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Percy's car is a shiny pick-up his parents bought for him when he was sixteen, before he even got his license. Indy remembers being worried that he was going to crash it to smithereens before he could even properly learn to drive it, so it's a relief to her now that it's still in good condition. The green paint has faded over time, the milky color of oxidized copper, but he keeps it clean, and it runs without a problem.

Gatz lost shotgun, so Indy sits in the front, tuning the radio as the mint air freshener dangles from the rearview mirror, the road in front of them long and straight and lined by grassy fields.

"You're lucky today was a slow day," Indy murmurs. The radio lands on a faintly staticky R&B station, and she lets it play. "Still, you owe me the pay I would've gotten if I stayed."

Percy rolls his eyes. "How's that fair? You agreed to this. Gatz and I could've gone alone."

"We asked Sylvia, too, but she's got rehearsals," Gatz says before Indy can ask. Stretching their feet long across the truck's cream backseat, they certainly seem content without Sylvia there. "Tell us again how exactly you worked this all out, Percy?"

"Yes," Indy insists. "Do tell."

Percy's grip on the steering wheel tightens slightly, then loosens again. "I was able to get my dad involved. I said it was important for class that I talk to this guy, and that was all it took, really. He made some phone calls and here we are."

Indy pauses, watching Percy's face, wondering if the conversation was truly as easy as he's making it seem. When it comes to the Mitchells, the seams between parent and son and brother and brother aren't so gaping that they're visible to those standing far away. Though Indy has a vantage point closer than most, it still isn't close enough. Even here she can just barely see the frays.

And she has the persistent feeling that's exactly how the Mitchells prefer it.

Gatz leans forward, knocking their fists against the console. "That's Senator Mitchell for you."

Percy winces. "I don't like taking advantage of my name like that. But I just—"

"You gave us somewhere to start," Indy says. "Thanks, Percy."

He's quiet for a second, the sound of the tires whirring against the asphalt filling the space his voice leaves behind.

He flashes Indy a brief smile. "Sure."



Percy's name also gets them through the high-security, high-tech gates of the state penitentiary, the top of the mile-high fence looped with barbed wire. The three of them have their bags checked and their bodies scanned, before a warden marches them down a hall that reminds Indy eerily of a horror movie: walls and floor and ceiling all the same bland shade of beige, a light at the end of the hall flickering intermittently.

Keys jingle together as the ward stops them all at a heavy iron door and takes her key ring from her pocket. "Thirty minutes," she says without feeling, the door squealing as she pulls it open, veins in her arm straining. "Recordings are fine. No gifts, pictures, or physical contact allowed."

Indy nods her understanding. She steps inside, and Gatz and Percy follow.

Another ward stands against the wall, gun and baton in full display upon his tool belt. Sitting in a chair before him, looking tired and vaguely disinterested, is Lamar Pine.

Though he was barely in his twenties when Elizabeth Dobbs was murdered, it's been years now, and his face shows it. Wrinkles and frown lines have worn deep into his skin, coiled hair and beard straggly and peppered with gray. His eyes are downturned, so deep a brown they look black, a mole dotting his cheek and the tip of his nose.

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