He'd made no demands based on it. He'd made copies and distributed them to separate secure locations in the past 2 weeks. Good, Patricia said. You're a witness to an event. You're not a participant in anything current.
Keep it exactly that way. A pause. I'll drive up Sunday evening. I'm meeting with the local sheriff Sunday morning, Boon said a brief silence. Boon, I know, he said.
But Pierce is already moving. He went after Foster's job 3 days ago. Timeline isn't waiting on perfect conditions. Don't show her the photograph until I'm present, Patricia said. Whatever else you share, not the photograph.
Sunday evening, he said. Sunday evening, she confirmed. Don't be impulsive between now and then. I haven't been impulsive since 2003, Boon said. I know, Patricia said.
That's why I take your calls. Sunday at 8, Ruth had the back of the diner ready, coffee made, front door locked, shades pulled halfway down, the back booth cleared and set with enough cups for the people who'd be using it, which was the kind of practical hospitality that didn't announce itself. Sheriff Dana Marsh came in through the kitchen door, which Boon noticed. She knew the layout well enough to use the back entrance without being directed to it. That told him something about how long she'd been paying attention to this town and the people in it.
She was 58, brown hair cut practically short. She moved with the economy of someone who had been underestimated enough times that she'd built her entire professional manner around letting it happen because the underestimation was more useful than the alternative. She sat down across from Boon, looked at Ruth, who was already seated at the end of the table with her hands around a coffee cup. Looked at Boon. Before anything else, Marsh said, "I want to say something for the record, even though this isn't on record yet. " She folded her hands on the table.
I've had suspicions about Grady Pierce for 7 years. I took office in 2017 and inherited a situation that had been developing for a long time before I arrived. I haven't been able to act on those suspicions because suspicion without evidence. In a county where Pierce has influence over budget approvals, including my department's budget, ends careers rather than investigations. She looked at Boon.
My interest here is in what's true and what's legal, not in grievances, not in politics. If what you have doesn't meet an evidentiary standard, I'll tell you that plainly, and you'll need to find another path. " Understood, Boon said. Marsh looked at him. "And I want to understand something else. You moved here.
PICE came after you specifically through your daughter to pressure you into leaving. Why are you pressing forward instead of going? Boon looked at her steadily. Because I said I was staying, he said. Because my daughter is at that school and this is the town I chose and I'm 59 years old and I'm done letting men like Pierce decide where I belong.
He paused. And because Ruth's husband is buried in the cemetery on Route 9 and I believe he shouldn't be. Silence at the table. Marsh looked at Ruth. Ruth looked back still and straight with the composure of someone who had been waiting 9 years for this specific sentence to be said in the presence of the right person.
"All right," Marsh said. "Show me what you have. " Boon talked for 20 minutes about the 199 gathering. He walked Marsh through every detail he could verify. The date established from records he'd located, the location, Ray Dutton, and what Dutton had represented the man in the blazer as needing. What the club had provided through a bank contact and what PICE had done with it to end Dale Whitfield's candidacy before the race was over.
Marsh listened without taking notes, which Boon understood to mean she was storing everything and would write it down later in a place that wasn't this table. When he finished, she was quiet a moment. Can you identify the man in the photograph as Grady Pierce from the image alone? She said, not with certainty from the image. The focus is poor and the angle isn't ideal.
But I was present. I saw him that day. I can place him at that gathering in a sworn statement. A sworn statement from a man with a documented history involving a motorcycle club. Marsh said not unkindly, just accurately.
The way a person stated the terrain they'd all be walking through. Dismissed weapons charge from 993. Boon said, "No convictions, no subsequent charges. A good defense attorney will make the history louder than the dismissal. Marsh said, "I know. " Boon said, "I'm telling you what I have, not arguing it's sufficient by itself. " Marsh nodded once.
"What else? " Ruth placed Walt's box on the table. She'd spent the past 2 weeks going through it completely, organized it the way Walt would have, chronologically, with each document labeled and cross-referenced. And at the bottom of the box, inside a folder she'd opened for the first time 10 days ago, she'd found a summary sheet in Walt's handwriting. His own index to his own investigation, dates, names, the nature of each document, written in the careful, precise hand of a man who had spent 11 years working in banking before he ever set foot in this diner. The summary sheet was written for someone who hadn't met Walt yet, someone who would arrive after him, someone who would need to be able to use the work without having watched it being built.
Marsh read it, read it again, set it down, and looked at Ruth. Walt wrote this, she said. Yes. When the folder was dated four months before he died, I don't know exactly when he wrote it, but it was during that period. Marsh looked at the summary sheet a third time.