The wind off the lake scrapes the lot like a broom made of knives. My wipers push a thin film of dried spray across the glass, and the dashcam LED blinks red, steady as a metronome I wish I could clip to Mason’s mouth. I angle my phone low in the cup holder, screen dark, recorder armed. Diesel ghosts in from the highway; the coffee on the roof of Ruth’s car smells burned in a church-basement way, comfort by habit, not by taste.
“You’re on?” Ruth asks, eyes on the rearview.
“Rolling,” I say. “Dash and pocket. Legal in a public place.”
My locket taps the zipper of my jacket when I inhale. Bells don’t ring here, but my ribcage does. Mason’s text told me the time and place: the closed car wash at Harbor & Pine, where foam tubes hang like drowned weeds. I step out. The air bites the inside of my nose; the wind carries a faint clove thread that makes my throat tighten before I search the lot and find him by the vending machines—hood up, hands in his pockets, sneakers tapping out a guilty rhythm.
“You brought her,” he says, flicking his chin at Ruth’s silhouette.
“I brought a witness,” I say. “Tradition in Ashgrove: we do things with eyes on.”
“Tradition,” he says, half laugh, half spit. “That’s what I need to talk about.”
Ruth joins me, hood down, calm like a stone that remembers flood levels. “Evening, Mason.”
He doesn’t say her name back, which tells me his hands are shaking. He warms them with his breath; clove smoke rides the exhale and curls in the cold. The scent yanks a bell rope in my head—tower stone, summer night, a girl’s cry tucked under bronze.
“Ground rules,” I say. “You talk; we corroborate. No promises about what we publish.”
“No names,” he says. “You voice-shift me, you blur me, you cut anything that points.”
“We don’t cut facts,” I say. “We cut identifiers. And you don’t get edit control.”
He looks at the dashcam’s red dot like it’s a sniper. “Turn that off.”
“It stays,” Ruth says, soft but immovable. “If you want a record that keeps you honest, that light is what you need.”
He rocks on his heels, eyes sliding to the church spire silhouette across the strip-mall roofs. The wind grabs a plastic pennant string and snaps it. I count the beats in the noise to keep from filling the quiet with a plea.
“Fine,” he says. “I’m not the hero in this, I know that. But I’m not the worst either. You want the worst? Tradition. It’s a mouth with everyone’s teeth in it. Boys ring bells; town rings back with scholarships. Slips get called slips.”
“Which slip?” I ask. “Which year?”
“You know the year,” he says, bitter smile. “The one you’re trying to pry open with that little brass heart.”
The locket thuds my sternum like a nod. I don’t give him the satisfaction. “Say the date.”
He rolls his neck, looks nowhere, then clamps his jaw. “July 19th, 2008. After the evening heat. Tower to dock. There was a fall, not the one in the paper. A worse one. He—” He stops, bites the inside of his cheek. “He covered the worst with the smaller. He knew people who could change words.”
Ruth’s pen ticks. “Who is he?”
“Don’t,” Mason says. “Don’t make me say it. You recorded him yourself. You have his cuff in a window. Let geometry say his name.”
“Locker,” I say, letting the word hang like bait. “You said there was a locker.”
His eyes flick up. The clove edge sharpens, unlit but present, skin-deep in his hoodie. “You have to promise I didn’t open it. I didn’t keep things. I’m telling you where they hid what they didn’t burn.”
“Promise we’ll represent accurately,” I say. “That’s all I promise anyone.”
He looks at Ruth. She’s still as a piling. He nods once to himself, then says, “Pine Street Annex. Basement storage. Locker 217.”
My heart stutters, counting like a bell rope in my fist. Ruth writes it, underlines it, boxes it.
“What’s inside?” she asks.
“Parts,” he says. “Rope ends with tar. A manual for a Meridian Mariner—limited run, crest oval. A phone that got too close to steam.” He swallows and his Adam’s apple bobbles like a buoy. “And a strip of ribbon from the club—Crane blue. Maybe someone thought a bow makes a bruise polite.”
The wind surges; the loose metal sign on the laundromat door thrums. I hear the lake’s seiche reach into the parking lot—a pressure bump that makes sound travel sideways; my dashcam mic will hear our voices brighter for it. I taste metal under my tongue like bitten coin.
