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He pulled into the bank’s parking lot and hurried Marvin along as they walked through the revolving doors and into the lobby. They rode an elevator to the lower level where Marvin showed his ID to the gentleman behind the desk.
“Marvin Mann. I’ve got a safe deposit box that I’d like access to.”
The man tapped his computer and checked Marvin’s ID before disappearing into a back room. He was gone for some time, leaving Eric to wonder if the PI was telling tales. The man finally walked back through the door and slipped a piece of paper across the counter. On top was a photocopy of Marvin’s driver’s license.
“Sign here,” the man said, and Marvin obliged.
“Follow me, sir. I’ll show you into the vault.”
The man came around the counter and led Marvin and Eric into a large atrium where a locked gate protected the vaulted room.
“I can only allow named persons into the vault,” the bank employee said, looking at Eric. “But you’re welcome to wait out here.”
“Do you have a private room where we can take the box?” Marvin asked.
“Yes, sir, we have several.”
The man walked to one of several doors off the atrium and unlocked it. Inside was a chest-high table in the middle of the small room. No chairs.
“You can wait here,” the man said to Eric.
Eric nodded and walked into the room. He watched the bank employee unlock the gate to the vault. Marvin Mann disappeared inside.
CHAPTER 61
Reno, Nevada Friday, August 2, 2024
A FEW MINUTES LATER MARVIN MANN EMERGED FROM THE VAULT CARRYING a thin safe deposit box. He walked into the small room where Eric waited and placed it on the table. He lifted the top of the metal box to reveal a stack of papers inside. Marvin removed the documents and slipped on his reading glasses.
“Yep,” he said. “These are them.”
Eric took the first stack of pages and read through them. They looked to be financial statements. He noted a couple of pages indicating the creation of a limited liability corporation, another page was a spreadsheet of financials, and the third was a list of deposits made into a numbered account. Eric picked through each page until he reached the end of the stack. He then removed the final bundle of documents from the safe deposit box and fingered through the remaining pages. Each page was the same gibberish—account numbers, financial spreadsheets, and names of corporations.
He reached the end of the stack and turned to the final page. There, stuck to the last page, was a yellow sticky note that carried his father’s familiar handwriting.
“Holy shit.”
Marvin peered through his cheaters to read the sticky note. “I’ll be damned.”
Eric ran from the private room and raced up the steps, bolting across the reception area and through the front doors. As he sprinted for his car, he fumbled for his phone to call Sloan.
CHAPTER 62
Bend, Oregon Friday, August 2, 2024
WITH TREMBLING HANDS SLOAN SECURED ANOTHER PIECE OF PHOTO paper in the easel and set it below the enlarger. She fed the film into the machine and pressed the button to set the exposure. The process took just over a minute before Sloan transferred the blank paper through the three trays of solution. As it floated in the fixer, the final tray, she waited. Painstakingly, a form began to take shape on the paper. Sloan used tongs to lift the photo out of the solution. She clipped it to the drying rack next to the photo of the Cooper’s hawk. In the glow of the red safelight, the image materialized.
Blurry crossbars in the foreground told them that the picture had been taken through a window.
“These are curtains in the foreground,” Sloan said. “And the blurry lines are window grids.”
The angle of the photo was on a downward trajectory, clearly taken through a second-story window. Nora moved closer to the photo.
“That’s Preston and Annabelle’s driveway. And their BMW. This was taken through Annabelle’s bedroom window.”
As the image came into sharper focus, a person emerged.
“Who is that?” Sloan asked.
