Chapter 6: What Roy Knew
Daniel wanted to call the police.
I understood why, and I didn't disagree — but Jace asked us to wait.
"If Roy gets scared off, we lose whatever he knows," he said at breakfast the next morning.
"And I need to know."
He said it quietly, without drama.
Just a fact he'd been living with for three years.
We compromised.
Daniel would come to the park.
I would come.
We would stay out of sight until we understood what we were dealing with.
If anything felt wrong, we would step in immediately.
Saturday came gray and cold.
The park was mostly empty.
A woman walked a dog near the path.
Two kids kicked a ball near the far end of the grass.
The east bench near the fountain: a man in his fifties, heavyset, wearing a dark jacket.
He was already there when Jace approached.
I watched from a bench forty feet away, Daniel standing just behind a tree line to my left.
Jace sat down.
The man — Roy — leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
They spoke.
I was too far to hear clearly, but I could read the shape of it: Roy talking steadily, Jace listening without moving.
Then Jace's head dropped.
Just for a second.
His chin toward his chest, like something had hjt him.
Then he straightened.
Said something back.
Roy reached into his jacket and produced a folded document.
Jace took it.
Looked at it.
Looked at Roy.
Then he stood up, put the document in his pocket, and walked back toward me.
Roy didn't follow.
He stayed on the bench, watching.
"What did he say?" I asked the moment Jace reached me.
"He said my mother didn't just get sick." Jace's voice was flat and controlled.
"He said she found out something about a man she'd been involved with before we were born.
Something he'd done.
And when she told him she was going to go to someone about it, he — Roy said she started getting worse very quickly after that."
Daniel had come up beside us.
"He's saying it wasn't natural?"
"He's saying he was there.
He saw things.
He didn't do anything at the time because he was scared." Jace looked down at his jacket pocket where the document was.
"He kept a record.
He wrote down what he saw and he's kept it for three years."
"Who is the man he's talking about?" I asked.
Jace looked up.
"His name is Gerald Foss.
He's a property developer.
He lives about forty minutes from here." He paused.
"Roy says he has money and connections and that's why nothing ever happened."
"And Roy came to you now because—"
"Because he heard Foss is about to sell a major property and move out of state permanently." Jace's jaw was tight.
"Roy said if we're going to do anything, it has to be now.
Once Foss leaves, it's over."
I looked at the bench.
Roy was still sitting there, watching us.
"I want to talk to him myself," I said.
Jace looked at me.
"You don't have to—"
"Yes I do." I was already walking.
Roy looked up when I sat down across from him.
Up close he was tired-looking, with the particular exhaustion of someone who had been carrying guilt for a long time.
"You're the woman who took them in," he said.
"I am."
"Then you should know—" He stopped.
Looked past me at Jace.
"That boy has been trying to protect his sister since he was thirteen years old.
Whatever his mother was, she loved those kids.
And she didn't deserve what happened to her."
"Tell me everything," I said.
"From the beginning."
He did.
By the time he finished, I had three names, two dates, and one address written in my phone.
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And I had a very clear picture of a man who had spent three years believing he was untouchable.
Gerald Foss had no idea that a sixteen-year-old boy had just led us directly to his door.
