By sunrise, the house no longer felt like mine.
Police moved between both apartments. A utility worker restored power after finding the exterior disconnect deliberately pulled. Another crew photographed the basement door, where fresh pry marks showed exactly how Travis had entered.
Doug needed four stitches in his lip.
He refused an ambulance until I threatened to drive him to urgent care myself.
Before leaving, he stood beside Bentley in the kitchen and tried to apologize.
“I should've checked on you.”
Bentley stared at his cereal.
Doug continued. “And I shouldn't have told a stranger anything about your family.”
No answer.
“I can't undo it.”
Bentley looked up.
“No.”
The single word landed harder than anger.
Doug nodded.
“No, I can't.”
He left without asking for forgiveness.
I respected him slightly more for that.
Ortiz spent the morning tracing the man photographed beside Amber.
His name was Owen Pike. He worked maintenance at the medical laundry facility and had been employed there for eight months. He had no obvious criminal record.
“Could he be Travis's contact?” I asked.
“Possibly.”
“Then arrest him.”
“It doesn't work that way.”
“I know.”
I rubbed my eyes.
“I just dislike that it doesn't.”
By nine, Bentley had fallen asleep at my kitchen table.
His forehead rested on folded arms beside an untouched glass of orange juice.
I carried a blanket over his shoulders.
Maddie had awakened cheerful and hungry, apparently deciding that police officers were simply new adults who might provide crackers.
Children can be mercifully practical.
At ten-thirty, Ortiz received authorization to search Unit B17.
She intended to go personally.
“So do I,” I said.
“No.”
“Bentley found the key in my house.”
“That doesn't make you part of the evidence team.”
“It makes me someone who wants to know what entered my home.”
Ortiz shook her head.
“Stay with the children.”
She was right.
I hated it.
Bentley woke when she put on her coat.
“Are you going to the warehouse?”
“Yes.”
“I want to come.”
“No.”
“It's my key.”
“It was hidden in your toy. That isn't the same thing.”
He straightened.
“What if I remember something there?”
Ortiz crouched beside him.
“Then we'll deal with that later. Right now I need professionals to search it without worrying about keeping you safe.”
He looked unconvinced.
“Will you tell me what you find?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
Ortiz hesitated.
“Everything appropriate for you to know.”
Bentley's eyes narrowed.
“That's adult language for no.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
Ortiz almost did too.
“Fair.”
She left.
Waiting became its own kind of exhaustion.
Maddie drew circles on printer paper while Bentley sat by the window pretending not to watch every car that passed.
At noon, the city crew restored water to the Collins apartment.
Bentley insisted on testing it himself.
He crossed the porch with me beside him and turned the kitchen faucet.
The pipes coughed brown water for several seconds.
Then the stream cleared.
Bentley held his hand beneath it.
He didn't smile.
He simply watched clean water run across his fingers.
I wondered how long it would take before something so ordinary stopped feeling uncertain.
“Turn it off,” he said after a while.
“Why?”
“We shouldn't waste it.”
I almost told him water wasn't going anywhere.
Then I remembered how many promises adults had already made him.
Instead I said, “All right.”
We shut the faucet together.
Ortiz returned shortly after three.
I knew from her face that Unit B17 had contained more than anyone expected.
She asked me to put Maddie in the living room with a cartoon.
Bentley remained at the kitchen table.
Ortiz didn't ask him to leave.
“The unit belonged to a company called Mayfair Equipment Recovery,” she said.
Bentley frowned.
“What's that?”
“A fake business.”
“Dad's?”
“We believe Travis controlled it.”
She placed photographs on the table rather than actual evidence.
Metal shelving.
Cardboard file boxes.
A locked cabinet.
Several pieces of medical equipment still bearing hospital inventory labels.
“He kept stolen stuff there?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Years.”
Bentley studied the photographs.
“Why didn't police find it?”
“The lease used another person's name.”
“Whose?”
Ortiz looked toward me first.
I disliked the habit almost as much as Bentley did.
She caught herself.
“Daniel Harlow.”
Bentley blinked.
I knew the name.
Maddie's father.
“Daniel?” I said.
Ortiz nodded.
Bentley looked confused.
“Why would Maddie's dad rent something for my dad?”
“We don't think he did.”
“Then how did his name get there?”
“Someone used his identity.”
My stomach tightened.
“Travis?”
“Possibly.”
Bentley frowned.
“Did Daniel know?”
“We don't know yet.”
I thought of Amber saying Daniel had been kind. I remembered the tenderness in her voice.
“When did the lease begin?”
Ortiz checked her notes.
“Four years ago.”
That was after Amber had escaped Travis but before Daniel died.
“So Daniel was alive.”
“Yes.”
Bentley looked at me.
“Mom knew about the storage place.”
Ortiz said nothing.
His eyes sharpened.
“Didn't she?”
“We found something else.”
She placed another photograph on the table.
A digital voice recorder.
Old, silver, scratched at one corner.
Bentley stared at it.
“What is that?”
“Recorder.”
“What's on it?”
Ortiz folded her hands.
“One conversation.”
“With Dad?”
“No.”
“With who?”
“Your mother and Marcus Bell.”
The name changed the room.
Marcus—the man whose death had never been solved.
