Chapter 3: The Man Who Attended the Funeral
Leo noticed the black car before he noticed the man.
It was parked across from the school gates on Thursday morning, long and polished, its windows tinted so dark they looked like sheets of wet slate.
Students streamed past it without a second glance.
Leo slowed down.
Maya nearly walked into his back.
“Why are we stopping?”
“That car.”
“It’s a car.”
“It wasn’t here yesterday.”
“Leo, you’re famous now.
Famous people get paranoid.”
“I’m not famous.”
“There are three different video edits of you on the internet, and one has dramatic music.”
Leo didn’t smile.
The rear window of the car slid down a few inches.
A hand rested on the edge of the glass.
A silver wristwatch caught the morning light.
Leo felt something cold move down his spine.
Then the window rose again, and the car pulled away from the curb without hurry, like a predator that had already seen enough.
“Who was that?” Maya asked quietly.
“I don’t know.”
But he did know.
He had seen that watch in his father’s notebooks, and at his father’s funeral, resting on his shoulder as a deep voice promised that Daniel’s work would never be forgotten.
He touched the right temple of his glasses.
Everything was still recording.
It had been recording since Monday.
Leo had decided that after the cafeteria, he would never again walk through a hallway without evidence.
That evening, the doorbell rang at six-fifteen.
Leo’s mother, Anna Bennett, was draining pasta in the kitchen.
Leo was at the table finishing a chemistry worksheet.
“Can you get that?” she called.
He opened the door.
Victor Sloane stood on the welcome mat holding a bouquet of white lilies.
He was tall and lean, perhaps sixty, with silver hair combed back from a calm, intelligent face.
His charcoal coat looked expensive but not showy.
The kind of man who never needed to prove anything, which made him far more unsettling than Principal Harris.
“Leo,” he said warmly.
“Look how tall you’ve grown.”
Leo didn’t move from the doorway.
“Mr. Sloane.”
“Victor, please.
We’ve known each other since you were small enough to sit on my knee.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You wouldn’t.
You were four.”
Sloane smiled.
“May I come in?”
“No.”
The word came out before Leo could soften it.
Sloane’s smile didn’t change, but his eyes did.
Something behind them sharpened.
“Leo, who is it?” his mother called.
She appeared in the hallway, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
When she saw the visitor, the towel went still.
“Victor.”
“Anna.”
He offered the lilies.
“I was in Atlanta for meetings and heard what your son has been through.
I couldn’t stay away.”
She didn’t take the flowers.
“That’s very thoughtful.”
“Please.
Five minutes.”
Leo watched his mother’s face.
She had spent two years learning how to look calm while carrying heavy things.
Now she was doing it again.
“Five minutes,” she said.
They sat in the cramped living room, Sloane on the worn sofa, Anna in the armchair, Leo standing near the bookshelf.
Sloane looked around the apartment, at the peeling paint, the secondhand furniture, the stacked boxes.
His expression was gentle and sorrowful.
“I had no idea,” he said.
“I should have checked on you both.
After Daniel passed, everything happened so quickly, and I let you slip away.
That’s a failure I’ll regret for the rest of my life.”
Leo said nothing.
“I understand investigators have contacted you,” Sloane continued.
“I’m not here to interfere.
I welcome any investigation.
I’m simply concerned that Daniel’s work is being misunderstood.”
“Misunderstood how?” Anna asked.
Sloane folded his hands.
“Daniel was brilliant, but he could be impulsive.
In his final months, he became convinced that he was surrounded by conspiracies.
He was grieving his own mother, overworked, and exhausted.
He wrote things he didn’t mean.
He recorded things out of context.”
“Out of context,” Leo repeated.
“It happens to everyone under stress.”
“Daniel said you wanted to sell surveillance technology to people who bury evidence.”
“Daniel said many things.”
Leo’s jaw tightened.
“He said it on video.”
For the first time, Sloane paused.
It lasted only a second.
Then he smiled again, a little more sadly.
“So you’ve seen it.”
“Yes.”
“Then you know your father was a man of principle.
I respected that.
But principle without practicality often hurts the people it claims to protect.”
He leaned forward slightly.
“Let me be straightforward.
Your family has struggled since Daniel’s death.
Your mother works long hours at a laboratory that barely pays her what she deserves.
You’re a gifted young man who should be thinking about universities, not subpoenas.”
“We’re doing fine,” Anna said.
“Of course you are.”
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