Chapter 9: The Folder

Jonas's POV

Diane Tourneur's glass was still breaking in my head when I shut the study door.

The file had reached me two days ago, and I had not been sure until I saw her face.

The folder lay where I had left it on the desk.

I opened it under the lamp and went through it again.

The first photograph was my own car, on its side in a drainage ditch off Route 9.

The roof had caved in over the driver's seat.

The investigator had clipped a second photograph beside it, a close-up of the rear quarter panel.

There was a long scrape of silver paint across the black.

Three years of chasing, and the paint was the first thing anyone had found.

The lab report was under that.

The silver was a factory color, used on one model of sports coupe in one year.

Eleven were sold in this state.

The investigator had visited every owner, and ten of them had a clean record.

The eleventh was Brett Tourneur.

I turned to the invoice.

It came from a body shop in the next county, and it was dated three days after the crash.

*Right headlight assembly, replaced. Front fender, repaired and repainted. Silver. Paid in full, cash and card.*

The card belonged to Diane Tourneur.

I leaned back and looked at the ceiling for a long time.

I had sat across the table from Brett's father more than once.

I had signed two contracts with that man.

I had thought him a cold, slow, ordinary businessman.

All that time his own son had been the man who tried to kill me.

The last page of the folder was a note in the investigator's small, square hand.

*A waitress at the Ridgeline Diner remembers a silver coupe in the lot that night, around half past midnight.*

*Two people. The driver was drunk and was sick by the pumps.*

*The passenger was a young blonde woman who begged him for the keys. He would not give them up.*

Keep reading free with an account. Start Left at City Hall, So I Called In His Life Debt from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.