this morning #1528.
this morning, mere minutes after the old man from the town hall had left my motel room, my phone rang. AGAIN. the neighbor. AGAIN. after what i just learned, the neighbor was even less necessary. the man who’d gone missing wasn’t missing at all. he’d sold his identity & gone off the grid. on the third ring, i took a seat on the bed. on the fourth, i took a deep breath. on the fifth, i answered. “THANK GOD you picked up. please don’t hang up. i’ve been back to the shed.” i braced for some stupid story but as he laid out what he had in his possession, i could see that the head of the family next door was involved in some sort of underground weapons trade. fake identity. weapons trade. arson. the pieces were starting to fall into place.