The Men In Brock's Statement Had Never Given Those Interviews

Cal Merritt met me outside a freight yard in Socorro, east of the city. He wore a safety vest and leaned on a cane with a rubber foot he had fixed himself.

"You still measure doors?" he asked.

"Every one."

"Good. People keep building them wrong."

We sat at a picnic table beyond the fence. I put Brock's statement between us, covered the other men's details, and showed Cal the paragraph about him.

He read it twice.

"I said this?"

"That's what he told our board."

The paragraph claimed Cal had seen me leave before anyone was hurt. It said Brock had found the wounded men without help from me.

Cal took off his glasses.

"I was on your left. Pike was on your right. You had Luz on your back. Who does he think got us to the wall?"

"Did he interview you last year?"

"He called about a donation breakfast. I said no. That was the whole call."

I slid Nina's business card across the table.

"Tell her what you remember. Don't try to fill the gaps."

"I remember the important gap. The one between the road and the wall."

He agreed to make a signed statement. Before I left, he brought up Darnell's current number on his phone.

"Pike moved to Phoenix. Teaches welding. Ask about his red boot."

That evening, Darnell answered on the fourth ring.

"I don't owe anybody money," he said.

"What about a red boot?"

He laughed once.

One of his boots had been coated in red marking paint spilled in the truck. For weeks afterward, Luz had called him a walking stop sign.

When I explained why I was calling, he stopped laughing.

"Brock sent me a page to sign in January," he said. "I refused."

"Do you have it?"

"The email, too. He said it was just to settle old unit history."

I asked him to send it straight to Nina. I didn't tell him what Cal had said or play the recording. I wanted his own memory, with all its rough edges.

"There was a driver," Darnell told me. "Rios. Quiet guy. Made a sling out of two cargo straps."

I remembered the straps then. Elias had tucked their buckles under Luz's thighs so they wouldn't press into her legs.

Small things came back harder than the big ones.

"Do you know where he is?" I asked.

"His aunt lived near Hatch. I have an old holiday card. I'll ask if she's willing to pass along your number."

At work the next day, I taught a woman to move from her chair into a pickup seat. We set the transfer board, checked its overlap, and moved the seat back half an inch.

"Half an inch matters?" she asked.

"When it's your half inch."

I was clearing the bay when Mara called me into her office.

Our bookkeeper, June, sat beside a stack of folders. Blue tape marked one folder's torn edge. I looked at it longer than I needed to.

"We've received the statements from Merritt and Pike," Mara said. "Neither supports what Brock submitted."

"Has he answered?"

"He says they are confused. He also asked us to approve his backup training plan."

June pushed a contract toward me.

It proposed that Vance Training Services run our classes for $48,000 a year. Brock owned the company. The board had allowed limited preparation work while we searched for a director. He had left the room for that vote.

"We paid $18,400 for course preparation and related costs," June said. "Now we're checking what those costs were."

My name appeared in an attached note: Internal candidate presents unresolved safety concerns.

The note was dated three weeks before Brock challenged me in the meeting.

"He'd already decided," I said.

Mara folded her hands.

"It appears he planned to object. That doesn't answer every other question."

I liked her more for saying it carefully.

June opened the supporting invoice. There were charges for manuals, travel, and an item called Driver Transition Lodging.

"We asked for the person's name," she said. "Brock sent this supplement yesterday."

Elias Rios. Temporary lodging and travel support. $6,800.

I read it without touching the page.

"The man he said never existed."

"Yes," Mara said. "We're asking about that too."

She gave me a copy with account numbers covered. Nina would receive the full document through the board's lawyer.

I walked back to Bay Two carrying a name that had somehow become both impossible and worth $6,800.

My phone buzzed before I reached the bench.

The message came from an unknown number.

This is Elias. My aunt says you're looking. Did he use my name again?