“I didn’t touch him except to hold onto this.” I nodded at the box. “And I think there’s a camera that’ll prove it.”
Hank Pruitt had wandered down the dock, wiping his hands on a rag.
“There is,” he said. “Two of ’em. One on the bait shop, one on the fuel pump. Insurance made me put ’em in.”
Vance studied him. Then me.
“Show me.”
The bait shop office was the size of a closet. Hank pulled up the footage on a dusty monitor while Vance leaned over his shoulder.
The angle was wide but clear. Trent’s truck screeching into the lot. Trent jogging down the dock. Trent climbing onto the swim platform uninvited.
Then the deck. Trent swinging first. Me curling around the box, taking the hits. Trent slipping over the rail on his own.
Vance watched it twice without a word.
“Copy that to a drive for me,” she told Hank.
Then she turned to me.
“What’s in the box?”
I set it on Hank’s desk and pressed play on the recorder.
My father’s voice filled the little office.
Vance’s expression didn’t change much while she listened. But by the end, she’d pulled out the chair and sat down.
“Your conviction was for embezzlement from Holcomb Feed and Hardware,” she said slowly.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you’re telling me your father found evidence that his stepson did it.”
“I’m telling you he found it, and two days later he had a stroke, and his wife told me he was de@d.”
Vance closed her eyes for a second.
“You have a lawyer?”
“I had a public defender with a hundred and forty cases.”
Ruthie was already on her phone.
“I called Nadine Breck this morning,” she said. “She handles appeals out of Corliss. She said to bring everything.”
Vance stood.
“Then I’m driving,” she said. “And you’re not in cuffs. But you don’t leave my sight, Mr. Holcomb. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Nadine Breck’s office sat above a closed shoe store on Main Street in Corliss. She was small and gray-haired, with reading glasses on a beaded chain and a desk buried under file boxes.
She didn’t waste time on hellos.
“Thumb drive first,” she said.
The store footage was grainy, time-stamped October 9, 11:42 p.m. My father’s office at the back of the store.
A man in a dark hoodie sat at Dad’s desk. He typed for a while, glanced at his phone, then typed again.
At 11:51, he turned toward the window. The desk lamp caught his face.
Trent.
I’d known. I’d known for three years. But seeing it made my knees go loose, and I had to grip the back of a chair.
Nadine pulled up the bank statement and ran her pen down the page.
“Transfer to BetVantage, forty-two thousand dollars,” she read. “October 9. Eleven forty-nine p.m.”
She took off her glasses.
“Mr. Holcomb, this footage was withheld from your trial because someone told police the system was down. That alone gets your conviction vacated.” She looked at Vance. “Officer, I assume you’ll be contacting the DA.”
“I’ll be contacting the DA,” Vance said.
Nadine was already typing. She pulled up the county recorder’s site and turned the screen toward me.
“Lorraine recorded a power of attorney last spring so she could list the house for sale,” she said. “Look at the date.”
March 24.
“Your father was admitted to Saint Brendan’s on March 22,” Ruthie said. “He was on a ventilator in the ICU for a week.”
“So how does a man on a breathing tube sign a power of attorney?” Nadine said. “He doesn’t. Look at the notary.”
KAYLEE DUNN, Notary Public.
Ruthie made a sound in her throat.
“That’s Trent’s ex-girlfriend. She worked at the title company.”
