Chapter 4 - THE LOCKER NUMBER
The police assigned Detective Hannah Price to the case.
She did not treat my military background as evidence that I was automatically right.
She interviewed Leo twice, with a child specialist present, and compared his statements.
They remained consistent.
Javier pinned him after demanding to know what Raymond had shown him.
David’s complaint claimed Leo entered through a broken window.
The window opened from inside.
Dust on the exterior sill was undisturbed.
Someone had unlocked the workshop before Leo arrived.
Melissa obtained Raymond’s probate inventory.
No blue tag appeared.
No private locker.
No sealed company records.
David had served as executor.
Every list passed through him.
Leo remembered one more detail.
“The tag had numbers.”
“How many?”
“Four, then a dash, then two.”
He had not memorized them.
Mia had seen him draw the tag after Raymond showed it to him.
She searched her tablet photographs.
Among pictures of homework and the family dog was a sheet of paper covered with Leo’s sketches.
One showed a blue oval.
Beneath it:
3147–B.
I recognized the numbering style.
Not the location.
Raymond had taken us to the Bennett Harbor Marina when we were children. Its storage lockers used four digits and a letter by dock section.
Detective Price requested access records.
Locker 3147-B had been rented under Raymond’s name for eleven years.
David canceled the rental six days after Raymond died.
The marina manager said the unit had been cleared.
“By whom?”
“Two men with estate authorization.”
The file contained copies of identification.
David Bennett.
Javier Cole.
The manager remembered a small metal cabinet inside the locker.
“They couldn’t open it,” he said. “They took the whole thing.”
David claimed the cabinet held old fishing equipment.
Javier claimed he had never entered the marina locker.
One of them was lying.
That night someone followed us from the hotel.
A dark pickup remained three cars behind through six turns.
I drove to a police substation instead of our apartment.
The pickup disappeared.
When we returned, our hotel room door showed fresh scratches around the latch.
Nothing obvious had been taken.
Leo opened his backpack.
May you like
His photograph of the workshop was gone.
So was the paper where he had drawn the blue tag.
