Ryan stood in the bedroom with the phone in his hand for a long time. The bedroom had one window, a small one, and it looked out into the air shaft between buildings.
