Micro Industry's Arc

Chapter 10 of 14

Silas stood in the empty doorway one more day. The consultant was gone. His chain of evidence held, but it named a man across the river. Then Willa said something that changed the shape of the hunt. "He cleared the shelves," she said. "But he didn't clear the discard bin." Consultants dumped rejected samples in a metal bin behind the agency. If the consultant had thrown away anything from Marina's case, it might still be there. Silas drove to Amos Kettridge's back room first. He needed to know what to look for. The blind clerk sat at his table, cane by his knee, the inked drawers dark on his forearm. He heard Silas rush in and frowned. "You're breathing hard," Amos said. "Men who breathe like that are about to do something foolish." "I need Marina Onwards's evidence list," Silas said. "Everything logged from her hotel room two years back." Amos tilted his head and opened a drawer inside his mind. "A glass. A pill bottle. And a scarf, gold, tested for residue." He tapped the table once. "The glass and bottle got logged into the vault. The scarf came back clean. Discarded." "Then the scarf is the one thing he'd toss and forget," Silas said. His pen skidded across a coffee ring on his notepad. "Clean means nobody guarded it. But the drug on his hands touched it." "If it's still in that bin," Amos said. "Bins get emptied, Silas." Silas didn't wait. He drove back to the agency and found the metal bin behind it. Papers, cracked vials, old gloves. He dug with both hands. His coat sleeve caught a nail and tore. He kept digging. Near the bottom, folded and stained, lay a gold scarf. Willa came out and took it with tongs. She carried it inside and ran her test. Silas watched her drops turn the cloth faint blue. She looked up. "Same compound. The killer handled this scarf with the drug on his fingers." She met his eyes. "This wasn't logged. This wasn't cleared. It's the one thing he couldn't erase, because he thought it was worthless." Silas felt his case turn solid. Not access. Not a log. A murder weapon's trace, in the killer's own hand, on a thing he'd thrown away. "Now it doesn't just name him," Silas said. "It convicts him." He drove the scarf, sealed, to the Main Street Police Station. He carried it past the front desk and set it on the chief inspector's table. The chief inspector read Willa's report twice. He didn't laugh. He didn't wave Silas off. "You reopened a closed case without orders," the chief inspector said. He held up the sealed scarf. "And you brought me the first thing that could win it." He set it down. "The man's fled. Find where he ran. Bring him back, and we'll talk about that badge." Silas had his proof at last. Now he needed the road the killer took.