The Missing Driver Sent A Message Through The Welding Shop

I sent the pump notice to Camille before I took off my shoes.

"He means to get there first," I said when she called.

"Maybe. The notice itself doesn't prove that."

"If he drops the level, he could reach the square object."

"Put that in a short technical statement. Depth, expected change, access. Don't guess at his plan."

I worked from the marked water level, not memory. The van lay in a pocket near the bank. A drop of four feet could expose the dock supports and let a machine approach along a mud shelf.

I added a warning: that shelf might not hold a machine.

My statement ran one page. Camille collected it while I was eating toast over the sink.

"You have a table," she said.

"It has the county packet on it."

She looked at the folders, then at the toast.

"Buy yourself one clear corner."

After she left, I moved the papers from one chair. It was a small thing to do because someone had noticed how I lived.

At nine, Elsie Raines called.

"A man left something here for you. He wouldn't come inside."

"What man?"

"Hood up. Thin. Said you were the only one who drew him in the right place."

I called Camille. She asked me to stay home while another investigator collected the envelope. An hour later, she showed me a copy.

The note said: I GOT OUT. HE DOESN'T KNOW. ASK THE MAP MAN WHERE THE OLD STEPS USED TO GO.

Beneath it was a phone number.

"Do you know about steps?" she asked.

"Not yet."

She called the number with another investigator present. The man would not give a location. He wanted to hear whether I knew the place where he had climbed out.

"He thinks you can verify him," she said afterward. "We won't send you hunting. Can your records answer that?"

The survey covered more than the van. West of the private dock, the bottom rose in even little ledges. I had marked them as broken masonry. An old county flood photograph, available in the planning office's public files, showed steps down to a fishing platform there.

I gave Camille the location and the photograph reference.

She called him again. This time he agreed to meet at Elsie's shop, with a lawyer she helped him contact. He asked that I be there when he arrived.

Camille explained that I could greet him, then would wait elsewhere during his interview.

"You don't owe him trust," she said.

"He doesn't owe me a whole story in the parking lot either."

She nodded once.

Jonah Price arrived in Elsie's old pickup. She had fetched him from a vacant family house outside town. His clothes hung loose, and he kept one hand around the other wrist.

"I thought you were working for him," he told me.

"I was measuring for him."

"That's what I thought I was doing. Driving."

His lawyer touched the folder under his arm.

"We'll do the account inside."

I waited in the shop office. Camille came out once to ask for a clean copy of the stair location. She did not tell me what Jonah had said.

Elsie made coffee so strong I could smell it before she opened the office door.

"That boy fixed my gate last spring," she said. "Wouldn't take a dime."

"People can do good things and still know something bad."

"I know. That's why I called you people instead of hiding him."

Near noon, Jonah left with his lawyer and the second investigator. Camille stayed long enough to tell me he had agreed to help, and arrangements had been made for him to stay somewhere safe.

"Can I know if somebody else is under the water?"

"His account says he was alone in the van. We'll still check."

Later, after her team had checked details and Jonah had approved sharing the parts I needed, she explained the escape. He had been paid $300 to move what Greer called stored equipment. At the landing, Greer had met him with Roy.

Jonah had heard them discuss the stolen money. When he tried to leave, Roy blocked the bank road. Jonah backed onto a rotten edge. The van slid in. He got through the open driver's window and reached the buried steps.

He hid because Greer knew where his sister lived. He had seen my name on the board agenda and finally called Elsie.

At dusk, Camille called again.

"The judge signed the recovery warrant," she said. "But the pumps are running already, and someone has moved a loader onto that mud shelf."