Chapter 6

"What letters?" Marcus said again. His voice had changed. It had gone from cracked to hard, the way a man's voice goes when he is about to do something he will regret not having done sooner.

Curtis looked at him. "I sent them to the office. The address on the website. I addressed them to you. I didn't know your title. I just wrote Marcus Whitfield, Whitfield Freight."

Priya was already moving. She had her phone out, and she was typing with both thumbs, and the folder was still open on the table. She had access to the company's correspondence archive - six years of her own work, plus the digitized files from the previous decade. She had spent two years looking for a janitor. She had never thought to look for a letter.

"1994 is before digitization," she said, mostly to herself. "2003 might be in the scanned batch. 2011 - we had the new system by then. If it was addressed to Marcus personally and didn't match a vendor or a client, it would have gone to the executive correspondence queue."

Vance was watching her. "Priya, what are you doing?"

"Finding out if he's telling the truth," she said.

She found it in ninety seconds. A scanned envelope, slightly crooked, addressed in careful block letters to Marcus Whitfield, Whitfield Freight, 1800 Wewatta Street, Denver, Colorado. Postmarked April 2011. Sender: C. Bell, Roosevelt Elementary, 2400 S. Franklin Street.

The body of the letter was one paragraph, handwritten, scanned in grayscale.

Dear Mr. Whitfield, I don't know if you remember me. I was the janitor at Roosevelt when you were in Room 4. I walked you home for a year. I saw in the paper that you are doing well. I am glad. I am not writing for anything. I just wanted to say that you were a good boy and I hope you are a good man. That is all. C. Bell

Below the letter, in the system, was a routing note. It was from a former executive assistant, now retired. It said: Not a client. Not a vendor. No action required. Filed.

Priya turned the phone around. She didn't say anything. She just held it out so Marcus could read.

Marcus read it twice. Then he looked up at Curtis Bell, who was standing at the edge of the head table with his hands at his sides, waiting to be told he could leave.

"2011," Marcus said. "You wrote me in 2011."

"Yes," Curtis said.

"And nobody told me."

"No," Curtis said. "I figured that out."

Marcus looked at the envelope on the table. Then at Curtis. Then at the envelope again.

"Sit down," Marcus said. "Please. Let me-"

"No," Curtis said. "Not yet. Open it first."