He watched her pull away. The taillights of the DB12 traced a red line down the road and around the corner and then she was gone, and the forest was dark again, and Noah stood in his driveway holding a brown paper bag that contained the most dangerous piece of evidence he'd ever held.
He went inside. Locked the door. Set the bag on the kitchen table under the light and sat down across from it.
The glove sat there. A single piece of latex that had been in an evidence locker, then in a sergeant's hands, then in a crime lord's safe, and now in a state investigator's kitchen. Every person who had touched it had done so for their own reasons and none of those reasons were the same.
He thought about testing the DNA. He thought about what it might show. He thought about the chain of evidence that didn't exist and the courtroom that would never see it and the answers that might live inside a blue latex glove that he could never officially ask for.
Noah sat in the kitchen for a long time. Then he got up, put the brown bag in the back of his home office closet behind a box of old case files.
24
McKenzie stood at the front of the briefing room with a map of Adirondack County tacked to the whiteboard behind him. Red circles marked locations they'd already searched. There were a lot of red circles.
"Motels from High Peaks to Plattsburgh. Bus stations in Saranac Lake, Elizabethtown, Ticonderoga, and Westport. Train stations in Port Henry and Whitehall. We pulled CCTV from every gas station on Route 73 and Route 9N. Backroads from Keene to Wilmington. Nothing." He capped his marker. "Derek Hollis has not been sighted in seventy-two hours. He’s not been flagged at any toll booth, border crossing, or traffic camera in five states and Canada. Hailey Benton has not been seen since walking out of the hospital."
The room was full. Callie in the second row. Noah against the back wall with his arms crossed. A dozen officers and deputies filling the chairs between them.
"It's just a matter of time before one of them is seen," McKenzie continued. " Hollis knows we're looking for him, which means he's either hiding or he's moved out of the area. Hailey left on foot with no phone and no money. Someone isgoing to spot one of them. In the meantime, we keep the net tight and we keep looking."
Noah felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned. A young officer, one of the newer ones whose name he kept forgetting, leaned in.
"Hailey Benton's father is in the lobby. Says he needs to speak with you."
Noah excused himself and slipped out through the side door. The lobby was busier than usual, a couple of people waiting at the front desk, a woman filling out a form on a clipboard, the phones ringing in overlapping cycles. Mr. Benton stood near the entrance, still wearing the same dress shirt from two days ago, now wrinkled, his tie absent, his face showing he hadn’t slept.
"How can I help you, Mr. Benton?"
"Hi." He glanced around the lobby, then stepped closer. "A woman was near our mailbox last night. Late. I turned the porch light on and she hurried away. In the dark I thought it was Hailey." He swallowed. "I caught up with her on the sidewalk. She looked scared. I asked her what she was doing. At first she said she had the wrong address. But I noticed she had a letter in her hand. I saw our name on it before she shoved it in her pocket."
"Go on."
"That's when she changed her mind and handed it to me. I asked her what it was. She told me it was best I just read it. She said she was sorry about Hailey and that she would have come forward sooner but she was scared."
"Did you get a name?"
"No. But she sounded Mexican. Dark hair with a streak of red in it. Brown eyes."
"Marisol Delgado?"
Mr. Benton frowned. "You know her?"
"I think I've seen her before. Not too many Mexicans around here." Noah held out his hand. "The letter?"
Mr. Benton reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Noah opened it. The handwriting was small and careful, pressed hard into the page. A single line.
Samuel Bridger is not who he says he is and he is a dangerous man.
Noah read it twice.
"She told me not to tell anyone," Mr. Benton said. "Said she was risking her life. She was going to place the letter in our mailbox but got scared when I came out."
"She didn't want to be seen."
"And she might not have been if we weren't already looking outside." His voice cracked slightly. "My wife keeps checking. She sits by the window expecting Hailey to walk in any minute." He steadied himself. "Anyway, I wanted to know what she meant by the letter, but she said she'd already said too much. She ran off."
Noah folded the letter and slipped it into his jacket. "I'll look into it. Thank you for bringing this in."
Mr. Benton nodded. He looked like he wanted to say something else but couldn't find it.
