Chapter 6 - The Boy at the Fuel Dock
Delia wanted to delete the threatening message. I told her to save it, and Detective Bell agreed.
"You aren't going back to the marina alone," Bell said over the phone. "Nobody there should be trying to scare a witness."
"I wasn't a witness," Delia answered. "I was the woman who heard his alarm."
"That makes you important."
I'd spent decades convincing employees they could speak to me. Now somebody had made the cost of speaking terrifyingly clear.
Late Friday afternoon, a nineteen-year-old fuel-dock worker named Theo Briggs arrived at the hospital carrying a cardboard coffee cup he never drank from. He kept glancing toward the door.
"Ms. Ramos said you might want to talk," he told Bell.
Theo had been closing the south pump on Thursday night. From across the water he'd seen Audrey push my chair along Pier Six, even though the dock was closed. He heard raised voices but couldn't make out the words.
"I thought you were arguing," he said. "Then I saw the chair move fast. I couldn't tell whether she pushed it. The lights were behind you."
He had raised his phone when he noticed the argument. The first seconds of his video showed water, a railing, and Audrey's pale coat. At the edge of the frame, the wheelchair tipped. Then Theo dropped the phone as he ran to call for help.
"Why didn't you come forward last night?" Bell asked.
"My mom works for the company. Audrey told everyone people who spread rumors would lose their jobs."
"Your mother is not losing her job because of me."
He finally met my eyes. "That's what people always say before somebody loses their job."
Bell copied the original file. The timestamp matched the ambulance dispatch. It wasn't proof of the shove, but it challenged Audrey's story that she'd been several feet away when the brakes failed.
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As Theo left, he stopped in the doorway.
"There was somebody else on the dock," he said. "I didn't recognize him then. But I recognized his car."
