Page 18 of The Guilty Trial

The Meridian House

Tacoma, Washington

Allie ended the call as she pulled into the gravel lot beside The Meridian House. Bennett’s employer at the machine shop hadn’t given her much, just told her the man had kept to himself. He had borrowed two hundred dollars from a co-worker early last week and hadn’t paid it back. It wasn’t much to go on, but it fit the pattern of someone planning.

The halfway house stretched before her, its beige siding streaked with water stains. It had the bones of something else—a nursing home, maybe, or a medical facility from decades past. Chain-link fencing wrapped around the property, and a few scattered cars sat in the lot, their paint dulled by years of Pacific Northwest rain.

Allie stepped out of her car, and the wind blew sharply against her face. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked. She crossed the lot with gravel crunching under her boots and pushed through the front door.

Inside, two hallways branched off from the small lobby, and the doors lining both sides were somewhat reminiscent of cells. An old cork bulletin board on the wall displayed house rules and curfew schedules. Someone had tacked up a flyer for an AA meeting on Thursdays.

A man emerged from a side office with a clipboard in hand. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with graying hair and a tired look on his round face. His shirt was wrinkled, sleeves rolled to the elbows. “Agent Bishop?”

“That’s right. Roy Schmidt?”

“House Director.” He shook her hand briefly with a firm but perfunctory grip. “You’re here about Aris Bennett.”

“Yes, I need to see his room.”

Schmidt gestured down the left hallway. “This way.” He pulled a ring of keys from his belt. “I’ve got it locked up. Haven’t let anyone in since he went missing.”

They walked past closed doors, the muffled sound of a television bleeding through one and someone coughing behind another. Schmidt stopped at a door near the end. “Bennett never showed up for curfew Friday night. Then he missed his nine p.m. check-in.” He unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Guy was quiet. Kept to himself, and frankly, always looked angry. Not that that’s unusual around here.” Schmidt said it with practiced detachment earned from dealing with transient residents.

The room was small and spartan, with a single bed with a thin mattress, a nightstand, and a standalone wardrobe against the far wall. One window overlooked the parking lot, its blinds half-drawn, letting in slanted afternoon light. There weren’t any photos on the walls or personal touches. It seemed like he had traded one cell for another.

“I’ll need a few minutes,” she said.

Schmidt nodded and stepped back into the hallway. “I’ll be in my office if you need anything.”

The door clicked shut behind him. Allie pulled on a pair of latex gloves and stood for a moment, taking in the room. People left traces of themselves everywhere—what they valued, what they hid, what they couldn’t let go. She just had to find them.

She began with the wardrobe. The doors creaked as she opened them, revealing a handful of cheap work shirts on plastic hangers, two polos that had seen better days, and a pair of sneakers that were worn on the bottom. She checked the shirt pockets—empty except for a few receipts for gas station coffee. A toiletry bag sat on the top shelf. She brought it down and unzipped it, finding nothing unexpected inside. It contained common basic hygiene items: a stick of deodorant, a disposable razor, and a toothbrush. Nothing that suggested a man planning to be gone long, but also nothing he couldn't replace cheaply.

She turned to the nightstand. On top was a lamp with a broken switch and a charging cable, but no phone. And a prescription bottle that was half-full. Allie picked it up and read the label. The medication was for depression and had been prescribed two months ago.

Allie set the bottle down and crouched beside the bed, running her hand beneath the mattress. It was a standard hiding spot, but people still used it. Her fingers brushed something solid about halfway down. She lifted the mattress and ran her hand along the frame. Her fingers came away with a hardback notebook, its cover scuffed and bent from being wedged against the bedframe.

Well, what have we here?

She sat on the edge of the bed and opened it carefully. Inside she found a letter, the paper worn from being folded and unfolded too many times. It was from his ex-wife, written after his conviction, letting him know she was divorcing him. Allie didn’t need to read every word to understand the weight it carried.

Next she found a receipt from a pawn broker for a watch, then losing lottery tickets, at least a dozen of them, folded and tucked between pages. There was a pay stub from the previous week.

Allie flipped through Bennett’s handwriting. His thoughts were scrawled in uneven lines across the pages. The ink changed color partway through—black to blue, then back to black. Different pens, different days, but the same bitter thread running through all of it. His entries focused on complaints about the system, about corrupt prosecutors who bent the rules to get convictions. He’d underlined certain phrases and circled others. They lie. They cheat. They get away with it. Corrupt system, corrupt prosecutors, all of them. One passage was crossed out so heavily the paper had torn through.

She slowed down and read more carefully. Bennett wrote about his trial, about evidence that appeared out of nowhere, about witnesses who changed their stories. Whether any of it was true didn’t matter—he believed it. And belief like that festered.

Toward the back, the tone shifted. Numbers filled the margins, and she realized they were betting calculations scribbled in shorthand. The desperation bled through the ink. He’d charted how much he owed and the potential payouts that would cover it all.

Allie scanned the pages for anything about the number fourteen but came up empty. Whatever that number meant, Bennett hadn’t written it here.

At the last page, Allie found something folded and tucked against the binding. She pulled it free and unfolded a receipt from a convenience store for a burner phone. It was dated last Wednesday, the day before Bennett disappeared.

She photographed the receipt with her phone, then closed the notebook and slipped it into an evidence bag. Bennett had been planning something. The burner phone was a way for him to control some part of his life he wanted to keep hidden. It wasn’t an impulse purchase.

Allie was halfway down the hall when Schmidt stepped out of his office. “Agent Bishop, one of the residents just told me something. He said Bennett had a phone call about a week ago in the common area and it got pretty heated.”

She stopped. “What did he say?”