Bentley stared at Ortiz.
“You said Mom saw him arguing with Dad.”
“She did.”
“You didn't say she talked to him.”
“I didn't know.”
I felt anger begin again, but not at Ortiz.
“What does the recording say?”
Ortiz looked toward the living room.
Maddie was singing along with the television.
Then she lowered her voice.
“Marcus wanted out.”
“Out of what?” Bentley asked.
“Your father's operation.”
“He was stealing too?”
“Yes.”
“So Marcus was bad?”
Ortiz considered the question.
“He was involved in crimes. He also decided to help expose them.”
“Does that make him good?”
“No.”
“Bad?”
“People aren't that simple.”
Bentley looked down.
He understood exactly whom she meant.
Ortiz continued.
“Marcus contacted Amber because he knew she wanted to leave Travis safely.”
I stared at her.
“So she knew Marcus before he died.”
“Yes.”
“Did she tell you that three years ago?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She claimed she barely knew him.”
Bentley pushed his chair back.
“She lied again.”
Ortiz didn't argue.
“What did Marcus tell her on the recording?” I asked.
“He gave her information about where Travis stored records. He described Unit B17.”
“The key.”
“Yes.”
“Then why was the key in Bentley's toy instead of with police?”
“Because the conversation happened before Marcus died.”
Ortiz leaned forward.
“Marcus told Amber not to go to authorities until he could copy financial records and get his family away.”
“And then he was killed.”
“Yes.”
Bentley swallowed.
“What did Mom do?”
“She went to the storage unit after Marcus disappeared.”
“Alone?”
Ortiz's eyes shifted.
“No.”
“Daniel?”
“We think so.”
That explained his name on the lease.
I felt the pieces move again.
“Daniel helped her secure the unit?”
“It appears he may have transferred the lease into his name so Travis couldn't access it easily.”
“Then Travis wasn't using Daniel's identity.”
“Maybe not.”
Ortiz's voice was careful.
“There are documents showing Daniel paid the rent for several months.”
Bentley stared at the table.
“Mom knew all of this.”
“Yes.”
“And never told me.”
“You were three.”
“I'm ten now.”
No one answered.
Ortiz placed one final photograph down.
A brown jacket sealed in an evidence bag.
There were dark stains along one sleeve.
“Whose is that?”
“We don't know yet.”
“Blood?” I asked.
“Possibly. It has been submitted for testing.”
Bentley's face had gone pale.
Ortiz removed the photograph from his line of sight.
“There were also ledgers, old phones and computer drives.”
“So you can prove Dad killed Marcus?”
“Not yet.”
“But you can prove the stealing?”
“Probably much more than we could yesterday.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“Then why do you look worried?”
Ortiz glanced at me.
Bentley sighed.
“Stop doing that.”
She almost smiled.
Then became serious.
“Because the recorder contains something I don't understand.”
“What?”
“Near the end of the conversation, Marcus tells Amber that if anything happens to him, she should take Bentley and leave.”
The boy's fingers curled around the edge of the table.
“Why me?”
“He says Travis had started asking whether you remembered ‘the loading dock.’”
Bentley frowned.
“I don't know what that is.”
Ortiz nodded.
“We don't know either.”
“Did Mom answer?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
Ortiz's voice grew quieter.
“She said you had seen something from the back seat of a car.”
A strange expression crossed Bentley's face.
“What?”
“What did I see?”
“Amber didn't explain.”
“Play it.”
“I can't.”
“Why?”
“It's evidence.”
“It's about me.”
“I know.”
Bentley stood.
“Everybody keeps knowing things about me except me.”
He walked toward the hallway.
I let him go.
After he disappeared upstairs, I turned on Ortiz.
“Call Amber.”
“I already did.”
“And?”
“She asked me not to discuss the recording with Bentley until she could.”
I laughed without humor.
“That strategy is going wonderfully.”
Ortiz rubbed her temple.
“She is being discharged tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“She's coming here under protection.”
“Even better.”
“There is something else.”
Of course there was.
“What now?”
Ortiz took out her phone and opened a photograph from Unit B17.
It showed a cheap spiral notebook.
A page had been marked with evidence tape.
At the top was a date from three years earlier.
Below it were several names.
Travis Ward.
Marcus Bell.
Daniel Harlow.
And Amber Collins.
Next to Amber's name, someone had written one sentence.
SHE SAW THE VAN.
I stared at it.
“The loading dock.”
Ortiz nodded.
“What van?”
“We don't know.”
Then she enlarged another line lower on the page.
A license plate number had been written beside the word MUNCIE.
My throat tightened.
“This happened here?”
“Possibly.”
“But Amber told me she came here because she thought Travis had stopped looking.”
“She may have had another reason.”
Before I could answer, Bentley's voice came from the stairs.
“What reason?”
He stood halfway down, eyes fixed on the photograph.
Ortiz closed the screen too late.
Bentley looked at both of us.
Then said, very quietly, “I remember a white van.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 11: Bentley’s Memory of the White Van Forced Amber to Tell the Story She Had Buried Since the Night Marcus Bell Disappeared
For Nine Mornings Bentley Knocked at 7:10, and Every Polite Request Made the Silence Next Door Feel Stranger
Part 10 of 15
