Chapter 12 - The Woman Who Watched Mason Leave
Her name was Lena Ortiz.
In 2006 she had been twenty-four, newly divorced, working nights at a roadside diner off Highway 61. Now she owned a small breakfast café outside Memphis and had spent twenty years refusing every call related to Mason Carter.
Tyler found her because Holloway Recovery’s payment ledger listed one field operative who later became her second husband.
When Eli walked into her café, she dropped a coffee pot.
Glass shattered across the tile.
Customers turned.
Lena stared at him.
“Oh my God.”
Eli removed his cap. “Mrs. Ortiz?”
She backed away.
“I don’t know anything.”
“You know who I am.”
“I said I don’t know anything.”
Ryan stepped forward. “We’re not police.”
“That’s worse.”
Lena ordered an employee to cover the register and led them into a storage room.
She locked the door.
“My husband is dead,” she said. “He can’t defend himself.”
“We’re not here for him,” Eli replied.
“Yes, you are.”
She pulled a cigarette from a pack, then remembered the room was smoke-free and crushed it between her fingers.
“His name was Paul Serrano. Holloway hired him for surveillance. Nothing else.”
“Surveillance of Mason?”
Lena looked at Eli.
“Yes.”
Eli’s hands closed slowly.
Ryan moved closer in case anger overwhelmed him.
“What happened the night my son died?”
Lena sat on a flour bucket.
“Paul came home at three in the morning. He was shaking. I’d never seen him like that.”
“What did he say?”
“He said a job had gone wrong.”
Eli’s voice became almost inaudible. “What job?”
“They were supposed to scare someone. Follow him, make him think he was being watched, force him to hand over a tape.”
Ryan felt cold.
“Mason.”
Lena nodded.
“Paul said Mason left a bar that night after meeting somebody. Holloway had two vehicles on him. One got ahead. One stayed behind.”
“Who drove the car that hit him?”
Lena shook her head quickly. “Not Holloway. The police report really did name a drunk driver.”
Eli exhaled, but there was no relief.
“Then what went wrong?”
“The driver who was following Mason kept too close. Mason sped up. He was looking in his mirror. The drunk driver crossed center.”
Eli closed his eyes.
“They didn’t hit him,” Ryan said.
“No.” Lena began crying. “But they chased him into fear.”
Eli leaned against a shelf.
For two decades he had imagined random tragedy. Now the randomness had edges.
“Did Victor order it?”
“Paul never spoke to Victor. Holloway got instructions through Doyle Mercer.”
Eli’s eyes opened.
“Doyle.”
Lena nodded.
“Paul kept something.”
She stood, moved sacks of flour, and opened an old metal cabinet.
From behind its back panel she removed a small voice recorder in a plastic bag.
“Why keep this?” Ryan asked.
“Insurance.”
“Against whom?”
“Everybody.”
The recording was damaged, but one call remained clear enough to understand.
Doyle’s younger voice said, “Stay on Carter until he gives up the tape. Scare him if you have to. No police, no hospital, no headlines.”
Another man asked, “And if he runs?”
Doyle answered, “Then make him stop.”
Eli turned away.
Lena said, “I’m sorry.”
He did not respond.
Ryan asked, “Will you testify?”
Lena laughed bitterly. “Against Kane?”
“Yes.”
“I have a business. Employees. Grandchildren.”
Eli looked at her.
Twenty-five years earlier, he might have called her a coward.
Now he said, “I understand.”
Lena stared at him in surprise.
“But if you stay silent,” he continued, “understand that too.”
She swallowed.
“I need time.”
Outside, Ryan expected Eli to rage.
Instead the old man walked to a drainage ditch beside the parking lot and watched minnows dart in shallow water.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Want to talk?”
“No.”
Ryan sat beside him anyway.
After several minutes, Eli pointed at the minnows.
“See how they face upstream?”
Ryan blinked. “You’re giving me a fishing lesson now?”
“If I stop doing normal things, Victor wins twice.”
Ryan looked at the ditch.
The tiny fish held nose-first into the trickle, letting food come toward them.
“Predators set up downstream of that,” Eli said. “Easy meal. Current positions everything.”
“You think about fish every second?”
“Almost.”
“What’s the other second?”
Eli’s mouth tightened.
“Mason.”
Back at Lake Harrison, reporters were waiting.
Someone had leaked that Ryan and Eli were investigating Mason’s death.
A woman shoved a microphone toward Eli.
“Mr. Carter, are you accusing Victor Kane of murder?”
“No.”
“Do you believe your son’s accident was connected to the 2001 scandal?”
“I believe people should stop asking questions they already turned into headlines.”
Another reporter shouted, “Are you still competing in the Masters?”
Eli stopped.
“Yes.”
“Even after the threats?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He looked straight into the nearest camera.
“Because I spent twenty-five years letting fear choose where I stood.”
Then he walked into Marnie’s shop.
Ryan followed.
On the counter sat a package with no return address.
Inside was a single old fishing lure—a red-and-white crankbait.
Eli picked it up and went pale.
“What is it?” Ryan asked.
“My son’s.”
Taped beneath it was a note.
THE SECOND TAPE DIED WITH HIM.
Before they left Lena’s café, she asked Eli one question.
“Did Mason love fishing as much as you did?”
Eli took a long time to answer.
“No. And I spent years pretending that disappointed me.”
“What did he love?”
“Photography. Old cameras. Baseball. Terrible music.”
Ryan smiled despite the tension.
Eli continued, “He fished because I loved it. Took me too long to understand the difference.”
That confession stayed with Ryan. Fishing knowledge, he realized, was not only about rigs and water temperature. It was also about knowing when to stop turning the people you loved into copies of yourself.
At a roadside pond on the return trip, Eli demonstrated a quick bank-fishing pattern for Tyler while they stretched their legs: topwater early, moving bait along windblown edges if fish were active, then a slower Texas rig or finesse presentation when sun rose and pressure increased. He emphasized that a “pattern” was never a commandment.
“Two bites are a clue,” he said. “Five similar bites are a pattern. One lucky fish is just a fish.”
Tyler wrote that down.
Eli frowned. “Stop writing everything.”
May you like
“That one’s going in the video.”
“I regret teaching literate people.”