“Why tell us now?” I ask.
He laughs empty. “Because I watched your episode, and I know the girls were first. Because that picture you’re not supposed to have—the one with glass and reflections—made some people twitch. Because tradition is a shark and I’m bleeding. I want my finger left after you slam the door.”
“Anonymity is a shield,” Ruth says. “Not armor. Do you understand the difference?”
“I understand I’m tired,” he says. “You want more? More costs.”
“Costs what?”
“A promise you’ll cut a part,” he says, eyes on me now. “A part where I’m near the bells.”
I let the request sit between us like bad gum. “You’re asking me to edit truth to save face.”
“You’re already editing,” he says. “You chose an angle for that scream, you chose which wave sounds to keep, you chose when to stop the tape. Now you want to be pure?”
“I want to be accurate,” I say, each syllable a step down a staircase I can’t see. “Accuracy includes you.”
Ruth touches my sleeve, a single note of restraint. “Tell us the part you want cut,” she says. “We’ll decide later.”
He tips his head back, stares into the sodium halo. “I rang once,” he says. “Not the night that matters. Another night, same summer. For a dare, for a count. I hate that noise now. I hear it in fans, in microwaves, in my mother’s dryer.”
“Thank you,” I say, and mean it. He wants absolution; I want a timeline. Those desires kiss and fight in the same mouth.
Micro-hook. A car turns into the lot and idles with lights off; my shoulders lock while we keep our faces open.
“Who else has the locker key?” Ruth asks.
“No key,” he says. “Latch is busted. It needs a court order or a steady hand and courage to cut a bolt in a hall with cameras. I don’t have either left.”
“Date’s exact?” I ask. “July nineteenth—time?”
“After the bake table closed and before the fireworks,” he says. “Before the big bell got its midnight ring. You can line the overtones to the little bell if you want to be cute. You like lining things.”
The clove breath skates into my nose again. He’s shaking less than he was. He’s enjoying the power of his crumbs. It makes me want to throw the box away and go to Lydia with empty hands and a clear throat. But the girls deserve the whole thing.
“We’ll need corroboration on the locker,” Ruth says. “And a paper trail on the watch manual.”
He smirks. “Paper trail’s the club newsletter. They love their own reflections. You already learned that.”
“Anonymous interview, voice masked,” I say. “But you answer follow-ups. No ghosting.”
“You get one question,” he says. “Tonight only.”
“Who changed the word ‘fall’ to ‘slip’?” I ask.
He thinks, then shakes his head. “You’ll say I speculate. I trade proof for protection, not guesses for a noose.”
“Then tell me who told you not to look,” I say.
That lands. He scratches his wrist where a bell rope burn would live in a different story. “Everett said it without saying it,” he says. “He said: ‘We don’t embarrass families.’ He said: ‘You like your spot at the bar, don’t you?’ He said: ‘Let the church handle church things.’ He called it mercy.”
“Mercy,” Ruth repeats, flat.
“Mercy that keeps secrets is just debt,” I say quietly.
Mason watches my mouth like he might memorize the line for later. “Locker 217,” he says again. “Don’t take friends. Don’t take enemies either.”
The idling car rolls forward two spaces and stops, a shark reconsidering a bite. Ruth shifts to block me with her body in a way that says she’s older than both of us and done with funerals. I tuck the locket inside my shirt so it doesn’t shine for any camera that doesn’t belong to me.
“We’ll follow up,” I say.
“You’ll be followed, period,” he says, and smiles without humor. “Tradition has a tail. It wags hard.”
“Then don’t be its fetch,” Ruth says.
He shoves his hands in his pockets and backs away toward the dark between the car wash bays. “Tell Lydia I’m sorry I knocked on her door back then,” he calls, softer now. “Tell her I was a coward with church coffee breath.”
I open my mouth to ask another, and he’s gone—slipped into black like a rope through a gloved hand. The plastic pennants crack, the lake breath gusts, and the dashcam blinks, indifferent.
“We need a judge,” Ruth says, voice small only in volume. “A clean one.”
“And a plan for our tails,” I say, nodding toward the sedan that pretends not to notice us while noticing everything.
We split. Ruth drives out the south exit; I take the north and cut across to Mill Street where the old mill windows throw back nothing but our own ghost lights. The sedan picks me, not her. I run the math on my fuel, my routes, the places with cameras the club doesn’t own. I slow at the Facebook-famous mural where the swap-group moderators pose for holiday photos and threaten to ban anyone who “brings politics to couches.” The irony tastes like old pennies.
“You with me?” I say to the recorder, useless habit, then kill it and call Ruth on speaker. “Shadow’s on me.”
“Copy,” she says. “Take the roundabout by St. Brigid’s. Bells are off now, but the tower camera feeds the city, not the club.”
I loop the church. The spire cuts a clean line in the sky; the window where Everett’s cuff once caught light is a blunt square of night. My tires whisper over grit. The sedan keeps a respectful distance, half a block back, like good families keep their bad sons.
“You think locker’s hot?” I ask.
“If it isn’t, they’ll make it look like it was,” Ruth says. “Either way, we need paper before bolt cutters.”
I pass the marina entrance. Diesel and wet rope hit me like a swallowed wave; the regatta pennants—legacy colors stitched to heirloom pride—riffle their tin pride. The smell knocks the new out of my throat and replaces it with what I came here to do. I grip the wheel at ten and two, and the locket warms against me, a coin held too long.
The sedan keeps coming. I take two extra turns, then a third, then signal left and go right, muscle memory from cities where I learned to evade men who thought stories owed them a mouth. The sedan mimics the first two turns and floats through the third like it owns gravity. Heat climbs my neck.
“I’m not going home,” I tell Ruth. “Not direct.”
“Good,” she says. “Park two blocks away, walk the rest, and photograph the sedan. If it’s a club plate, we send it to three places at once.”
I slide into a street I rarely use, where the mill’s shadow makes a tunnel, and kill my lights before the sedan turns in. I count Mississippi to five, then ten. The sedan rolls past my hiding spot and stops at the far corner, engine low, no dome light, patient like tradition.
I park two blocks from my building under a weak streetlamp that buzzes like a cheap mic. I pop the glove box for the disposable I keep as a decoy—old habits—and take a grainy flash shot of the plate through a gap in the leaves. The flash pops too bright; a dog barks; the sedan’s brake lights wink like eyes.
I kill the flash, lift the locket once like a salute to every bell I can’t ring yet, and shoulder my bag. The night holds a metallic chill that coats my teeth. I hear the lake slap the breakwater and then hush, a seiche breath in and out. Sound travels too well on nights like this; words can ride farther than I intend. I keep my mouth shut and count my steps.
Two doors from my building, a porch light flares. My neighbor, Ms. Dunn, holds a mug that smells like actual coffee, not church. “You working late?” she asks.
“Listening late,” I say, and point vaguely at the sky. “Wind carries.”
She nods in that town way that says she knows things she’ll keep until asked properly. “Saw a car slow past twice,” she says. “Not anyone from here.”
“Thank you,” I say, and feel the gratitude all the way down, because small witnesses keep big truths from drowning.
Inside, I lock the deadbolt and set my bag on the floor. I don’t turn on the overhead light. I use the desk lamp, low. I lay out my notes: July 19th, 2008. Locker 217. Rope ends, watch manual, burned phone, Crane ribbon. I add one more line in all caps: TAIL PLATE with the numbers I read from the flash shot, still sizzling in my eyes.
Ruth texts: Judge on call at 8 a.m. Bring your cleanest shoes and your dirtiest facts.
I text back a picture of the plate.
She replies: Club member. Not the worst; not the best. Enough.
I swallow dry. The locket’s hinge kisses my thumb. Bells hold their breath in my walls.
I open a fresh document and title it: Conditions of Anonymity — Mason Y. I type out exactly what he asked, exactly what I refused, exactly what we might protect anyway—not to make him comfortable, but to make the record clear when someone tries to flip it.
The sedan idles two blocks away, then drives, then idles again. The lake answers with a hush that makes the hair on my arms lift.
I ask the question that will keep me awake until dawn, not into any recorder, not into any court, but into the brass that learned to carry truth: is Locker 217 a door into daylight—or the trap Everett set for my hands the moment I reach for the bolt?