What Gregory had not expected was Elijah’s immediate insistence on an outside investigation. He had anticipated either an angry abuse of authority, which could be used to discredit the chief, or embarrassed silence, which would give Sterling time.
Instead, Elijah had done the one thing that exposed the scheme to people Gregory couldn’t control.
He had refused to decide his own case.
When Price showed Elijah the messages, under the limits of what prosecutors had cleared for disclosure, he sat silently for a long time.
“He knew I was chief,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And he let his wife walk up to my garage believing I’d be frightened of the police.”
“That’s what the messages suggest.”
Elijah stared at the image of the text.
“He used his own family as cover.”
“He used a lot of people,” Price said. “That’s becoming clearer every day.”
There was more. In the months before Elias Grant died, a representative of Lakeview had approached him about purchasing the Mustang, then asked for its original chassis photographs. Elias declined both requests. Gregory appeared in correspondence as a supposed adviser to the buyer.
One email from Elias, recovered from an old account with the estate’s permission, contained a sentence Elijah recognized from a hundred garage conversations.
If you’re buying the car, come look at the car. If you’re buying a number, call somebody else.
Elijah smiled despite himself. It was the first real smile since the complaint.
Then he noticed the date. His father had written the email during the final weeks when the doctors were still telling them there might be time for another treatment.
He had been exhausted, frightened, and increasingly unable to work. Yet he had still protected the history of the machine they built together.
“He never told me,” Elijah whispered.
“Maybe he thought it was over,” Price said. “Maybe he didn’t want you worrying. I can’t know.”
Elijah nodded. He appreciated that she refused to invent an answer.
Outside, traffic moved along the street and the ordinary world kept its schedule.
Inside, he finally understood why Gregory had looked so carefully at the Mustang the first afternoon, and why he had asked about numbers rather than horsepower.
CHAPTER 19: LOGAN FINDS OUT WHAT A FAVOR COSTS
Logan learned that his father had known the new neighbor was police chief from a news report describing the investigation. At first he refused to believe it. Then he confronted Gregory in the Hartmans’ kitchen, the same room where Sophie had recorded the conversation.
