Tempus White's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

Tempus sat at a wooden table in the public records office, three leather ledgers stacked in front of him. His paws traced down columns of auction house transactions from the past month. The private buyer had left no name, but money always left a trail. He wound his watch counterclockwise twice and flipped to the next page. There—a payment processed through First Continental Bank, account number partially visible. His pink eyes narrowed as he copied the digits into his notebook. The bank kept records. Records had names. Names had addresses. He stood up fast enough to knock his chair backward. The librarian glanced over but said nothing. Tempus gathered the ledgers and returned them to their shelf, his chest tight with something he hadn't felt in weeks. Hope tasted bitter on his tongue, but he swallowed it anyway. The timepiece was closer now than it had been yesterday, and tomorrow it would be closer still. Outside, rain drummed against the pavement in sheets. Tempus pulled his vest tight and headed toward the old estate where his family's vault had been broken into decades ago. The storm drains would be flooding by now, carrying debris and forgotten things through the tunnels beneath the streets. He stopped at a bent mailbox near the property line, its metal slot corroded but still functional. Dark indigo and magenta paint peeled from its surface, and gold trim lined its base. His grandfather had mentioned it once—how small objects sometimes washed into these boxes during heavy rain, trapped against the back panel where mail carriers never looked. Tempus wrenched open the slot and reached inside. His paw closed around something wet and rectangular. He pulled out a water-damaged envelope, the ink on its surface nearly gone. But he could still make out three numbers. Part of an address. Back at the estate's outbuilding, he found the old drying cabinet his family had used for preserving documents. Playing cards decorated its wooden doors—indigo, magenta, gold, and white suits arranged in strange patterns. He placed the envelope inside and adjusted the vents to let air circulate without destroying what remained of the paper. The cabinet would take hours to work, but he'd learned patience over forty-three years. While he waited, he walked to the fence line where a decorative post stood guard. A small ledger box had been built into its side, and a curved hook held a visitor log. He flipped through the pages, checking dates from the week of the theft. Someone had scratched out a name on the night his grandfather's timepiece disappeared. The ink was gone, but the indentation remained in the paper. He ran his paw over it slowly, feeling the grooves. Three letters. An initial, maybe. Or part of a company name. The rain stopped as evening settled in. Tempus returned to the drying cabinet and retrieved the envelope. The paper crumbled at the edges, but the address fragment had survived—782, followed by a street name he couldn't read. He copied it into his notebook beneath the bank account numbers. Two pieces of evidence now instead of one. The fence post ledger gave him a third. He wound his watch counterclockwise and felt something shift in his chest. This was how trails warmed again—one scrap at a time, one clue building on another until the picture came clear. The private buyer had a name somewhere in these fragments. The timepiece had an address. And Tempus White had forty-three years of practice at refusing to quit. Tomorrow he would visit the bank. Tomorrow the search would move forward again.