Chapter 5: The Man in Logistics
Garrett Foss arrived at the warehouse at eight-fifteen, the same as every Tuesday.
He had a coffee in one hand and his access card in the other, and he was already looking at his phone when he pushed through the side door and found me sitting at his desk.
He stopped.
The coffee stayed in his hand.
His face did the thing faces do when the mind is running faster than the body — a half-second of absolute stillness before the performance begins.
"Morning," he said.
"Didn't know you were coming in."
"Sit down, Garrett."
He looked at the two men standing behind me.
He sat down in the chair against the wall, the one meant for visitors, and set his coffee carefully on the floor beside him.
"I want to talk about Pier 44," I said.
Something shifted in his jaw.
"That was a long time ago."
"Six years.
Tell me what you remember."
"I remember the fire.
I remember the response was slow because of the weather.
I remember we lost Ewan." He said my brother's name without hesitation, which told me he had rehearsed this version many times.
"It was a hard night."
"You pulled someone out," I said.
"Before the roof went."
A pause.
Short, but there.
"I helped a few people out.
It was chaos."
I set the photograph on the desk between us.
The one from the cellar.
Ewan and Garrett, fourteen months ago, outside a building with a green awning.
Garrett looked at it.
He didn't touch it.
"That's a serious accusation," he said.
"I haven't accused you of anything yet.
I showed you a photograph."
He looked up at me.
The performance was still running — the slight furrow of confusion, the reasonable man confronted with something unreasonable — but the edges of it were starting to fray.
"Celeste Vandermark has been making deposits into an account registered to a holding company called Foss-Meridian LLC," I said.
"Quarterly.
For four years.
The last one was eleven days ago." I watched his hands.
They were very still, which meant he was working hard to keep them that way.
"I want to know where my brother is."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Garrett."
"I'm telling you I don't —"
"She's already given you up." I said it quietly.
"She called her attorney at six this morning.
The arrangement is being restructured.
Your name comes up in the first paragraph."
That was not entirely true.
But the part that mattered — the part that landed in his face like something physical — was that he believed it.
His shoulders dropped a quarter inch.
His right hand moved toward his knee and stopped.
"She said she'd —" He caught himself.
"She said she'd protect you," I said.
"I know.
She's good at saying that."
He looked at the photograph for a long time.
Then he looked at the floor.
Then he said, in a voice that had lost most of its shape: "He's in Milwaukee.
There's a building on the east side, near the lake.
He's been there for two years.
He works at a print shop two blocks down." He stopped.
"He thinks you want him d*ad.
I told him — I told him it wasn't safe to come back."
"Because Celeste was paying you to tell him that."
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
"The skimming from the dock accounts," I said.
"Two years.
Approximately how much?"
His jaw tightened.
"I can have it back.
I have most of it.
I kept records —"
"I don't want it back." I stood up.
"I want you to call him.
Right now, in front of me.
I want you to tell him the truth — all of it, starting with the night of the fire.
And then I want you to tell him his brother is coming."
Garrett's hand was shaking when he picked up his phone.
He dialed.
It rang four times.
And then a voice came through the speaker — a voice I had not heard in six years — and it said hello in the careful way of a man who doesn't recognize the number.
I reached over and took the phone from Garrett's hand.
"Ewan," I said.
"It's me."
The silence on the other end lasted a long time.
Long enough that I thought the line had dropped.
And then my brother said my name — just my name, nothing else — in the voice of someone who has spent six years trying to decide whether they are still allowed to say it.
May you like
"Don't move," I said.
"I'm coming to you."
