Chapter 5: Unit 41

"In a storage unit off Broad Street," I said. "Unit 41."

Darla stopped chewing.

"All of them?"

"Every jury trial since his first. Thirty-one books."

"Why on God's earth do you still have them?"

"Because they're mine," I said. "The station owns the drawings it airs. The books are mine."

Darla poured three fingers of bourbon into the paper cup from my bathroom and handed it to me.

"Sugar," she said, "go get your books."

We went the next morning in Ike's truck.

Nettie rode in the middle with a large pizza on her knees, because Ike said we'd be hungry and Nettie said we'd be hungry sooner.

It was a gray October Saturday, and the storage place had a chain-link fence and a man in a booth who didn't look up.

Unit 41 was at the end of the second row.

I hadn't opened it since the spring.

I rolled the door up, and the smell of chalk came out to meet me.

Six milk crates. Fat black sketchbooks standing in rows, every spine labeled in white paint pen.

The first one said, JURY 1, B.T., in letters I'd made at twenty-four.

I touched it with one finger.

"You okay?" Ike asked.

"I met him drawing this one."

"Want me to carry that one?"

"No," I said. "I'll carry it."

We set the crates on the tailgate and opened the pizza box on top of them.

Nettie sat cross-legged in the truck bed and ate the pepperoni off her slice first, one piece at a time.

"Which one has the bad man?" she asked.

Ike looked at me.

"She knows," he said. "She's nine. She hears everything."

"I don't know which one," I said to Nettie. "That's why we're looking."

"What's he look like?"

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