Page 125 of Forever Dark
“Most of them came back clean,” she said.“But there was something under one name.A Nolan Pruitt.He’s the keyboardist in Elias Croft’s revival band.”
Connor glanced down at the name on his list.He would have said that felt like fate if he believed in such things.
“What do you have on him?”
Dana said, “Give me a second while I pull it up… So, where’s Arnold?I thought he was helping you with these interviews.”
Connor rubbed at his jaw with his free hand.“Sent him back to the station.He’s losing the will to live with all the interviews.”
A laugh escaped her.“That bad?”
“Bernice Toller threatened to write the governor.A man with a ferret told us evil doesn’t sit where the crowd’s looking.Then Ruth Ann Bell informed us she’d die for Croft and so would the rest of his flock.A few more wackos after that and I think his brain had melted.”
Dana went quiet for a second.“It’s already melted.”
“Yeah.”
Paper shifted at her end.More typing.
Connor looked again at the motel room.No movement.No shadow behind the curtain.The place had that dull, shut-in quiet that made even breathing on the other side of a wall feel suspicious.
Nolan Pruitt.
A keyboardist.The kind of man people forgot because someone louder stood in front of him with a guitar.A man who blended into the background.Connor had known men like that before.Sometimes they were harmless.Sometimes they were storing enough grievances to light half a county.
The phone buzzed in his other hand.
Selena.
Her name lit the screen.Connor glanced at it once, then back at the motel room.
Great, she’s up and about at least, he thought.
Dana came back on the radio.“All right.I’ve got something.”
Connor straightened.
“It’s buried,” she said.“Sealed juvenile record from Ohio.Twenty years ago.Expunged, but there’s still a faint system trace if you know where to look.”
“For what?”
Another pause.Connor could picture her now in records, one hand on the keyboard, glasses halfway down her nose, chewing the inside of her cheek while she dug.
“Fire,” she said.“Residential structure.No fatalities.Limited record left, but his name appears in connection with it.”
Connor looked down at the sheet of names on the passenger seat.
“A fire.”
“Yeah.”
“How old was he?”
“Sixteen, maybe seventeen.”
“Arson charge?”
“Can’t tell.It’s possible he was just a witness.”
