CHAPTER FOURTEEN A: THE PERSON WHO DID NOT BOARD
The deputy called Jake back before he reached the fire station.
A woman had come forward after hearing about the stranded school bus.
She said she had seen Russell’s red truck at the abandoned packing plant on the night the bridge closed.
The deputy wanted Jake to listen to her account because she believed she recognized him.
Jake returned to the station with Mara and Gideon.
The woman waiting in the interview room wore a faded delivery uniform and kept both hands around a paper cup.
Her name was Priya Das,
and she had delivered cleaning supplies to the plant for six months.
She looked at Jake carefully.
“You brought sandwiches one afternoon,” she said.
“You gave one to a man who wasn’t on the order.”
Jake remembered a tired worker standing near a locked gate.
He remembered Russell yelling that the man was supposed to be on a bus.
He had forgotten the sandwich until Priya mentioned it.
“I thought they were changing shifts,” Jake said.
“They were changing the list of people allowed to leave,” Priya replied.
The deputy asked her to explain what she meant.
Priya said drivers arrived before dawn with printed lists and left with fewer passengers than the lists contained.
Some workers were told their transportation had been canceled because they had complained about unpaid hours.
Those workers remained in the fenced yard while other crews departed.
Priya had seen the same woman waiting by the gate on three consecutive mornings.
The woman had asked to use Priya’s phone, but Russell had stepped between them.
“He told me the woman had no business talking to outsiders,” Priya said.
“I drove away because I was scared of losing my delivery contract.”
She put down her cup.
“I kept driving away after that.”
Gideon did not interrupt her.
The deputy asked whether she could identify the woman.
Priya shook her head.
“I never learned her name, but I remember her jacket.”
She described a yellow raincoat with a stitched white flower near the collar.
Jake felt a faint tug of recognition.
He had seen the same flower in a photograph on the diner wall.
The photograph showed workers celebrating the reopening of the county fairgrounds years earlier.
Warren had once pointed out his sister among the volunteers.
Jake did not know whether the resemblance meant anything.
He told the deputy exactly what he remembered and nothing more.
The deputy wrote down the detail and asked Priya to wait while he made a call.
Mara took Jake into the hallway.
“You think Warren knows that woman?” she asked.
“I think he has a picture of somebody wearing a similar coat,” Jake said.
“That isn’t the same thing.”
Mara accepted the correction.
She had learned to trust Jake most when he resisted an easy conclusion.
Gideon came out of the room and joined them.
“Priya told the truth even though she waited too long,” he said.
“What happens to her now?” Jake asked.
“She has to keep telling it when someone asks harder questions.”
Jake looked through the glass at Priya sitting alone.
He understood why the second telling might be more difficult than the first.
A person could confess fear once and still have to live with every consequence afterward.
