Chapter 17 - MICHAEL DISAPPEARS
Michael's front door was open.
No blood.
No struggle.
His car remained.
His phone sat on the kitchen counter.
Walter found one thing missing.
The motel Bible.
The one containing NOT TOMMY.
Daniel blamed himself.
Walter told him to stop.
Daniel shouted:
"Don't tell me how to feel."
Walter stopped.
Good.
They searched the house with agents.
Inside June's old sewing cabinet they found a hidden compartment.
Letters.
Dozens.
Thomas had written June for years.
She kept them.
Never answered most.
Michael had never seen them.
One letter described a list hidden in the motel Bible.
Not names of spies.
Names of civilians promised evacuation during Night Glass.
Families who never got out.
Crewe had sold those names.
Some descendants were now suing contractors tied to his company.
The list could establish knowledge and liability.
Michael must have found it.
That was why he disappeared.
Then Daniel received a text from Michael's number.
I'M SAFE. DON'T FOLLOW.
Walter read it.
"That's him?"
Daniel nodded.
"How do you know?"
"He uses periods when he's angry."
Walter almost smiled.
Michael had gone willingly.
He was trying to protect them.
Walter hated the pattern.
Men deciding alone what danger other people could handle.
He had done it.
Thomas had done it.
June had done it.
Michael was doing it now.
Daniel traced a clue in one of Thomas's letters to an abandoned veterans hall near Fort Wayne.
They arrived too late.
Michael was gone.
But Alan Crewe was there.
Dead.
A pistol beside him.
One shot.
Federal agents immediately treated it as possible suicide.
Walter looked at the body.
Then at the gun.
"Don't touch anything."
Daniel said:
"You think he was murdered?"
Walter shook his head.
"I think we've spent forty-four years deciding answers before evidence."
On the stage behind Crewe's body, someone had written:
WALTER KNOWS WHERE THE ORIGINAL LIST IS.
Walter stared.
May you like
He did not.
