“You’ll have to sign for this,” she said. As Jack made an illegible scrawl across the sheet, she added, “We couldn’t keep his clothes. The blood, you know.”

“But you emptied his pockets first, right?”

“I assume so. That’s done in the ER, long before he gets to us.”

Jack handed back the clipboard and took the bag. Not much in it: a wallet, a watch, some keys, and maybe a buck’s worth of change.

When the nurse was gone, Jack checked the wallet: an AmEx and a MasterCard, AARP and AAA cards, a Costco card, seventy-some dollars in cash, and a couple of restaurant receipts.

Jack dropped it back into the bag. What had he been hoping for? A note with a cryptic message? A scrap of paper with a hastily scribbled address he could check out?

Watching too many mystery movies, he told himself.

Maybe there is no mystery. Maybe it was just an accident. Maybe Dad was simply out for a drive and wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time…got clocked by accident by someone who wasn’t quite legit and couldn’t hang around to explain himself to the police.

Jack understood that. Perfectly.

Just an accident…a random collision…

But his gut wasn’t buying. Not yet at least.

Jack looked down at his father.

“Have you been holding out on me, Dad?”

No response, of course. He patted his father’s knee through the sheet.

“See you tomorrow.”

17

Fortunately Anya had left her gate passcard in Jack’s car. He used it to breeze through the resident’s arch. The old lady’s lights were out by the time Jack reached the house. Her lawn ornaments clinked and clanked and whirred in the dark.

Once inside, he went straight to his father’s room and took out the metal lockbox.

“Sorry, Dad,” he muttered as he carried it to the kitchen.

He hated invading his father’s privacy, but this box might hold an explanation as to why he’d been out in the swamps after midnight instead of home in bed.

First, a beer. He grabbed another Havana Red from the fridge, then searched the bathroom for a pair of tweezers. He found one, and twenty seconds later the lid popped open. Jack hesitated. Maybe there were things in here his father didn’t want anyone to know about. And maybe Jack wouldn’t want to know about them once he saw them. Maybe parents should be able to keep their secrets.

All fine and good when they weren’t the comatose victim of a hit and run.

Jack lifted the lid.