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“No. I’ve never heard him say that name before. He sounds familiar though. Was he a big client of your dad? Did someone call and ask about him?”
Sometimes I forget that Chris doesn’t know everything I do. He doesn’t live inside of my mind and hear my thoughts as I do. He’s usually by my side when I find things like this.
“I found an old folder marked 1999 with a scanned in businessbilling statement to someone named Bill Carter. I couldn’t find any information besides that. So, I Googled the name and it brought me to a news article. Turns out the Carter family were involved in a number of robberies.”
“Wait, wait. How did you know that Bill Carter was the same from the article? How do we know it’s not two different Bill Carter?”
My hand goes to my mouth. I guess I hadn’t thought aboutthat. Have I been jumping to conclusions all along? No, they mustbe the same man. My gut is telling me so. But how do I prove it?
“Look up his prison record.”
“What?” He looks concerned for me. But I don’t care because I know I’m right.
I walk over to his chair and sit on his lap, taking over hisspace. Chris doesn’t seem to mind. I type in the court record system, ‘William Carter’. Pulling up his record puts a chill down my spine.
“Woah. He was a bad dude,” Chris says as he looks over my shoulder.
I ignore the laundry list of wrongdoings and go to his personalinformation. I’m praying this works. Ripping a post-it from Chris’recent pile on his desk, I quickly copy the three street names of Bill’s known addresses.
Trying not to run, I make my way back to my desk and find the billing address on the document I still have pulled up. Chris follows me, still confused.
“There! How many Bill Carters live on twenty-second street?”
His eyes get wider. “Okay, you’ve got me. It’s the same guy. But what could your father be involved in that this guy would go after him?”
“I don’t know. But something about it doesn’t feel right. Is it supposed to be a coincidence that I found a strange folder fromforever ago with my dad’s name on it? And that the folder containsa document connecting him to a family of armed robbers?”
Chris paces in front of my desk as I sink further into the chair. There’s no reason that we need a file this old in the system. “So, what do we do with this information? Do we tell your dad?”
My father has his own secrets. I know from the note I found on his desk that he’s withholding information. Every time I’ve confronted him about something, he’s pushed back. He ignores our questions, and pretends like everything is okay. If we ask my dad about this, would he tell us anything? Would he lie? I want to trust him, but my gut is telling me that he doesn’t want me involved. So, questioning him will get us nowhere.
The only thing interrogating him will do is increase the amount of stress he’s already carrying. “I don’t want to freak him out even more. He’s already paranoid about my safety. I don’t think he’d give us a straight answer anyways.”
“So… now what?”
That is the question. What do we do now that we have something real? We can’t exactly ask my father and going to the prison to talk to the Carters seems not only like a waste of time, but extremely dangerous.
“I don’t know,” I answer.
