Bullies Spit On A Waitress — Unaware She Was A Commander For 10 Years!
Chapter 13
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
Claire was quiet for a long moment. The kitchen was warm and very still."Kevin Webb's brother," she said finally. "His name was James. James Webb." She didn't look away when she said it. "James served with me," she said. "Four years. He was the best operator I ever worked with: steady under any conditions, the kind of person you want next to you when everything else has gone wrong." A pause. "He died on a classified operation in 2021. I was his commanding officer."Frank said nothing. He understood the weight of what that sentence carried; he didn't try to reduce it."Before he died," Claire said, "he asked me one thing. He knew the risks; he'd always known them. But he had a younger brother back home who was twenty-two years old and just starting his life. And James said to me, he said, 'Claire, if something happens to me, just keep an eye on him. That's all. Just keep an eye on him.'"She picked up the coffee cup, set it back down without drinking."I got out in 2023," she said. "And I kept that promise. I stayed in touch with Kevin. I called every few weeks. And then one day, he stopped answering. I called his mother; she told me about the accident, about the knee, about his hand, about how Kevin hadn't left the house since it happened." Her voice stayed even, steady, but underneath it was something that had been compressed for a very long time. "I did some reading: the accident report, the timeline, the witness statements. There was another vehicle on Route 7 that night—a second vehicle that the report mentions once in a subordinate clause and never mentions again. No license plate, no follow-up, no reason given for why it wasn't pursued."She looked at Frank. "Dale Mace's department closed that case in five days," she said. "A standard single-vehicle accident with no injuries to other parties takes, at minimum, two weeks to process. Five days means someone wanted it done."Frank nodded slowly."I came here three months ago," Claire said, "because I needed to be close to the records, to the people who saw things, to Kevin when he's ready to talk." She paused. "And because sometimes the only way to understand what a person is capable of is to watch them in their own environment."Frank looked at her steadily. "You've been watching Dale Mace," he said."I've been watching his town," she said.He nodded again. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "There's something else you should know."He reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it and pushed it across the table. It was a printout, a news item from a regional Virginia paper dated six weeks ago: Federal Investigation into Small-Town Corruption Widens Across Three Counties.