Chapter 7: What Dale Left Behind
Rhea photographed the note before she let anyone else touch it.
Then she brought it to the kitchen table and set it down in front of Carla.
Carla read it once.
Then she pressed both hands flat over it like she was trying to keep it from flying away.
"He knew," she said.
"He knew before he went."
"What does it say?" I asked.
Rhea nodded at Carla.
Carla read it aloud, her voice barely holding.
*"Carla.
If this gets to you, things went wrong.
Don't look for me yourself.
Don't call the police yet — wait until you have to.
Foss has someone inside the department.
I don't know who.
Take the kids to your sister's if it gets bad.
The money I owe him — it's already paid.
I paid it.
I have the receipt.
It's in the green folder in the storage unit on Halsey.
Unit 14.
The combination is Brenna's birthday.
He knows I have it.
That's why he won't let me go.
Don't let him tell you I still owe him.
I don't.
Love, Dale."*
The kitchen was completely silent.
Rhea spoke first.
"He paid the debt."
"And Foss took him anyway," I said.
"Because Dale had proof."
"Because Dale had proof that Foss had been collecting on debts already settled," Rhea said.
"Which means every other person Foss claimed still owed him—"
"Might not have owed him anything either," Carla said.
Her voice had gone very flat.
"He's been doing this to other families."
Rhea was already on her phone.
I looked at Carla.
"Your sister.
Is she reachable?"
"Yes."
"I want you to call her in the next hour.
I want you and the children somewhere else tonight."
Carla looked at the note still under her hands.
"The storage unit."
"We'll handle the storage unit," Rhea said, phone still at her ear.
"Carla, do not go there yourself.
Do you understand me?"
"Is Dale alive?" Carla asked.
Rhea lowered the phone slightly.
She didn't answer immediately, and that pause was its own kind of answer.
"We don't know yet," she said.
"But what's in that note gives us something we didn't have an hour ago.
It gives us a direction."
Carla nodded slowly.
She folded the note back along its original creases and held it out to Rhea.
"Find him," she said.
From the hallway, Radley appeared again.
He had Brenna's hand.
"Are you going to look for Dad?" he asked.
Rhea crouched down to his level, the same way she had in his room.
"Yes," she said.
"And I want you to know — that note you kept safe?
That was the most important thing anyone has given me in a very long time."
Radley looked at her for a long moment.
"I knew it mattered," he said.
"I just didn't know why."
Brenna leaned against her brother's arm.
"That's why I got Officer Lionel," she said simply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Rhea stood up and looked at me.
"Storage unit on Halsey," she said.
"I need you with me."
I was already moving toward the door.
May you like
Behind us, Carla was on the phone to her sister.
Her voice was shaking, but it was the shake of someone who had been holding still for forty-three days and was finally, carefully, beginning to move.
