The Missing Driver's Sister Brought A Photograph Without An Address

Nora Mercer held her phone in both hands when she came to the state office.

"He sent it the night he vanished," she said. "I already gave it to the sheriff. They asked me to send it again, full size."

The picture showed Eli's truck beside a long shed. A torn feed sack hung from a nail near the door. Beyond it lay flat ground and a strip of trees.

There were many sheds like that around Grand Island.

"What did his message say?" Celia asked.

Nora turned the screen toward us.

Waiting for my pay. Something wrong here. Call later.

"And you did?"

"Twelve times. Then his phone stopped ringing."

Celia asked permission to have a deputy copy the original message. She gave Nora a receipt for it.

"You believe me?" Nora asked.

"I believe this needs work," Celia said. "I'm doing that work."

She did not hand out comfort she could not back up.

The sheriff's office handled the search. Celia handled the grain trail. I helped her read the strip, one stamped pair at a time.

Every ticket had a gross weight when a loaded truck arrived and a tare when it left empty. Gross minus tare gave the grain weight. Voss's office had taken eight thousand pounds off certain loaded readings. It had left the empty ones alone.

"Could a bad wire choose only loaded trucks?" Celia asked.

"Could it choose certain farms too?"

She drew a box around that question.

The forty-seven loads came from six farms. Other tickets between them matched on both channels. Whatever had happened, it had not happened at random.

One farmer, Ruth Bell, arrived with a brown envelope and a face white with anger.

"I knew my yield couldn't be that low," she said. "He told me to check my combine."

Her farm had its own scale. She used it for field checks, not sales, but she kept its service records. On seven loads, her numbers were close to my cart's direct readings. They were nowhere near Voss's settlement tickets.

An independent grain buyer supplied unloading tickets for two more trucks. Those weights also supported the direct channel.

Celia laid the papers side by side.

"Now we have more than a machine agreeing with itself," she said.

At $4.48 a bushel, eight thousand pounds of corn was worth $640. Forty-seven such shortages came to $30,080.

I wrote the sum twice. It was a harvest in someone else's pocket.

"That isn't the whole audit," Celia said. "Different dates had different prices. We need each contract."

"All six used his fixed-price pool," Ruth said. "Four forty-eight. We thought we were being careful."

She smoothed the envelope flat.

"My husband and I postponed a roof for that money."

I thought of Voss's clean boots.

Willa came after lunch with a lawyer. Celia had asked her to bring counsel before making a full statement.

"I changed four tickets," Willa said.

The room stayed quiet.

"He stood beside me and told me which setting to use. I knew it was wrong. I told myself he would fix the farmers' checks later."

Her lawyer touched her wrist.

"You can stop for a moment."

"I've stopped enough."

She supplied a page from the office settings book. Beside the adjustment code, Voss had written: Pool loads only. R.V.

"Why didn't you tell someone?" I asked.

"I owed him rent. My son worked in his yard. Those aren't good answers. They're the answers."

I had no kind reply ready. Celia did not force one from me.

When Willa left, I took my lunch outside. Celia joined me on a bench facing the street.

"You asked her something hard," she said.

"You do that all day."

"I try to leave room for an answer."

I broke my sandwich in half and offered it. She opened her bag and gave me an orange.

"A fair trade?" she asked.

"I'll need to weigh it."

Her laugh was low. I could feel it through the bench before I caught all of it.

My marriage had ended twelve years earlier. I had become used to eating alone, and to calling that a preference.

Before we went in, she brushed a crumb from her sleeve. I wanted a reason to sit another minute.

Instead, a deputy waved us over.

He had found three properties Voss used for storage. Search teams were checking them. None matched the shed yet.

Then a process server stepped through the front door and asked for me.

He handed me a civil complaint filed by Voss's hauling company. It demanded $18,400 for damage and lost trade.

Attached was a sworn claim that I had broken into the scale terminal.

At the bottom, in the space for supporting witnesses, stood Willa Shaw's name.