She was quiet for a second. Then she said, "Because my friend asked me to. Before she died. Benedetta. She used to stand right here and look at that paint and say, somebody painted that for a reason, Pet. Somebody meant that. Every morning she'd say it. I'd say, Benny, it's an old sign, play tennis. Then she was gone, and I came here every day and sat on that bench, and the only thing I could think about was that I never once looked it up for her. So I looked it up." She shrugged, a small hard shrug. "I found you. I thought, one day that man is going to come down here. I didn't think it would be like this."
Ferrol absorbed that. He nodded a few times, slowly, the way you nod at a doctor telling you something you were afraid to hear but already knew.
"I'm going to go write my report," he said. "Then I've got about forty minutes till I'm off."
He walked back to the car.
Ruel and Perpetua stood at the board.
"Mrs. Ancheta," Ruel said.
"Hm."
"How long have you known? About him?"
"Since April."
"You didn't tell me."
"What was I going to tell you? That a police officer painted that sign sixteen years ago and now he writes traffic tickets on Route 9? That's not a story. That's just a sad thing. I don't tell sad things to people who are trying to fix their follow-through." She took a piece of yellow chalk from the coffee can and very carefully, letter by letter, traced over the ghost of R. ABARA, right through the white CHEEVER, until the yellow sat on top and the white was the ghost. Then she wiped the white letters away, gently, around the edges, so that only his name was left. "There. Now you didn't write it twice. I wrote it once, for you. Board steward. It's allowed."
"Is it?"