I put the notebook down on the table very carefully. Clare was watching me. He was protecting you, I said. I know. He didn't tell you because he thought it was safer.
I know that, too. She got up off the floor. She brushed off the back of her jeans and she said very quietly, "I've been angry at him for 6 years for leaving me alone with nothing. For dying and not explaining himself, for the locked workshop and the private phone calls and the backyard checks and all of it." She looked at the notebook and it turns out he spent the last year of his life trying to make sure I'd be safe even after he was gone. A breath.
That doesn't make it easier, but it's different. It's a completely different thing to know. I nodded. I didn't try to fill it with words. We need to call someone, she said.
Not the sheriff's department. Someone who will actually understand what this is. The EPA and probably the state attorney general's office. Tonight, first thing tomorrow. Tonight, we take photographs of everything.
We lock this unit and you do not go home alone. She looked at me sharply. Someone has been accessing the drainage channel under your property. Someone put fresh screws on that vent panel. Someone was outside your window 3 weeks ago.
I kept my voice level. They don't know the sinkhole opened. They don't know you found the box, but they may know someone was at the property today. An inspector's vehicle. Sheriff's deputies.
That's visible activity. She was quiet for a moment. You think I'm in danger? I think Daniel thought he was in danger. And he was right to think so.
I held her gaze. I'm not going to pretend I know exactly what we're dealing with, but I know enough to tell you not to be alone in that house tonight. She looked around the storage unit at everything Daniel had spent years building. "My sister lives in Westerville," she said finally. "20 Minutes, call her." She took out her phone.
We locked the unit at 6:47 in the evening. The sun was already down, just the last gray light left in the sky. Sitting in the car before Clare started the engine. She turned to me. What do you think they were moving through the drainage channel?
I'd been thinking about it since I saw the map. Samples, maybe documentation. If they knew Daniel had evidence and they were trying to figure out where he'd hidden it. The channel gives them access to the property without coming through the front gate. They were searching.