Snowstorm of Our Past novel · Chapter 17 of 32

Chapter 17: What He Paid

Gran looked at him for a long moment over the rolling pin.

"Wipe your feet," she said.

She turned on the lights over the counter and left the rest of the diner dark.

Clint sat down on a stool.

I stayed standing on the other side of the counter.

Gran went into the kitchen and I heard the coffee maker start.

Clint put the papers down in front of him.

Bank statements, printed out, with lines highlighted in yellow.

"Rent on her apartment," he said. "Fourteen hundred a month. Then twenty-five hundred, every month, on the first. For five years."

He pushed the top sheet toward me.

I didn't pick it up.

"I sat in my office after you left," he said. "I told myself you were lying. I told myself Amber was right about you."

"And?"

"And I couldn't stop seeing the back of that photo."

He rubbed his face with both hands.

"So I went home and pulled the statements. And then I pulled the dates off the copies you left on the captain's desk."

"He gave them to you?"

"He put them on my desk at six o'clock and didn't say a word." Clint laughed, an awful sound. "I made him post that video. Did you know that? I told him you'd hit her."

I didn't say anything.

"The money orders," he said. "Every single one is dated two or three days after my check cleared. Every one. For five years."

He looked up at me.

"I was paying him. The whole time. I was paying the man I thought I killed."

Gran came back with the pot and poured him a cup of coffee.

She didn't pour me one. She knew I wouldn't drink it.

Clint wrapped his hands around the mug.

They were shaking so badly the coffee slopped over the side.

"I called her," he said. "From the car. I asked her who lives in a cabin above Twin Lakes."

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