And the manager who watched her emerge from the back room and immediately go to refill the coffee station didn't say a word because he'd worked with Laura Carter for 3 years and he understood by now that she processed things by by moving through them rather than stopping for them. She called in her cousin to cover the rest of her shift. She drove to the motel where Jackson and the chapter were gathered. She walked into the room where Ryan was sitting at a table with Manny's legal pads and a cup of coffee that had gone cold. And she sat across from him and said, "Tell me everything.
All of it. Don't leave anything out because you're worried about how it'll land." Ryan told her everything. When he finished, Laura sat for a moment. Then she said she never told Margaret how bad it was.
Not really. Margaret knew something was wrong. knew Emily was scared, but Emily kept the details away from her to protect her. She paused. "That's so completely her. She'd protect everyone around her while she walked straight into the fire by herself."
"She didn't walk in alone," Ryan said. "She had my father." And then he died," Laura said quietly. "And she kept going anyway. The room held that for a moment."
The particular silence that gathers around the recognition of a specific kind of courage, not the loud kind, not the celebrated kind, but the kind that keeps going in the dark with no audience and no guarantee. Victor Hail Laura said, "I've seen his name in the news. He was at some gala 2 weeks ago. He was photographed shaking hands with the governor." Manny, who was across the room, looked up from his laptop.
"He was," he said. I've been tracking his public appearances. He's everywhere right now. There's a new community forward expansion campaign. They're announcing a $15 million initiative to fund rural housing assistance across four states.
He paused. The announcement went out 3 days ago. Ryan looked at him. He's expanding. While the investigation is starting, Manny said he doesn't know anyone's looking.
As far as Victor Hail is concerned, he's untouchable. He's been untouchable for 25 years. Not anymore, Ryan said. And there was something in how he said it flat and certain and without any performance that made everyone in the room understand that Ryan Carter had finished grieving for the moment and had moved into something more purposeful. Jackson, standing near the window, had been watching Ryan since they got back from the storage facility.
He'd been watching the way grief and information and the weight of his mother's letter had rearranged something inside the young man not breaking him. The opposite aligning things that had been slightly off-axis his whole life. He'd seen it happen to people before. The moment when the chaos of a hard life suddenly makes sense. When all the disconnected pain resolves into a shape and the shape tells you what you're supposed to do with it.
Ryan Carter had that shape now. The investigators need time, Jackson said. Months, Reyes said, possibly longer. I know, Ryan said. We let them work, Jackson said.
We don't do anything that compromises what your mother built. I know, Ryan said again. He met Jackson's eyes. I'm not interested in burning it down. I want it to work.
I want it to go through a courtroom, and I want every piece of evidence my mother collected to be entered into the record. and I want Victor Hail to sit in a room and have to listen to her voice on those tapes. He paused. I just don't want to wait doing nothing. What do you want to do? Jackson said.
Ryan was quiet for a moment. Then he said, I want to know who else knew. Hail didn't do this alone. A fraud operation this size this long running. He had people helping him. people inside Community Forward, people at the banking liaison firm, people who processed those shell company transactions and knew what they were processing.
He looked at Manny. My father worked at the banking liaison firm. If he found out and died for it, were there others? Were there other people who found out and stayed quiet because they were afraid or because they were paid? Manny looked at him steadily.
That's the right question, he said. Can you find the answer? I already started, Manny said and turned his laptop around to show the screen. The banking liaison firm was called Meridian Financial Services and it had been Community Forward's primary financial institution since the organization's founding in 1,999. Meridian had processed every grant dispersement, every shell company transaction, every property acquisition that Manny had traced back to Victor Hail's network of financial misdirection.
And Meridian, Manny had discovered was not an innocent party. The firm's founder, a man named Gerald Puit, had been Victor Hail's college roommate. They'd been close for 50 years. Puit had retired eight years ago and handed the firm to his son Derek who had been working there since his mid-20s and therefore had been part of the operation for his entire professional life. Daniel Carter had worked for Meridian for 4 years before his death.
Derek Puit, Ryan said looking at Manny's screen. He knew he had to have known. Manny said he processed the transactions. He was there when your father was there. Then he knows what happened to my father, Ryan said.
The room got very still, Ryan Jackson said carefully. I'm not going to do anything stupid, Ryan said. And his voice was so completely controlled that it was almost more alarming than anger would have been. I just want to understand the full picture. If Derek Puit has been carrying this for 21 years, if he knew what happened to my father and he stayed quiet, I want to know why.
Fear, money, he paused. because if it was fear, he might be willing to talk to the investigators. And if he talks, the case gets stronger. Manny nodded slowly. That's a legitimate investigative theory, he said. And it's one the investigators will likely pursue themselves.
Will they find him as fast as we can? Ryan said. Manny thought about it honestly. Probably not, he said. Then let's not waste time, Ryan said.