“Did Jason have friends who came by often?”
Emily shook her head. “Not friends. People from work sometimes. A man named Travis. Another named Mark. But Jason didn’t bring people home much.”
“What about Daniel Reeves?”
The detective’s pen paused.
Emily noticed.
“You know that name?”
Detective Navarro looked from Emily to me.
“Where did you hear it?”
I showed her the copy of the list.
Her expression did not change much, but something in her posture did.
She sat straighter.
“Mr. Mitchell, where did this copy come from?”
“The folder the officers gave Emily with copies of seized documents.”
She examined it carefully.
“Daniel Reeves was reported missing eighteen months ago.”
The kitchen seemed to tilt.
Emily gripped the table.
“Missing?”
“He worked in private lending. Small business financing, high-interest loans, vehicle liens, that sort of thing. His wife reported him missing after he failed to come home from a business trip to Austin.”
“What does that have to do with Jason?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
But her tone said otherwise.
It said there were possibilities she wasn’t ready to speak aloud.
Detective Navarro asked more questions. Had Jason ever mentioned loan offices? Did he travel unexpectedly? Did he own storage units? Had Emily noticed mail for unfamiliar companies?
Emily answered as best she could.
Yes, he traveled sometimes.
Yes, he received strange envelopes.
Yes, there was a storage unit.
Her face changed when she said that.
“The one in my name,” she whispered. “The one he said was empty.”
Detective Navarro closed her notebook.
“Do you know where it is?”
Emily nodded slowly.
“I saw the address on one of the bills.”
The detective told us not to go there. She said officers would check it. She said we should stay at the house, keep our phones on, and call immediately if anyone contacted us again.
After she left, Emily stood at the sink for a long time.
Outside, Ethan was drawing with sidewalk chalk on the driveway, making careful blue lines around the cracks in the concrete.
“There’s more,” Emily said.
I looked at her.
“What?”
She did not turn around.
“The night before Ethan called you, Jason was looking for something. He tore apart the hall closet. He kept asking me where I put it.”
“What was he looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Emily.”
She turned then, and fear had returned to her eyes.
“He said, ‘If your father finds it, we’re finished.'”
A long silence followed.
I felt the hairs rise on my arms.
“My father?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Me?”
“I think so.”
I stared at her.
“Why would I have anything of Jason’s?”
“I don’t know.”
But suddenly, I remembered something.
Two weeks before that night, Ethan had spent Saturday with me. We had gone fishing at Calaveras Lake. He had brought his backpack, the same one with the dinosaur keychain. At some point, while digging for snacks, he had pulled out a small black flash drive and asked if it was mine.
I told him no.
He shrugged and put it in the little drawer of my rolltop desk where I kept spare batteries, old keys, and things I meant to sort later.
I had forgotten all about it.
Until that moment.
I walked to the den so quickly Emily had to hurry to keep up.
The rolltop desk sat beneath a framed photograph of my late wife, Margaret. She was laughing in that picture, wind in her hair, one hand raised to block the sun. I opened the little drawer and pushed aside a tape measure, two pens, and a packet of hearing aid batteries.
There it was.
A plain black flash drive.
Emily covered her mouth.
“Dad,” she whispered.
I picked it up carefully, as if it might burn me.
“Did Ethan know what this was?”
“No. He must have taken it by accident. Or Jason put it in his bag. Or…”
She stopped.
We both understood the other possibility.
Someone had hidden it there.
Someone wanted it out of Jason’s house.
My first instinct was to plug it into my computer.
Detective Navarro’s voice echoed in my head.
Do not go there. Do not touch anything more than necessary. Call immediately.
So I called.
She arrived with another officer less than an hour later. This time her calm was thinner.
“Where exactly was it?” she asked.
I showed her.
She placed the flash drive in an evidence bag.
“Has anyone opened it?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Emily stood behind me with her arms wrapped around herself.
“Detective,” she said, “what is happening?”
Navarro looked at her for a long moment.
Then she said, “I don’t know yet. But I think your son may have brought your father the one thing Jason was afraid of losing.”
That should have made me feel better.
It didn’t.
Because from the kitchen window, I could see Ethan outside, drawing blue chalk lines around every crack in my driveway.
A child trying to make broken things look whole.
Two days passed.
No new messages came.
Jason remained in custody while investigators dug through the hidden room, the storage unit, and whatever was on that flash drive. Emily tried to rest, but every sound made her jump. Ethan stayed close to me, following me from room to room, pretending he was helping with small chores.
We made pancakes one morning.
He spilled flour on the counter.
Normally, I would have teased him.
Instead, he froze.
“I didn’t mean to.”
The fear in his voice told me exactly what life had been like in that house.
