Chapter 94: Protective Measures
Renata Halloway moved on the twenty-ninth, five days after her daughter stood in front of a door.
She moved the way she has always moved. She hired somebody, and she made a telephone call.
The hiring produced a letter.
It came by regular mail to the halfway house. Three pages, from Halbert Coyne of Coyne and Deshpande.
Paragraph one said his firm represented Renata Halloway, Bree Mercer, and Dean Mercer.
Paragraph two said that my conduct on the twenty-fourth of September constituted an unlawful restraint of Mrs. Mercer's person and that his client reserved all rights.
Paragraph three demanded that I cease all contact with any member of the Halloway or Mercer families and confirm in writing within seven days.
I read it four times and then I did the two things you do with a letter like that.
First, I checked what it did not say.
It did not say anybody had made a police report. If one had been made it would have said so, because saying so is free and it frightens people.
It did not put the word restrain in a sentence with the word imprison, which a lawyer would have done if he thought he had it.
And it did not mention the module, or a technician, or a car, or the ninth of March.
Second, I checked what it did say, and I mean the parts that are not sentences.
The reference number in the top right corner was 4471-002.
Not 001. 002.
There is a file at that firm. The settlement agreement was matter 001 and this letter was matter 002, and both are billed to somebody.
Coyne and Deshpande is a four-partner firm on the sixth floor of the Merchants building. Their rate is not a family rate.
Renata Halloway has no job. Dean Mercer sells commercial flooring.
I put that in the folder, and I wrote the question on an index card and put the card in with it.
Who is paying Coyne.
I answered on the seventh day, certified mail, four lines, drafted with Marisol reading over my shoulder and cutting two adjectives.
I admitted nothing and denied nothing. I confirmed I would not initiate contact with his clients, which cost me nothing, because I never had.
Then the telephone call.
Anneke Sirko called the office on the third of October at 9:15 in the morning.
“A woman rang my shop yesterday,” she said.
I stood up.
“Say it in order.”
“Four-eleven in the afternoon. She asked whether we do crash data downloads. I said we do. She asked whether we'd done one on a Ford Taurus.”
“What did you say.”
“I said I don't discuss client work on the telephone.”
“And?”
“She asked whether a download could be done without the owner's permission. I said no. She asked what happens to the data afterwards. I said it belongs to the owner and to my file.”
“Did she give a name.”
“I asked for one,” Sirko said. “I always ask for one. I said if she wanted a quote I'd need a name and a callback number for the estimate log.”
“And she gave you one.”
“She gave me one.”
I put my hand flat on the desk.
“Read it to me exactly as you wrote it.”
There was the sound of a page.
“R. Halloway,” Sirko read. “Then a phone number with your area code. Then in my own handwriting: caller stated she was asking on behalf of a family member and did not wish to be contacted at that number in the evenings.”
I did not say anything for a moment.
“Cass.”
“I'm here.”
“I logged it in the estimate book, which is bound with numbered pages and which I have kept since 2009,” she said. “It is line 2,411. Nothing torn out, nothing added after the fact. It sits between a man asking about a Silverado and a body shop asking about a Civic.”
“Do you know what you've just done.”
“Yes,” Sirko said. “I've written down that a person named Halloway rang a crash data technician, unprompted, to ask whether a download had been done on a Ford Taurus.”
“How would she know to ask about a Ford Taurus.”
“That,” said Sirko, “is not my department.”
Here is what I understood at that counter.
Bree had gone home on the twenty-fourth and told somebody about eleven seconds at a door.
She had told her mother, not her husband, or she had told both and only one of them acted.
And Renata Halloway had not called a lawyer first. She had called a technician first.
You do not call a technician to protect your daughter from harassment.
You call a technician because you want to know how much of a six-year-old car can still be read.
Which means Renata Halloway knew what was in that car.
Not guessed. Knew, well enough to make a phone call about it in October, six years and seven months after the ninth of March.