Chapter 17
The Harland Mutual report took me forty minutes to write and three separate observations to justify.
I sat at my desk at Rourke Investigations with the Holloway file open on one monitor and the raw clips queued on the other, and I watched the cooler lift, the folded wrestling mat, and the box-truck loading sequence one more time before I typed the final line of the summary.
Subject repeatedly demonstrated lumbar flexion, load-bearing capacity, and unrestricted movement inconsistent with claimed injury.
I attached the clips, the timestamps, the still frames I’d pulled for the adjuster who wouldn’t watch all the footage no matter how clearly labeled it was, and I sent it.
Owen leaned into my doorway with a coffee mug that said World’s Okayest Analyst, a joke gift from a case two years back that he’d made permanent office equipment.
He had worked beside me for six years, two at my old firm and four here, running background checks, social-media traces, and the paper trail nobody else had patience for.
He was the closest thing I had to a friend inside these walls.
“Holloway’s done?” he asked.
“Initial report’s submitted. Harland’s got what they need for now.”
“You think Trent lets it lie?”
“No. He’ll appeal it, and they’ll probably come back to me for a public event once he does. But that’s a different assignment, if it happens. This one’s closed.”
“You want me to flag the file for when the appeal shows up, or let it sit?”
“Flag it.” I closed the file window, and the screen underneath it was the Rover Court property map I’d pulled during the second day of the case, courtyard sightlines marked in a red I’d told myself was professional shorthand and not something else.
Owen looked at it for a second too long before he said anything, which was his version of a raised eyebrow.
“You billed all that?” he asked.
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.” He took a drink from the mug and didn’t push it further, which said enough. Owen had opinions. He was choosing, for now, to keep them filed rather than spoken, and I appreciated it more than I would have told him.
I drove to Rover Street anyway that afternoon. I parked near the courtyard, not in any of the three old surveillance spots, cut the engine, and sat with my hands on the wheel.
It didn’t feel like relief. Josie found me before I found a reason to leave. She came down the courtyard steps in the yellow sneakers, a bag of trash in one hand, and she crossed the lot at an angle that put her directly beside my window before I’d decided whether to roll it down. I rolled it down.
“You’re back,” she said, “and you don’t have the plumbing decal today. Interesting wardrobe choice for the van.”
“I filed the Holloway report this morning. Harland Mutual has what they need for the initial claim. There might be an appeal down the line, and if there is, they might send me back for a public event. But that’s not today, and it’s not why I’m here.”
She set the trash bag down against the curb like she intended to be here for a while, and her face went careful in a way I recognized now, the half-second before she decided how to look.
“So what is this,” she said, nodding at the van, at the street, at all of it.
“This is me, choosing to be here. Nothing else.”
She was quiet long enough that I started cataloging it, the stillness of her hands, her refusal to reach for a joke when a silence got too long for comfort.
“Good,” she said. “Because I don’t want the version with a reason. I want the one who chooses to be somewhere I might see him.” She picked the trash bag back up. “You understand that’s different.”
“I understand.”
“I don’t think you fully do yet. But you will.” She almost smiled, not quite, and turned toward the courtyard gate.
I stayed in the van for a minute after she left, then got out to stretch my legs.
Rosa was crossing back from the mailboxes and changed direction when she saw me, the retired neighbor who had fed me theories about half the building without ever being asked.
She held out a ceramic mug, steam still rising from it.
“You look like a man who needs this,” she said, “and don’t tell me you don’t drink coffee this late, everybody drinks coffee this late, it’s a lie people tell to seem healthy.”
“Thank you.” I took it. It was better than anything from the shop I usually hit.
“My bathroom cabinet door doesn’t close all the way,” Rosa said, in the same breath, no transition at all. “Hinge is stripped, I think. Josie fixed my garbage disposal last spring but cabinets aren’t her thing, she says the angle bothers her wrist. You look like a man who fixes things.”
“I do fix things.”
“I thought so. You have the hands for it.” She looked at me a moment longer than the cabinet required, the way a woman looks at something she’s already decided about and is only confirming. “Thursday’s good. Not too early. I have my show at ten.”
I told her Thursday worked, because it did, and because there was no version of refusing Rosa that seemed survivable or, honestly, something I wanted to survive. She patted my arm once, satisfied, and went back inside.
I didn’t leave when the light started going orange over the roofline.
I moved the van, once, from the curb to the small lot near the gate, in plain sight of the courtyard, no angle calculated for concealment, no decal pretending to be anything but a man sitting in his own vehicle because he wanted to be near a building where Josie lived.
Her kitchen light came on a while later. I watched the curtain, waiting for the moment it would close, the way it always had.
It stayed open. She didn’t wave this time, didn’t perform anything for the glass between us. She just moved through her kitchen with a glass of water in her hand, unhurried, visible, choosing not to close the one thing that had always ended the night before.