CHAPTER 42
JASON PULLED HIS CAR OFF THE HIGHWAY AND ONTO THE EXIT RAMP.
He’d plugged the address Gus had given him into the GPS, which told him that his destination was on the left in one-point-three miles.
A light drizzle fell and the lights of New York collected in a matrix of yellow and red starbursts on his windshield until his wipers swept them away and allowed the halos to begin forming anew.
He squinted through the mist until the billboard sign, illuminated by two bright spotlights that also highlighted the falling rain, told him he had arrived at Red’s Self-Storage.
He climbed from the driver’s seat with an eerie feeling of isolation and bemusement as to what the hell he was doing in the Bronx during a rainstorm about to open the storage unit of one of his patients.
He walked to the shed and held the paper so the headlights allowed him to read the code, which he punched into the keypad on the side of the building.
He pressed enter and the garage door rattled open.
The headlights tunneled through the rain and brightened the small ten-by-ten space.
It was filled with storage boxes—the sort with hand slots on each side for easy carrying—and which were capped with cardboard tops.
They looked to be meticulously organized; and, indeed, once Jason started searching, he realized the boxes were organized by year.
Jason stood bathed in the glow of the headlights as the rain came down harder now, pelting the metal roof of the storage facility.
“Damn, Gus,” he said aloud. “I thought you were retired.”
A few minutes later, he backed his car to the opening of the storage unit, opened the trunk, and loaded all four boxes from 1999.