Chapter 96: The Log
The log came printed landscape on two sheets.
A header row at the top, and a footer showing the date it was generated and the initials of whoever generated it.
Six columns. Log number. Date received. Requester. Subject as stated by requester. Disposition. Fee collected.
Eleven rows.
I read the header row twice before I let myself look at the rows, because I wanted to know what each column meant before I knew what was in it.
Rows one through three were mine. March, June, and October. Requester, C. MERCER.
Subject as stated: CRU final report incident 22-0339 and appendices. Disposition: partial, partial, partial.
Row four was a name I did not know, dated eleven months ago, subject: crash statistics, Route 9 corridor. A researcher. Disposition: released.
Rows five, six, and seven were an insurance defence firm, all on the same day four years ago, all closed as no responsive records.
Row eight was a newspaper, dated six years ago. Disposition: released, redacted.
Rows nine and ten were internal transfers.
Row eleven was dated the seventh of October.
Requester: R. HALLOWAY.
The seventh of October is the day I mailed mine. Not the day it arrived. The day I mailed it.
I sat down.
I want to be accurate about the order of things, because the order is the only thing I had.
I did not know how she could have known.
I still do not know. There are three explanations and I have never chosen between them.
She may have been told by a clerk.
She may have guessed the month, because a lawyer told her to check quarterly.
She may have been asking every month since October the third, and this was the first entry that landed on a page I would ever see.
The third explanation is the one I believe, because it requires the fewest people to be careless.
The column I read next was Subject as stated by requester.
And this is where I stopped understanding.
It did not say incident 22-0339.
It did not say the crash report, or the reconstruction, or the vehicle, or the appendices, or anything with the word crash in it at all.
It said: INSURANCE CLAIM CORRESPONDENCE, POLICY DOCUMENTATION, AND CLAIM PAYMENT RECORDS.
I read that four times.
Then I read the next column.
Disposition: RELEASED, 4 PAGES.
Fee collected: $12.00.
Four pages and twelve dollars.
I have spent four hundred and seventy-five dollars, nineteen weeks of savings, eight months, ninety-four miles each way, and a borrowed truck, on a report about a switch on a seat rail.
She spent twelve dollars.
And she did not ask about the crash.
I stood at the folding table with the two sheets flat in front of me and my hands on either side of them.
I read that row from left to right eleven times. It took about four minutes.
Here is everything I understood that day, set down with the gaps in it, because the gaps are the honest part.
One. Renata Halloway had submitted a written request to a state agency in her own name.
Two. She had put an address on it, because you have to, and that address is now on a public log.
Three. She had paid twelve dollars, and the fee record means there is a receipt with a payment method on it.
Four. She had not asked for anything about the crash. She had asked for the money.
And I did not know what that meant.
I want to be precise. I did not half know. I did not have a feeling about it.
I looked at those words and I thought about the letter I already had in the DA's file, the one telling the carrier a vehicle was being released from impound. And I thought: she is checking the car insurance.
That is what I thought.
Dean's Taurus was on Dean's policy. The claim was paid out six years ago. There is nothing there.
I was wrong, and I was wrong for a long time, and it cost more than money.
That afternoon I did the only correct thing available, which was to write it down and ask for the next document.
I took a fresh request form out of the drawer.
I wrote, in the description box, in the flattest language I have: A copy of the four pages released to requester R. Halloway on the seventh of October under log number 11, together with the request form submitted by that requester.
The request form. Not just the records. The form.
Because a form has a signature on it, and a date beside the signature, and a box for the requester's stated interest in the record.
I sealed the envelope and walked to the post office in the rain with two dollars and sixty cents in my pocket.
$8.15 was owing at the window. Marisol had given me the difference without being asked.
The clerk asked if I wanted insurance.
I said, “Yes. This time, yes.”