Chapter 4: The Box Ben Left Behind

Grace pushed Lucy behind her while I held the brass key between my fingers.

Heavy steps crossed the porch.

“Doyle?” I called.

The doorknob turned slowly.

“Give me what you found,” the voice answered.

Grace lifted a chair and wedged it under the handle.

“There’s nothing here.”

“Then you won’t mind opening the door.”

A crash came from beneath the cabin.

One of the floor panels shifted, and a weathered hand appeared through the gap.

“Move the rug,” someone whispered.

“Quickly.”

We dragged it aside.

Walter Hayes, the elderly man who lived beyond the tree line, pushed open a narrow cellar hatch.

“Get down here before Doyle comes through that door.”

I had spent years telling the children to avoid Walter because Aaron called him unstable.

Now he held the hatch open while Lucy climbed into the cellar.

“Why are you helping us?” I asked.

“Because Ben helped me when no one else would.

Move.”

The front window shattered as Grace dropped into the cellar.

Walter pulled the hatch closed above us.

“Follow me,” he said.

“There’s an old drainage passage.”

We crawled through damp earth until Walter pushed open a wooden panel behind his shed.

Lucy emerged first, coughing into her sleeve.

“That was Chief Doyle outside,” Walter said.

“I saw his truck.”

“You’re sure?”

“I watched that man come here three nights after your family’s crash.

Aaron was with him.”

Grace stared at him.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I did.

Aaron wrote in his report that I’d been drinking.”

Walter opened an old fishing cabinet.

Inside sat a metal box with a lock that matched the brass key.

“Ben gave me this the morning of the trip,” he said.

“He told me the key would be under the floorboard if anything went wrong.”

I unlocked the box.

It contained a memory card, a ledger, and a small voice recorder.

Lucy pressed the recorder’s button.

Ben’s voice filled the shed.

“Aaron, those bags came from the evidence room.

I saw Doyle loading them into his truck.”

Aaron answered, “You don’t know what you saw.”

“I photographed everything.”

“You have three boys, Ben.

Think about them before you make an accusation you can’t take back.”

My hand closed around the recorder.

Grace whispered, “He threatened Dad.”

The shed door opened.

Aaron stood there, breathing hard, with Doyle behind him.

“Put down the box,” Doyle ordered.

Walter moved in front of Lucy.

“You’re on my property.”

Doyle displayed his badge.

“And you are interfering with an investigation.”

I faced Aaron.

“Did you know Doyle would come after Ben?”

Aaron’s eyes stayed on the recorder.

“Ben refused every chance I gave him.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“I told him to destroy the photographs.”

“And when he didn’t?”

Doyle stepped forward.

“Enough.

Hand it over.”

Grace lifted her phone.

Doyle snatched it from her and crushed it beneath his boot.

“You can’t destroy all of it,” she said.

Doyle smiled.

“I only need to destroy what a court can trace.”

Aaron held out his hand to me.

“Give me the box, or Doyle arrests Walter and takes Lucy into custody for breaking into a police station.”

“She’s a child.”

“She entered a restricted office,” Doyle said.

“Choose carefully.”

Lucy clung to Walter’s coat.

I placed the box in Aaron’s hands.

“Let them go.”

Aaron opened it and counted the contents.

“Where’s the memory card?”

“It was inside,” I said.

His gaze moved from me to Lucy.

Doyle searched the shed while Aaron pocketed the recorder and ledger.

When they finally left, Lucy opened her clenched fist.

“I switched the card with one from Walter’s camera.”

Walter inserted Ben’s card into an old laptop.