Chapter 17 - THE GARAGE UNDER THE HIGHWAY
The original Silver Hawk garage stood beneath an interstate overpass, abandoned after flood damage. Arthur, Wade, Thomas, and nine veterans had once repaired motorcycles there at night and delivered food by day.
Federal agents searched the building with ground radar. Beneath a rusted lift, they found a watertight compartment.
Inside were Wade’s paper ledgers.
They documented every freight payment from the first legal sponsorship to the later smuggling fees. Arthur’s initials appeared beside early entries. Wade’s appeared beside all of them.
One page recorded a meeting on the night of the warehouse fire:
A.H. approved cleanup. M.H. problem ends tonight.
Arthur denied seeing the page or approving any cleanup.
Claire argued A.H. meant Arthur Hale.
Thomas suggested it meant Allen Hurst, Silver Hawk’s former operations manager. Hurst had died twelve years earlier.
The ambiguity threatened the entire case.
Handwriting experts confirmed Wade wrote the entry but could not determine whom the initials identified. Prosecutors found Hurst’s travel records showing he was in another state that night.
That made Arthur the obvious interpretation.
News coverage shifted again. The old man humiliated in a diner now looked capable of ordering his son’s death.
Arthur’s attorneys advised silence.
He instead held a press conference and admitted the initials might refer to him, but denied the conversation. He asked investigators to treat him as a suspect if evidence required it.
“The truth cannot belong only to me when it clears me,” he said.
Michael watched from the clinic.
He requested the page. After studying it, he pointed to the phrase problem ends tonight and selected letters on his board.
May you like
Wade used those words before. Ask Rex’s mother about the baby.
Elaine had never told Rex he was not Thomas Dalton’s biological son.
