He hung up. Will stood in the shop for a moment and then he called Marcus. Marcus listened to all of it without interrupting. When Will finished, Marcus was quiet for 3 seconds. Decker walked it in himself, he said.
"Yes," Will said. "That's" Marcus paused, which was unusual for him. "That's not what I expected." "Me either," Will said. But I think I should have.
Why? Because he was always the most honest one in the room. Will said just honest in the wrong direction until the calculation changed. Marcus absorbed this. What do you need from us for tonight?
Will told him what Hutchkins had said. Marcus made three more calls. And then the afternoon continued its move toward dark and Silver Creek held its breath in the particular way of places that can feel a change of weather before the first cloud appears. At 4:00 3, Marcus' men walked into Hutchinson's office. Will didn't know all their names well, but he knew their faces.
Older men, mid-50s, with the specific composure of people who'd been in situations that clarified what mattered and what didn't. One of them, a broad-shouldered man called Reeves, who will vaguely remembered from 14 years ago as a prospect when Will was already full member, had apparently spent eight years as a county investigator in Oregon before his life moved in other directions. Reeves sat with Hutchkins for 2 hours over Lou's footage and Decker's statement and built the structural architecture of a case that Hutchkins could walk into court with. Will knew this because Hutchkins called him at 6:15 and the velocity in his voice had become something more settled than the sound of a man whose tools have arrived and who knows how to use them. Warrant signing, Hutchkins said.
I'm moving at 8. I'll make sure the streets are clear, Will said. We'll stay out of it. I know you will, Hutchinson said. And there was something in those four words that acknowledged more than they said acknowledged the whole of the afternoon and the decisions made in the strange coalition that had assembled itself in Silver Creek over one November Sunday to address something a small town sheriff with two deputies couldn't address alone.
Will went to the diner. Marcus was there. Emily was there. Maggie now asleep against her side in the corner booth. The coloring book closed.
Both horses done. Tommy Reese was at the counter. His wife beside him now, a compact and direct woman named Carolyn, who had apparently driven to the sheriff's office herself at 4:00 to give her own statement about the night Brandon's man had come to Lou's house. Because Carolyn Ree had been visiting Lou's wife when it happened and had seen everything and was done, she said, with being someone who saw things and didn't say them. Lou Baitman was there, too.
Sitting across from Tommy. Both men on the same side of something for the first time in weeks. Both of them quieter than usual with a particular quiet of people who have done the thing that scared them and are still processing the fact that they're intact. Patty was behind the counter. She had made coffee for everyone twice and was on her third pod and showed no signs of stopping.
Will sat down beside Marcus. Marcus looked at him. Will gave him the update in low brief words. Marcus nodded once. Tonight, Marcus said, "Tonight."
Will confirmed. Emily was looking at him from the corner booth. He went over and sat across from her, not asking, just sitting, because sitting was what was appropriate, and he knew it without having to calculate it. Hutchkins has what he needs," Will said quietly. "He's moving at 8."
Emily exhaled slowly. Her hand was resting on Maggie's back, the automatic comfort of a mother, and she looked at Will with an expression that had tired in it and relieved in it and something else that was more complex than either. "Is it over?" She said. "Tonight's when it tips," Will said.
After that, yes. She nodded. She looked at Maggie. She asked me today why all the motorcycles were here. She said, "What did you tell her?"
I told her they were friends of Wills who came to visit. She looked up. She said that made sense because you had good friends. Will looked at Maggie's sleeping face, the unguarded trust of a child who had decided the world was manageable because the adults in her world were handling it. He felt something that didn't have a simple name.
Something about the weight of being trusted by people who couldn't afford to be wrong about you. She's right, he said. I do. Emily was quiet for the moment. Then she said, "Will, when this is done, when it's really done, will you tell me more about who you were?
Not because I need to know, because I want to." He looked at her, the directness of the question, the complete absence of judgment in it. "Yes," he said. "When it's done." She nodded once.
That was enough for both of them. At 7:00, Brandon Keller did what Will had known he would do. Will's phone rang and it was one of Marcus' men, a quiet one named Sutton, who had been positioned down the road from the Halverson warehouse since 3:00. And his voice was the precise, unhurried voice of a man reporting what he sees. "Keller's moving," Sutton said.
"Two vehicles coming out of the warehouse, East Lot, heading toward Maine." "How many in the vehicles?" Will said. "Four total. Keller and three I haven't seen before.