Page 80 of The Silent Note

Dropping the trash bag on the ground, I prepare myself for the stink bomb that’s about to explode and undo the knot at the top. Trying not to puke, I stick my hand in and fish around.

“Anything?” Finn asks, hovering from a safe distance away.

“I’m looking.”

“You’re sure you heard the cleaning lady right?”

I stop and whip around to pierce him with my stare. “I’m not deaf, Finn.”

Last night, Finn and I drove all the way to the prison. We got here just in time to see the hospital truck transporting Slavno’s corpse to the local morgue.

I wanted more information and the warden wasn’t picking up, so we stuck around, asking him to meet us when he had a minute. It wasn’t until two am that I could talk to the warden face-to-face.

“Heart attack,”the warden said as we all huddled in the shadows behind the prison.“Found him dead in his cell sometime between ten and midnight. His cellmate alerted the guards. If you ask me… I think there’s something fishy. Slavno hasn’t been eating since that day you first visited. But he finally caved and ate lunch today after the stomach cramps got to him. Hours later, guy was blue in the face.

Our only lead… gone.

But as we returned to the parking lot in defeat, an old cleaning lady was there waiting.

“She told me Slavno left something for me. Said he called her aside and gave it to her after watching the news early last night.” I return to fishing through the trash. “What do you think that means?”

“That Slavno had a crush on a cleaning lady,” Finn mumbles, brushing invisible lint off his pants.

“No.” I glare over my shoulder. “That he saw the news about the fire at the nursing home, saw headlines about his grandmother’s ‘death’ and had confirmation that she was safe.”

“That’s a pretty big leap,” Finn says darkly. He covers his face with a hand, shading his eyes from the sun.

“Maybe it is but I’m desperate.”

Finn hangs around while I search some more, but there’s nothing in the trash. No box, no letter. Nothing.

“Dammit!” I hiss.

My brother approaches me, two fingers clipping his nose. With his free hand, he squeezes my shoulder. “It’s okay, man.”

“Damn it all.”

“She didn’t say it was in the trash. Maybe she’ll come back with it.”

“When? We don’t even know her name.”

“That’s easy enough to find.”

“Even if we do, you saw how terrified she was just to tell us about Slavno. She’s not going to say anything, man. She wants nothing to do with this.”

“True,” Finn allows.

“What am I going to tell Grey?” I rant. “How the hell do I fix this?”

“Maybe this is a sign that Miss Jamieson needs to move on from the case. Heal. Maybe see a therapist. Have you noticed she’s seemed a little strange lately…”

“No. No. I need to look again.” Rather than just shove my hands in the bag, I empty the contents on the ground so I can see each item individually.

Finn takes a giant step back as the smell bombs the air. “Nothing’s here, man. Look, we’re tired. We’ve been out all night. Let’s call it a day and regroup?—”

“There’s no regrouping, Finn. You don’t understand. Without Slavno, we’ve got nothing.Nothing.” Aggravated and hopeless, I pick up an empty beer can from the trash pile and toss it. “This was my last chance to help Grey and I blew it. Ruined everything. I’m the family screw up. Just like dad said.”

Cling. Cling.