And he thought about Jimmy Puit the way he always thought about Jimmy Puit, not with guilt anymore, not the raw kind, but with the particular ache of someone who has learned to carry absence without being destroyed by it. Jimmy would have made the call on day one, Will thought. Jimmy would have made it before Brandon Keller's truck was out of the driveway. He got up from the desk, turned off the back room light, and went out to finish Pete Alcott's oil pressure problem. He worked until midnight when he finally found the fault.
A barely perceptible hairline crack in the oil feed passage on the right side of the engine case. Invisible to the eye. Without the exact right angle of light, he sat back on his heel and allowed himself the quiet satisfaction of a diagnosis made. He fixed it. He always fixed things.
That was what he did. The hairline crack in Pete Alcott's engine case took Will until nearly 1 in the morning to seal properly. He used a high temperature epoxy compound. First let it cure under a heat lamp while he cleaned the surrounding metal, then finished with a proper case sealant that would outlast the bike itself if applied correctly. He worked without rushing because rushing was how you created the next problem.
And Will Carter had not survived 69 years by creating problems he could have avoided. He locked up the shop at 12:50, walked to the house behind it where he lived, washed his hands twice at the kitchen sink, and stood at the window for a moment, looking out at the dark street. Silver Creek at 1:00 in the morning was as quiet as a town could be. The kind of quiet that should have felt like peace, but tonight felt like held breath. He went to bed.
He slept 4 hours, which was more than enough. He trained himself to need less a long time ago. In circumstances where sleep was a vulnerability, you managed rather than a comfort, you indulged, and the habit had never fully left him. Even after 22 years of a life that posed no particular threat to his survival, he was back on the porch at 5:15 with his coffee the day before the sun listening. The call to Marcus had been made.
That was done. Whatever had set in motion was in motion now and couldn't be retrieved. And Will was not a man who spent energy regretting completed decisions. He spent the 5 minutes on the porch doing what he always did, measuring the day, listening to the town breathe, allowing himself the exact ration of stillness that sharpened rather than softened. At 5:20, he went inside, called Pete Alcott's answering machine, told him the shovel head was ready, and started the coffee for the second pot that he drank while he opened up.
Brandon Keller didn't come Wednesday. He didn't come Thursday. The absence was louder than his presence had been. The specific loudness of a silence that means something is being planned and will recognize it the way you recognize weather coming by the behavior of the air rather than the sky. On Thursday afternoon, Emily came to the shop.
She didn't call ahead. She never called ahead. It wasn't her way, but this time she came in through the back door that connected to the small yard where Will kept his older project bikes under canvas covers, which meant she'd parked on the side street and come around rather than pulling into the driveway where she could be seen from the road. Will notice this. He didn't comment on it immediately.
He poured her a coffee from the shop pot and put it on the workbench beside her and waited. "He went to see Hutchkins yesterday," Emily said, wrapping both hands around the mug. Not Keller himself, Decker. He walked into the sheriff's office like he had an appointment and told Hutchkins that there had been a misunderstanding with a local business owner and he wanted it on record that he hoped things could be resolved civily. Will set his own mug down.
He's building a paper trail. That's what Hutchkins said. Said it was a play Keller covering himself, making it look like he's the reasonable party if anything happens to you. She looked at him directly. Hutchkins wants to know if you've got anything he can use.
Anything recorded? I don't, Will said. He said he thought you'd say that. He also said, Emily paused, choosing her words. He said to tell you that he doesn't have the manpower to put anyone on your shop overnight.
He's got two deputies in a county that runs 40 m in each direction, and he can't justify a protective detail without a documented threat. And what Decker did here on Tuesday was property damage worth maybe $200 if you wanted to press it. I don't. Will said he figured that too. Emily set the coffee down and looked at him.
Are you going to tell me what you're actually doing because I know you made a phone call. Patty saw you at the phone in the back office Tuesday night before she locked up the diner and she said you were on it for a long time and you had a look she described as Emily paused. She said it was the look of a man saying something true for the first time in a while. Will was quiet for a moment. He picked up a socket wrench and turned it over in his hands the way he sometimes did when he was thinking, not putting it to use, just feeling the weight of it.
I contacted someone I used to know, he said. From before, Emily said. Not a question. From before. The Hell's Angels, she said.
And this time she said the name with no particular inflection. The way you say the name of a river or a mountain, a thing that exists and has a certain nature that isn't improved or diminished by how you feel about it. Yes, Will said. Emily absorbed this. She picked up the coffee again and drank from it and looked at the wall behind him where he had a calendar and an old clock that ran 3 minutes fast and a list of upcoming appointments in his handwriting.
When, she said, I don't know exactly. He said a few days. Today's Thursday. I'm aware. So this weekend maybe maybe Will said Marcus doesn't give you a schedule.
Marcus arrives. Something in the way he said the name and the sentence after it told Emily something she hadn't known before. She looked at him with the attentiveness she usually reserved for Maggie when her daughter was trying to tell her something she didn't have words for yet. "You miss him," she said. Will looked up from the wrench.
He didn't answer, but he didn't deny it. And in Will Carter's economy of communication, those two things were different. Will you be careful between now and then? Emily said, whatever they're planning in those two trucks, can you just I'm always careful, he said. And she heard in the phrase the same thing she'd been hearing and not fully understanding for 2 years.
Not the careful of a man who avoided trouble, but the careful of a man who had navigated it for so long that caution had become structural built into how he stood and where he sat and how he listened. She nodded and picked up her jacket from the stool. Maggie asked about you last night. She wants to know if you'll teach her to use a wrench. She's four, Will said.