Chapter 5

At 6:05 the floodlights over the lot came on with a thump that made everybody blink, and the night shift came out of the building and stood in a half-circle on the gravel, because the sheriff had told them to.

Fifteen people. Nobody with a phone out. Nobody talking.

Unit 12 sat in the middle of them under the lights, clean and white and official.

"Colton," Mabry said. "Empty your pockets on the hood."

Reedy looked around the circle once, like he might find somebody in it who would say something. Nobody did.

Keys. Wallet. Phone. A pack of gum. He set them down one at a time.

"Open the glovebox."

Reedy opened it. The bundle came out and hit the hood with a flat slap - blank stickers, thirty-eight of them, still rubber-banded.

"Cash box."

It was under the seat. Reedy set it on the hood and Mabry flipped the latch. Money, ones and fives and twenties, packed in no order. And on top of it, a small spiral notebook with a coffee ring on the cover - the one Reedy kept in his shirt pocket during shift and locked in the box at the end of it.

Nadine Ferris came out with a printout and read it in her flat dispatch voice, the same voice she used for stolen cars and house fires.

"State of Missouri confirms inspector license four-one, eleven-eight-seven, Sorrell, Emmett R. Surrendered November second, eighteen months ago. Status: dead. No inspection signed under that number is valid."

Mabry took the reading glasses off the cord around his neck and put them on. He walked to the windshield, leaned in, and read it out loud to the half-circle, the way Emmett had read it twenty minutes earlier.

"E. Sorrell."

Then he looked at Emmett.

"Every sticker carrying your name is counterfeit. Every one. Including this one."

"Now the phone," Emmett said.

Duane Keel held his up and read the thread out loud. Two lines, June ninth, from a number everyone in the lot knew.

"150 cash. Ballfield lot. Bring the truck. Don't tell nobody."

Somebody in the circle let out a breath.

Mabry opened the notebook. He started at the first page and worked down, and he did not skip anything.

"February nineteenth, Kessler, one, one-fifty." He turned the page. "June ninth, Keel, one, one-fifty." Duane nodded at his boots. "August second, Renn, one, one-fifty." Hollis Renn, third from the left, studied the gravel. "August thirtieth, Beck, one, one-fifty." Owen Beck didn't move at all.

Down the page. Down the next. Names and numbers, eight months of them, sixty-three entries.

Reedy's mouth was open and he was breathing through it.

Then Mabry reached the bottom of the last page. The last line was dated that same morning, in the same small handwriting.

He stopped. He read it twice.

Then he read it out loud.

"Pruitt. Six. Nine hundred. Owe."

Nobody in the half-circle moved. Ten feet away, in uniform, Sergeant Dean Pruitt stood with his clipboard against his chest.