Micro Industry's Arc

Chapter 11 of 14

Silas had his proof. Now he needed the road. The scarf convicted the killer, but the man had fled with a day's head start. Silas stood outside the station and turned in a slow circle. River one way. Highway the other. A wrong guess let the killer vanish for good. He needed someone who remembered every path a man could take out of town. He drove to the boarding house. Amos Kettridge sat in his back room, cane by his knee, the inked drawers dark on his forearm. The blind clerk had helped Silas before, pulling filed dates from memory like coins from a pocket. He always charged a dollar. He always heard too much. "You're pacing," Amos said. "Men who pace have already lost something." "The consultant ran," Silas said. "I don't know which way. Ferry logs, permits, anything. What did he file before he left?" