Chapter 3 - The Blue Tin Under the Sink
By six o’clock in the evening, the heat in Baltimore hadn't broken; it had settled into the bricks like grease into an old pan.
In Trauma Bay 4, Sarah Vance’s fever had dropped half a degree, but her blood work was a disaster. The white count was thirty thousand, her kidneys were shutting down from three days of severe dehydration, and her lungs were crackling like dry paper under the stethoscope.
Marcus stood in the small office behind the nurses' station, the door locked, the blinds drawn halfway down.
Sitting across from him was Detective Roy Miller from the Baltimore County Sheriff’s Office—a man with graying hair around his ears and a badge that looked like it had been cleaned with brass polish every morning for thirty years.
“Julian Vance isn't in Pennsylvania,” Miller said, setting a brown folder on the desk between them. “He’s in the county jail in Towson.”
Marcus didn't move. “On what?”
“Grand larceny. Interstate transport of stolen farm equipment. And arson.” Miller reached down, pulled a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket, and hooked them over his ears. “Two weeks ago, somebody set fire to a three-hundred-foot poultry shed on the old Henderson place near Lineboro. The land was under foreclosure by an outfit called Crestline Land Holdings. Julian was picked up four miles away in a ditch with a five-gallon gas can in the bed of his truck and three thousand dollars in rolled twenty-dollar bills in his boot.”
Marcus looked out the small interior window toward the hallway. Through the glass, he could see Emma sitting on a cot in the breakroom, her head resting against Renee’s hip as the social worker read her a picture book about a little boat.
“Julian didn't have three thousand dollars,” Marcus said flatly. “Julian didn't have thirty dollars when he left our father’s house.”
“He didn't get it from a bank,” Miller agreed. “He got it from Crestline. They paid him to clear the lease on that farm so they could run a gravel haul-road through the valley. Only Julian took the cash, didn't leave the house, and when the bailiffs showed up with the eviction papers, he locked the gate, took the truck, and left his wife and the girl inside.”
“And the twins?”
“Nobody knew about the twins,” Miller said, leaning forward, his elbows making a dull thud on the wood. “Sarah didn't go to the clinic in Westminster. She didn't have a county medical card. According to the records, that house was empty six months ago.”
Marcus stood up, grabbed his coat off the back of the chair, and reached for his keys.
“Where are you going?” Miller asked.
“To Carroll County,” Marcus said.
“Marcus, that property’s posted. Crestline’s got private guards on the road line.”
“That land belonged to my grandfather before Crestline was a tax shell in Delaware,” Marcus said, his voice dropping so low Miller had to lean in to hear it. “And there’s a blue tin under the sink that a seven-year-old girl pushed a wheelbarrow three miles to tell me about.”
Miller looked at him for a long, quiet five seconds. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a small brass key on a leather ring, and laid it beside the brown folder.
“The gate lock on the west lane is a Master No. 3,” Miller said softly. “The deputies don't go down there after dark. Too many copperheads in the weeds.”
Ten minutes later, Marcus walked out the back entrance of the hospital into the private staff lot.
He didn't take his own car—a sensible white sedan that every security guard on the lot recognized. He walked to the corner bay where the hospital’s maintenance van—a rusted 2008 Ford with SYMH MAINTENANCE faded on the door—was parked near the loading dock.
He threw his medical bag into the passenger seat, turned the heavy key in the ignition, and listened to the V8 engine roar to life with a thick, throaty cough.
As he pulled out onto the avenue, he looked in the side mirror.
May you like
The silver sedan with the missing front tag backed out of its spot by the hydrant and fell in three cars behind him.
Marcus didn't speed up. He turned on his right blinker, shifted the heavy van into gear, and headed north toward the county line, where the streetlights ended and the dark, dry hills began.
