"Everything, including your own role." "Including my own role, Puit said. I've already talked to an attorney this morning. She's going to arrange immunity cooperation. I know how this works.
I know what I'm offering them is more valuable than what they'd get from prosecuting me. He met Ryan's eyes. I'm not doing this to avoid consequences. I'll take whatever comes, but I need the truth to come out first. Ryan held his gaze.
And then he made a decision that Jackson could see happening. A deliberate, costly, fully conscious decision. Then come with us, Ryan said. I'm going to call the investigator and you're going to talk to her today. Right now, not later today now.
Puit nodded. Yes, he said. All right. Ryan turned back toward the truck. He pulled out his phone and dialed Reyes's number.
And when she answered, he said, "Simply, I have Derek Puit. He's ready to cooperate. Tell me where to bring him." The meeting with Reyes happened at a Federal Field office in Nashville that afternoon. Ryan and Jackson were not in the room for Puit's statement.
That was proper and Reyes had been clear about it and neither of them pushed back. They sat in a waiting area outside with bad coffee and the particular quality of waiting that comes when something important is happening on the other side of a closed door and you have no ability to influence it. Manny was on the phone for most of it, running the parallel track he'd reached out to two journalists he'd worked with during his fraud investigation years. people with the specific experience and credibility to handle this kind of story without burning the investigation. He wasn't feeding them anything yet. He was establishing the relationship so that when the time came, the truth would have the right vehicle.
Laura had driven up from Cookeville and was sitting across from Ryan in the waiting area. And the two of them were talking in low voices about things that had nothing to do with the case about Margaret, about their childhoods, about the specific memories they each carried of Emily Carter, filtered through the secondhand accounts of a woman who had loved her and preserved her carefully for the people who came after. Jackson listened to them talk and didn't interrupt and felt something that he'd been too occupied to feel for the past 48 hours. The specific weight of his own history with this 21 years of carrying a key he didn't understand. 21 years of the lowgrade guilt of a promise he couldn't figure out how to keep.
He'd told himself over those years that he'd looked. He told himself he'd tried. He'd pulled the accident report. He'd asked questions carefully. He'd kept his eyes open for any thread that might lead somewhere.
And all of that was true. But there was also another truth, one he'd been less honest with himself about. At some point, he'd stopped actively looking and started passively waiting. He told himself the answer would come to him when it was supposed to. That was partly wisdom and partly relief.
And he'd let the relief do more of the work than the wisdom warranted. He thought about what Ryan had said at the storage unit. You kept the promise. You just needed time to understand it. Ryan had meant it as comfort.
Jackson was still deciding whether it was also true. His phone rang. Unknown number different from the one Carver had used that morning. He looked at it, considered, and answered. Mr. Reed.
The voice was older than Carver's. Smother. the voice of a man who had spent decades moving through rooms where power was exercised quietly. This is Victor Hail. Jackson's hand didn't tighten on the phone. His breathing didn't change.
He stood up from his chair and walked toward the far end of the corridor away from Ryan and Laura and kept his voice completely even. Mr. Hail, he said, "I understand my associate reached out to you this morning." Hail said, I wanted to follow up personally. Manto man. All right, Jackson said, "I think there's been some confusion about some old documents."
Hail said documents that belong to a woman who unfortunately passed away some years ago. The kind of documents that could be misinterpreted by people who don't have the full context of how community organizations operate. He paused. I'd like the opportunity to provide that context in a setting that's comfortable for everyone involved. Jackson listened to every word with the flat attention of a man identifying exactly what he was dealing with.
Victor Hail was not panicking. He was maneuvering. 25 years of operating in the space between appearance and reality had made him extraordinarily good at this, at presenting the reasonable face, at offering the plausible alternative, at making the person on the other end of the conversation feel like the reasonable choice was to hear him out. I appreciate that, Mr. H Jackson said, "The thing is, I'm not really in a position to have that conversation." The documents you're referring to are in federal hands now.
You'd need to talk to the investigators. A pause. Very brief, but Jack Jackson caught it. I see, Hail said. And the smoothness had acquired the faintest edge.
Not anger control maintained, but the sound of a man adjusting his calculation. Then perhaps this is simpler than I thought. Perhaps you and I can speak about what it is you're actually hoping to accomplish here. Because I've been doing community work in this state for 25 years, Mr. Reid, whatever concerns exist about administrative practices can be addressed through the appropriate channels. That's all I'm asking for.
The appropriate channels are exactly where this is going, Jackson said. So, we're in agreement. Pause. Mr. Reed, Hail said, and the smoothness was nearly gone now. The practiced surface thinning under the pressure of a situation that wasn't responding to his tools.
I'm going to be direct with you. The young man with you, Ryan Carter, has a great deal to from allowing this mom to become a public spectacle. His mother's reputation, his father's reputation, the circumstances of their deaths, these are things that can be examined in ways that reflect poorly on. Stop, Jackson said. He said it quietly, not angrily.
The way you stop something that doesn't warrant the dignity of emotion. You're threatening a 25-year-old man whose parents you killed, Jackson said. And you're doing it on a phone call that I'm going to report to the federal investigators within the next 10 minutes. So, I'm going to suggest you stop talking and let your attorneys do the rest. The line was quiet for 3 seconds.