Matthew drove downtown to meet Laurie Porter for a late lunch on Christmas Eve. The restaurants were mostly closed, so they went to a bar that was always open. The place had no sign, just rough wood siding and high front windows tinted too dark to see into. Tattered flyers covered the door, flapping in the wind as they ducked in out of the snow. Inside, walls were lined with black-and-white photographs of people who had once been the bar’s regulars. Mostly all dead now, he guessed. As they stood on the entryway carpet stomping snow off their boots, he wondered if his dad was up there somewhere.
A three-foot Christmas tree had been set up on a table near the door. Canned food and toys were clustered up around it. Thank You for Giving! written on a piece of cardboard. The place was scattered with day drinkers. Wet-eyed old men who kept their hats and jackets on as they sat along the bar. At a table near the ATM, a man in a fringed buckskin jacket lectured a woman about real-estate prices. She wore an oversized Green Bay Packers sweatshirt, her chin propped on her fist, obviously asleep.
Laurie led him past the long bar to a rear eating area, where two guys in aprons and mesh trucker hats served Cajun food out of a tiny kitchen. It was after three o’clock but the line of people waiting to order stretched halfway to the bar. Specials were scrawled on a whiteboard above the window to the kitchen—alligator po’ boys and swordfish gumbo. They ordered, and while Laurie found seats he went to the bar for a beer. He got a tall can of Budweiser with a retro label and watched her eyes hang on it as he sat down.
“Hair of the dog,” he said, lifting the can a few inches off the tabletop. “Your daughter and I had a pretty lousy night the other night and I’m afraid I overmedicated in the aftermath.”
“I heard,” she said, fingers going to her throat. “We just can’t believe it. Jack and I are beside ourselves with worry. We tried to get Georgie to come stay at our house for a few days, but you know how she is.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I do.”
Laurie Porter flipped open a manila folder she had set between them. “In any case,” she said, “I thought it would be best if we get some stuff signed before the holiday so I can file it all next Monday. Georgie tells me you fly out tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I wanted to thank you for doing all this stuff for me. You didn’t have to do it.”
“I hope this trip wasn’t too painful for you, Matthew,” she said. “I lost my parents when I was young. I know a little of what you’re going through.”
He sipped his beer, pretty sure she had no idea what he was going through.
“I spoke with the doctor you saw in Florida,” she said. “Her initial report looks very good for you. I know it sounds odd to couch this as a positive development, but she says there’s definitely some structural damage present.”
He nodded, not knowing how to respond to that.
“My calls to the VA were pretty encouraging,” she said. “I spoke to the service officer there and have a feeling if we fill out the proper forms, get the neurologist to sign off on your injury occurring in the line of duty, they’re going to approve you for a disability package.”
“That’s the first good news I’ve had in a while,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Getting into nasty legal tangles with veterans makes for bad PR,” she said. “Generally speaking, they’ll avoid it if they can. It’s still strange they cleared you to stay on active duty so quickly after the explosion—and I don’t want to get your hopes up—but I get the impression they’ll work with us on this.”
“About that,” he said. “I talked to my old roommate, Cameron Rickert.”
An uneasy look crossed her face. “Yes?” she said.
Matthew told her the story according to Rickert—how they’d lied on the after-action reports and falsified medical documents to keep him in the war. He saw her stiffen.
“Was this something you were part of?” she asked.
“I don’t remember,” he said. “But, yeah, it sounds like it was my idea.”
“Fraud’s not going to help your case,” she said. “If it comes up at all, maybe we can bring in your friend to try to explain your motives. But let’s keep that private for right now.”
One of the guys from the kitchen brought their food and Laurie got up to pay for a bottle of water out of a small cooler at the back of the bar. She took a sip and asked: “How worried about you should I be?”
“Georgie asked me the same thing the other night,” he said. “Truth is, I don’t know.”
“Have you given any thought to New Mexico?” Laurie asked. “I know it sounds weird to some people, but the woman who operates the clinic there has had tremendous success with TBI and with PTSD, too. Like I said, if you’re interested I can make a call.”
He nodded, unable to think of a reason to say no. “It can’t hurt to at least look at it.”
“Very good,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He glanced at the clock and fought down a wave of anxiety when he noticed it was almost four. It would be dark in an hour and he still had to pack and figure out how early he’d need to be at the airport the next morning. He’d need time to return the rental car, find a shuttle, and then make it through security. If the motel’s pool had reopened, he might squeeze in a swim. The beer he was drinking made him feel sluggish and slow. A mistake to have ordered it, he decided, and pushed it away. He needed to keep moving so he didn’t think about how tired he was.
“So,” he said. “The folder.”
Her eyes came to life again. So much like her daughter’s. “Right,” she said. “There were a few irregularities with your father’s accounts.”
She set her plate aside and opened the folder, revealing a stack of papers and what looked like carbon copies of old receipts. “I told you I was going to have our investigator do a more complete check,” she said. “Looking for any assets that may not have been apparent in the documents you got from his house or the credit and debit cards you gave me. The bad news is, you’re not going to inherit a hidden fortune. In fact, what we did find is barely going to cover his debts and a couple of outstanding medical bills.”
“I figured as much,” he said, though it only ratcheted his anxiety up a notch.
“Here’s the one thing that caught my eye,” she said. “Were you aware that your dad still has an active bank account here in town?”
“No,” he said. “Is that unusual?”
She shrugged. “He moved his primary checking and savings up to Lake County when he left town years ago.” She flipped a piece of paper from the stack so he could read it. “But this one is still operational. It’s with a small local bank. It would’ve been easy to miss. I told you my guy is good.”
“You did mention that,” he said. At the top of the page was the name of a bank he didn’t recognize, not the national chain where his dad kept his primary account. The rest of it was just a neat row of numbers. A simple list of transactions showing small amounts of money flowing in and out of the account. “What am I supposed to be looking at here?”
Laurie’s smile was different this time, a puzzled half smirk. “I didn’t see it at first either,” she said
He focused on the transactions list, seeing that once a year, always in December, a single deposit was made in the amount of $600. For the rest of the year the account made just one transaction each month—an auto-pay withdrawal in the amount of $49.99. It was the same, dating back as far as the paper record went.
He grinned. “Is this illegal?” he asked. “Did you hack my dad’s bank account?”
“Not if you gave me permission,” she said. “You’re the executor. That’s your money now. I thought you might know where it was coming from.”
He thought of the married couple, the doctors who had rented his dad the house at Flathead Lake. He wondered if Dave Rose could have had other benefactors out there. People looked out for him, would put some spending money in his account every year like a Christmas present. But that didn’t explain the identical monthly withdrawals. If his dad was using the account for everyday life, the withdrawals would have been more haphazard. There would be debits for $2.99 when he needed to buy milk. There would be checks to collection agencies. Card transactions at the bar. Instead, it was just the one withdrawal each month. Always $49.99. Always on the same date. What was he paying for?
“Can we tell where these payments are going?” he asked.
“In fact, we can,” she said. She ruffled through the stack once more and came up with a smaller sheet. She passed it to him and he read the words printed there. The business name meant nothing to him: Little Bear Storage, but the street address found a spot deep in his chest and punched it hard: 588 W. Pullman Avenue.