Chapter 12 - THE DRIVER WHO MISSED
The old police report still existed.
My father’s accident happened nineteen years earlier.
A delivery truck crossed the center line.
Hit his car.
Then disappeared.
Hit-and-run.
No arrest.
No useful witnesses.
The detective handling it retired years ago.
But the truck description matched a Harwick contractor fleet operating under Victor Sloane.
Sheriff Nolan found the retired fleet manager.
His name was Calvin Price.
He was eighty-one.
Living in Florida.
He agreed to speak by video.
At first, he remembered nothing.
Then the detective showed Victor’s photograph.
Calvin’s face changed.
“I don’t want trouble.”
The detective answered.
“You’ve had nineteen years without it.”
Calvin looked down.
Then he spoke.
Victor asked him for a driver.
Cash job.
No paperwork.
Scare a former employee.
“Who?”
The detective asked.
Calvin looked at me on the screen.
“Thomas Beckett.”
I felt my chest tighten.
“What was the driver told to do?”
“Force him off the road.”
“Kill him?”
Calvin shook his head.
“He said scare him.”
I had heard enough men use softer words for violence.
The detective had too.
“Who drove?”
Calvin swallowed.
“Raymond Vane.”
Celeste’s father.
The room froze.
Garrett looked toward the interview window.
Celeste’s father had died ten years earlier.
Heart attack.
But nineteen years ago, he drove the truck that nearly killed mine.
The detective asked.
“Did Raymond confess?”
“Not exactly.”
“He came back shaking.”
“Said Thomas survived.”
“Victor was furious.”
Calvin paused.
“Raymond said he never wanted another job like that.”
I sat very still.
Celeste had grown up inside this.
Victor’s niece.
A father doing intimidation work.
A family built around loyalty and fear.
It explained her.
It did not excuse her.
Sheriff Nolan obtained records linking the truck to Victor’s company.
Enough for conspiracy investigation.
Not enough for murder.
But then Calvin remembered something else.
“Thomas mailed me a copy.”
“What copy?”
“A letter.”
“Why?”
“He knew I knew.”
My heart hammered.
“Do you still have it?”
Calvin nodded.
“I kept it because I figured men like Victor eventually make enemies of everybody.”
The letter arrived by secure courier the next morning.
My father had written.
Calvin,
If anything happens to me, Victor Sloane ordered it.
Raymond Vane is the man following me.
I have already sent copies elsewhere.
You can choose what kind of man you are when this becomes public.
Thomas Beckett.
At the bottom, Calvin had added a note nineteen years later.
I chose coward.
I am sorry.
I stared at those words for a long time.
Then Sheriff Nolan entered.
“Victor surfaced.”
“Where?”
“Hospital.”
I frowned.
“What happened?”
“He collapsed at a motel.”
State police had him.
Alive.
May you like
Guarded.
And for the first time in twenty years, Victor Sloane could no longer run.
