Chapter 10 - The Man at the Door|
Lyall asked to meet Naomi through Mara, and the request made her more uneasy than Duly's had.
She remembered him standing beside elevators, opening car doors, and saying very little at family dinners.
Men like Lyall made other men appear reasonable by handling what happened after conversation failed.
She told Mara she wanted to hear what he had to say.
He arrived with his own attorney and an ordinary cardboard box.
One corner had been repaired with packing tape.
“I kept dispatch records,” he said.
“For the security crews.”
Mara did not touch the box until his attorney explained what it contained and how it had been preserved.
Among the records were assignments, payment notes, and copies of instructions sent by Edmund's office.
The man who had visited Second Page had been paid through a Ward Freight contractor.
His assignment appeared as a property inspection.
The date and address matched the police report.
That connection would need to be checked against the original payment records.
It was specific enough for the investigators to pursue.
“Did Duly ask you to bring these?” Naomi said.
“He told me not to destroy anything.”
“That wasn't my question.”
Lyall looked at her across the box.
“No.”
He rubbed the scar near the base of his thumb.
“My lawyer told me what waiting would mean.”
Naomi appreciated the absence of a noble explanation.
Then Lyall removed a smaller folder.
“There are earlier assignments.”
The name on the first page was Mendoza.
Naomi felt her stomach tighten.
After Luis's death, his widow had pressed the company for money it had promised.
Lyall had visited her apartment with another man.
“What did you tell her?” Naomi asked.
“That making trouble would delay things.”
“Did you threaten her son?”
“I mentioned his school.”
His voice did not change, but he stopped looking at the paper.
Naomi pushed her chair back a few inches.
Lyall had once offered her an umbrella outside a restaurant.
She remembered thanking him warmly.
She wondered how many people had mistaken a small courtesy for evidence of a harmless life.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you'll hear that I'm helping.”
He folded his hands.
“I thought you should know what came before it.”
The room was quiet for several seconds.
Naomi looked toward Mara.
“Make sure the investigators receive everything.”
Lyall nodded.
He did not ask her to understand him.
After he left, she sat beside the window while Mara completed the handoff arrangements with his counsel.
The records could corroborate people who had been frightened into silence for years.
That mattered even when the man providing them had been one of the reasons they were silent.
Naomi thought about calling Luis's widow, then stopped herself.
The woman had already received enough unexpected calls from people connected to Ward Freight.
Through Mara, she asked whether the family's attorney would welcome the information instead.
That evening, June brought dinner to the temporary apartment.
They had begun returning to the shop for limited hours after discussing precautions with the police.
Nothing about the schedule felt normal yet.
But customers kept leaving patient messages about repairs that could wait.
“How was today?” June asked.
Naomi considered the question.
“Useful.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It was.”
June put a carton of noodles between them.
Naomi ate more than she expected.
Across the city, Lyall sat in an attorney's office describing orders he had once accepted without making anyone repeat them.
At the Moretti offices, Duly authorized the preservation and delivery of records his lawyers had warned could implicate him.
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And at his lake house, Edmund Ward learned that two men he had always counted on were no longer keeping the same secrets.
He took out his phone and called Helen into the room.
