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Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Three: Out of Custody
"That's not possible," said Imanaka.She said it for the third time, standing on the snow-packed sidewalk outside Station Six with her phone pressed against one ear and her long wool coat flapping around her knees. Her gray hair was in disarray. Behind her, a pair of FBI agents in dark windbreakers were scanning the street in opposite directions. The brass band, spilling out of the bay, had stopped playing."He's in the federal detention center on Pier Street," she said into the phone. "Cell nine, block C. I saw him there forty minutes ago. I—" She stopped. Listened. "I see."She lowered the phone slowly."He walked out at eleven fifteen."Caleb stared at her."A transport order," she said. "Properly signed. Judge Pike's signature, on the court's letterhead. It said the defendant was needed at a hearing in the east wing of the courthouse. Two deputies took him out the front door. A van was waiting. The van never reached the courthouse.""Pike signed it?""Pike says she did not.""Then
Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Two: The Medal
It was not a medal.It was worse. It was a *ceremony.*Station Six had been dressed for it. A banner stretched across the apparatus bay, red, white and blue, reading *HARBORSIDE HEROES: THE CITY THANKS YOU.* A folding podium. Three rows of metal chairs. A small brass band from the high school, in matching jackets, tuning in a corner. Along the back wall, a row of cardboard boxes overflowed with cards from schoolchildren, and someone had hung a hand-lettered sign over the bay doors: *WELCOME BACK, CAPTAIN.*Caleb stood on the threshold in his dress blues, which Nadia had pressed that morning, and for a long moment he could not make himself walk in."Go on," Doyle muttered. "It won't bite.""I'm not a hero.""No. You're a firefighter who's been sleeping four hours a night for two weeks." The old man shoved him gently. "Which is how you get heroes, mostly."He went in.The applause hit him like heat. The whole bay was full: a hundred and fifty first responders in dress uniform, along the
Chapter One Hundred Fifty-One: Pay Stubs
The package contained a book.Caleb did not open it that night. He carried it in from the snow with a pair of kitchen tongs, because Alvarez, called at ten, had told him in a flat voice that this was what a sensible person did, and he laid it on the table beside the cold sandwiches. A red ribbon. Brown paper. A tag in handwriting he recognized from a cream letter in a bank vault.*For Captain Reyes. With affection.*In the morning, Alvarez arrived at seven with a bomb tech named Voss-Lindgren from the state police, who x-rayed it on the kitchen floor with a portable unit and then, with a face of weary boredom, cut it open.It was a children's book. A battered, mid-century copy of *The Little Engine That Could,* with a blue cloth cover and a dedication on the flyleaf. Inside, in a faded schoolboy pencil, someone had written a name.*Elias Whitfield. Age 5.*"He's saying he knew you," Alvarez murmured."He's saying he gave it to me.""*Did* he?""I don't remember." Caleb turned the page
Chapter One Hundred Fifty: The Right to Remain Silent
"Call the police," Nadia said."And tell them what?" Ferris had not moved from her chair. "That a man walked out of a courthouse and took a scenic route? He can claim the car was lost. He can claim a detour for a medical appointment. A judge will give him the benefit of the doubt, because he is the sort of man judges give the benefit of the doubt.""He's *watching* us.""Yes." Ferris looked at the black car through the kitchen glass. "Which is precisely what he wants. A man under a no-contact order who cannot help himself. Every minute he sits there is a minute he is violating his bail."Caleb turned from the window. His jaw was tight."So we film him.""We film him, and we call his probation officer, and we log it with Special Agent Imanaka." Ferris opened her portfolio and took out a legal pad. "And then we ignore him. He is a distraction. His entire function this morning is to make you stand at that window instead of working.""It's working.""I know. Sit down."He sat.After a mom
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Nine: Subpoena
The snow had stopped by morning, leaving the motel parking lot under three inches of clean white silence.Caleb stood at the kitchen window with the cream envelope in his hands and watched Teddy shovel a path to the office door. He had not slept. He had sat at the table until four, reading the same two paragraphs over and over, as though the words might rearrange themselves into something kinder.*You are hereby commanded to appear before the Grand Jury of the United States District Court, Southern District, on the seventeenth of November, to testify and give evidence in the matter of* United States v. Silas Marrow, et al. *You are further commanded to bring with you all documents relating to the E.H.W. Trust, its predecessors, successors, and beneficiaries.*Seventeen days of silence from the one man who had promised him a stage."You're going to wear a hole in it," Nadia said from the doorway.She wore his old academy sweatshirt and a pair of wool socks, and her hair was a dark tang
Chapter One Hundred Forty-Eight: The Beneficiary
Hane received them at midnight, in a dressing gown, with a pot of cocoa.The FBI safe house was dark except for the kitchen, where a single lamp burned over a table covered with printouts. Priya had brought her laptop. Whitlock had brought a thermos. Imanaka, summoned by phone, had arrived in a raincoat over pajamas and looked about as pleased as a cat in a bath."Sit," said Hane. "Do. I'm afraid I haven't any biscuits."They sat, Caleb at his right hand, Prudence Hollis at his left. The old bookkeeper and the old trustee regarded each other across the cocoa pot with the grave courtesy of two veterans of the same war."Miss Hollis.""Mr. Hane.""I believe we've corresponded.""In 1998. About a clerical error." She smiled thinly. "I was *right.*""You were *insufferably* right." He poured. "I took the liberty of reading your amendment, Elias. It is a fine piece of drafting. Eleanor always did love a loophole."
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