I needed somebody who had seen Ruth Bell leave work, not another man willing to tell me where she ought to be. Leon gave me the address of her freight office and nothing resembling permission. By late afternoon I stood outside its shuttered windows with the packing strap folded inside my jacket. My shoulder throbbed from the falling load. I could still close my hand, and I mistook that small ability for fitness to do whatever came next.
The front door resisted. Around back, a delivery entrance stood open the width of a brick. I called Ruth's name before stepping inside. Nobody answered. A wall calendar lifted in the draft, showing a photograph of mountains whiter than anything I had ever seen in Mississippi. Two desks had been tipped on their sides. Drawers lay open on the floor. I stayed clear of the scattered papers. I wanted a person, a neighbor, somebody who remembered a car pulling away.
A woman at the adjoining repair shop had watched me come around the building. I went out to her before she could shut her door. She held a broom across the opening. 'Office is closed,' she said. I asked when she had last seen Ruth. Her eyes traveled to my jacket, then my shoes. 'Ask the men who emptied it.' Before I could ask which men, she pulled the door inward and turned the lock. I heard her broom fall against something.
I should have gone then. Instead I returned to the office and searched the rooms for a second exit, thinking the woman might talk if I came back without the look of a man running errands. Footsteps crossed the loading platform behind me. Wade Sutter filled the doorway, hat pushed back, hands empty. That made him more frightening. We had unloaded trucks together in July heat and eaten from the same sack of sandwiches. He knew exactly how long I could keep going.
'Cal wants you at the office,' he said. 'Then he knows where to find me.' Sutter stepped over a drawer. I moved around the upright desk, keeping furniture between us. He looked at my stiff arm. 'Don't make this harder.' He did not ask why I was there. That omission narrowed the room more effectively than a threat. I asked where Daniel was. Sutter reached across the desk and caught my coat instead of answering.
I pulled backward. The coat held; the desk slid, its feet screaming over the boards. Sutter came around it while I stumbled against the overturned chair. I threw my weight through the loading-room door and struck the frame with my bad shoulder. Pain flashed down to my wrist. For a moment I could not find enough breath to shout. I caught the edge of a shelf with my other hand and kept myself upright while he shoved into the room behind me.
The platform door opened outward. I hit it with my hip and went down the short steps sideways, landing hard beside a pile of damp cartons. Sutter stopped above me. 'Ellis.' He said my name as if I had embarrassed him in front of strangers. I got up without using my injured arm and crossed the narrow yard. He could have followed. Instead I heard his shoes turn back across the platform, and that decision frightened me worse than the chase.
My old pickup stood beyond the repair shop. I climbed in and sat with my forehead against the steering wheel until the pain settled into a heavy pulse. Then Sutter's sedan rolled past the alley mouth. I started after him. At the first intersection I nearly turned toward Mercer's office, surrendering to the old habit of bringing trouble to the man who paid me. Sutter went the other way. I followed far enough back that traffic came between us, then caught him again beside a shuttered seafood market.
He led me beyond the working warehouses to Mercer's cold-storage property. I had hauled freight there when its machinery still rattled through the walls. Now weeds crowded the fence and the painted sign hung crooked. Sutter drove through the open gate. I kept going, parked beyond the next bend, and walked back along the roadside with my wounded arm pressed against my ribs. His sedan stood by the loading entrance. He had gone inside. I could not see whether anyone had admitted him.
I took the folded strap out of my jacket. The marking matched my memory of the place, but memory was not a captive calling for help. I put it away. Going through that gate now would tell Sutter exactly what I suspected, and I had already shown him I could barely defend myself. I stayed behind the roadside brush and watched the building settle into dusk. Then a light came on behind the cold-store windows.