Chapter 18: Release Form

Laurel's POV

Marshall left the house at ten on Friday night with Melanie at his side.

He kissed my forehead at the door and told me to take my pill and go to bed.

I said goodnight, and I waited for the sound of his car to leave the drive.

Melanie had been wearing her phone in her bra since noon, with the recorder running. She had told Frances so, and nobody else.

At eleven, a knock came at the back door.

Frances stood on the step in her good raincoat with a sheet of paper in her hand and the deputy from the courthouse behind her.

"The judge signed it at his kitchen counter in his bathrobe," she said. "Defendant may attend any movement of the vehicle."

"It was in the first inspection order," I said. "Marshall never read that far."

"Marshall never reads what he can sign," Frances said.

Duncan was waiting in the gray sedan under the maple, and two people were in the back seat I had never seen.

One was an investigator from the attorney general's office, a quiet woman with a notebook.

The other was the reporter from the brunch.

"I was never going to miss this," the reporter said.

The county impound lot lay at the edge of town behind a chain-link fence, lit by two tall floodlights.

The gate stood open. A flatbed truck idled in the middle of the gravel with the name of a scrap yard on its door.

The black sedan sat in front of it, with its hood up.

Marshall stood beside the car in a dark jacket with a clipboard in his hand.

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