Hopsworth's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

By morning, the county car was already parked at the gate. Hopsworth watched a man in a county jacket walk the lot with a clipboard, snapping photos of the scattered cups. The pink hotline number caught the sun on every one. The inspector tapped a cup against his pen and frowned. Then he said the name of the rehab center out loud, like a question Hopsworth did not want asked. Hopsworth had rolled the chain-link gate halfway shut and dropped the stop sign across the drive. He wanted the inspector funneled, not wandering. It did not work. The man stepped around it and kept walking, cup in one hand, phone in the other, comparing the number on the cup to a listing on his screen. Then he pulled a folded paper from his clipboard. Ornate borders. Official seal. He held it up so Hopsworth could read the word at the top. Records request, signed and stamped, naming both addresses on the same line. The drive-in. The center. Linked on county paper now, in ink. Hopsworth took the paper. He kept his face still. The inspector got back in the county car and drove off, leaving the document in his hand. The tip had worked. The beer was gone. But the thread he had spent years keeping cut had just been tied, by his own hand, into a knot a stranger could pull.