“No more TV, it broke!”
“He ever gonna get a new one?”
“Not unless you give him one!”
“Damn.” The bearded trucker clucked, and the tattooed trucker slipped on wire-rimmed reading glasses.
“What are you, eighty? You don’t need to watch the TV news. Look it up on your phone.”
“Screen’s too small.”
“I told you, get the glasses.” The tattooed truck driver started scrolling on an iPhone in a heavy-duty case. “Here we go. They got an update.”
“Any news about Jay?” The bearded trucker leaned over, and so did I. Heads turned in our direction, and conversations ceased. Eyes lifted from plates, and coffee cups stopped in mid-sip.
“Nothing new on Jaybird!” The tattooed trucker raised his voice to be heard. “Good news, the young girl’s leaving the hospital tonight!”
A trucker called out, “Praise Jesus!”
Another called back, “Praise Jaybird!”
The truckers laughed grimly.
The tattooed trucker continued scrolling. “Hold on, they ID’d the people that got killed at the plant! There were two! ‘The victims have been identified as Phillip Nerone, thirty-four, of Avondale . . .’？” The tattooed trucker stopped reading and scanned the crowd. “Anybody know a Phil Nerone? Kyle, you live in Honey Brook, right?”
The truckers shook their heads.
The waitress came over and set breakfast in front of me. “Here we go, sir.”
“Thanks.” I dug into the scrambled eggs, shoveling them into my mouth. They tasted warm, buttery, and good.
The tattooed trucker held up his phone, continuing his update to the crowd: “One more thing, they identified the other guy who got killed at the plant.”
I paused, fork in hand over my hash browns. The second murder victim was probably the security guard behind the bags last night, calling 911. I shuddered at the memory. I could still hear him pleading for help, then the ringing of the gunshots, reverberating in my head.
The tattooed trucker pushed up his glasses. “Says here, ‘The second victim found at the scene has been identified as Bryan Krieger, forty-one, of Brooklyn, New York.’？”
Bryan Krieger? I set down my fork, stunned. So, the desperate man calling 911 had been the citizen detective, not a security guard.
The truckers reacted.
“What’s a guy from New York doin’ down here?”
“Buyin’ or sellin’， take your pick!”
“Jaybird gets winged by a drug dealer? There’s no justice, man!”
I slid out my phone, scrolled to Krieger’s website, and skimmed the latest entry of his blog, posted yesterday afternoon, when I was at the motel:
Gang, I told you last night the huge news that I saw Jason Bennett at the scene of the hit-and-run murder of Paul Hart, the big-time Philadelphia lawyer who was sleeping with Jason’s wife Lucinda! I can’t give you the details yet, but I’m following a major lead! Stay tuned!
I read it again, horrified. It was possible that Krieger had followed me, but I didn’t know how or when he had started. He had seen me at Hart’s hit-and-run, but how had he followed me thereafter?
I had no answers, only more questions. Had he seen me at Contessa’s? How would he know to go there? What had he been up to? What lead was he following? And how did he get to Valley Composting last night?
I scrolled up through Bryan’s website, and found the audio posted was his interview with Hart’s wife Pam. I read the transcript that I had listened to earlier. I realized something I hadn’t noticed before; Bryan hadn’t posted the entirety of the interview, only an excerpt that began with his introduction. But the interview hadn’t ended on air, a detail I’d missed before.
I listened to the audio file again, phone to my ear.
Bryan: I can see you’re brutally honest—
Pam: That I am! I got honesty and brutality!
Bryan: I’m investigating whether your husband was having an affair with a woman named Lucinda Bennett. She’s a photographer who took his photo last summer.
Pam: I don’t know anybody named Lucinda, but if she had a pulse, I’m not surprised Paul’s screwing her. She wasn’t the first and she won’t be the last! Ha! Ha! Are you trying to shock me?
It struck me that Pam Hart could’ve gone on to talk about other women that Hart had cheated with, possibly Contessa. If she had, then Krieger could’ve continued to track me, always one step behind. He could have gone to Contessa’s apartment the next morning, just like I did, and he could have seen me leaving. After that, he could’ve followed me to the motel and waited outside until last night, when I left for New Cumberton.
I flashed on last night, driving through the run-down part of town after town. There had been traffic on all of the streets. I didn’t I know what kind of car Krieger drove. He could have been following me last night, all the way to the composting plant.
I mentally retraced my steps inside the plant from when Nerone had taken me at gunpoint to the storage room where we waited for Big George. We had been there about twenty minutes, long enough for Krieger to pull into the lot, park, and sneak inside the storage room before Milo got there. Neither Nerone nor I would have heard him over the industrial fans.
I remembered Krieger’s terrified shout when Milo and Nerone had started shooting, then the frantic 911 call. My heart felt heavy at yet another loss. Krieger was trying to get to the bottom of my family’s disappearance, and it had led him to a horrible death.
My phone started ringing, and I scrolled to check the screen.
Unknown, it read.
But I knew who it was.
I pressed the green button to answer. “Yes?”
“This is George Veria,” said a gruff voice.
Chapter Forty-Eight
An hour later, I was sitting on the floor of an old van, with a black hood over my head and zip-ties cutting into my wrists behind my back. The floor of the van was hard, the air smelled of stale cigarettes, and the ride was bumpy. I braced my back against the side, scrambling to stay upright. Bottles rolled back and forth, clinking.
Two heavyset thugs were in the front. They’d taken my car keys, wallet, and phone. My gun was in my glove box, doing me no good. Still I told myself to stay calm. I was on my way to meet Big George Veria. I had willed this meeting to happen. Plan B was never going to be a picnic.
I had set everything in motion yesterday afternoon, as an absolute last resort. I had to get to Big George, without getting killed in the process. I had hoped to use Nerone to get to him, but that hadn’t worked when Nerone had called Milo instead. I hadn’t predicted how badly it would go wrong last night, but I always knew there was one simple, if insanely conventional, way to get to Big George.
By FedEx.
I wrote him a note in the motel, for early delivery at eight a.m. It read simply: Please call me. Then I had written my name and phone number.
And it had worked.
That is, if I lived.
I believed I had a chance of staying alive. I prayed that the murders at the composting plant would work in my favor. That was what I was telling myself, though I didn’t know if everything was falling into place or falling apart. Either way, it was the only option left.
I didn’t know where we were meeting or how long it would take to get there. I tried to see through the jersey weave of the hood but couldn’t. I listened to the noise of the traffic like they do in the movies, but I learned nothing. There were no foghorns to suggest a river, nor were there seagulls or trains. It sounded like normal weekday traffic on a road shared by moms, accountants, sales reps, UPS, and homicidal thugs.