It was a closet with ambitions: a metal desk, a computer that looked like it had been new during the Clinton administration, a four-drawer file cabinet, a folding cot with a Spider-Man pillow and a fleece blanket. A calendar from a feed store. A schedule on a clipboard. And high on the back wall, above the file cabinet, a small window, its glass streaked with rain, looking out on the back lot.
Hollis did not climb on the file cabinet. He did not think the file cabinet would survive it. But he stood on his toes and looked, and he could see the back lot: a cook's car, an old Corolla that was probably Renée's, the dumpster, the edge of the woods. No gray truck back there. The gray truck was out front.
There was a phone on the desk. A beige landline with a curly cord. He picked it up and got a dial tone and stood there with it in his hand.
He had not called the police on anybody in his life. Not once. Not when his father beat his mother. Not when his brother Danny went missing for three days in 1979. Not when a man in a bar in Corry put a knife in his side. It was not a thing that Hollis did, or that the people he had come up with did; it was the first rule and maybe the only rule, and he had kept it even after he quit the club, even in prison, even when keeping it cost him. It was in him the way the grain is in a board.
He dialed 911.
"Potter County 911, what is the address of your emergency?"
"I'm at the Hemlock Diner," he said. "On Route 6, west of Galeton." He told her the situation as plainly as he could: two men in a truck in the lot, a boy who had witnessed an assault, the men watching. He did not say murder. He did not say Jesse Kline's name. He did not know yet how much to say and to whom, and some old instinct told him to keep the boy's story in the boy's mouth.
The dispatcher was calm and professional and took his name and the boy's name and the plate on the truck, which Hollis did not have. Then she said the thing he had been afraid she would say.
"Sir, I'm going to be honest with you. We have one state police unit covering the north half of the county tonight and he is on scene at a vehicle accident on Route 44 with injuries. The next nearest unit is coming out of the Coudersport barracks and it's going to be a minimum of forty minutes. Possibly longer with the weather. Are the individuals in the vehicle making any threats? Have they displayed any weapons?"
"No," Hollis said. "They're just sitting there."
"Are you or anyone else in immediate danger?"
He thought about it. He thought about the right answer and the true answer, which were not the same.
"Yes," he said. "I believe the boy is."
"I'm going to get a unit started to you," she said. "Stay inside. Keep the doors locked if you can. If anything changes, call back immediately. Do not approach the vehicle."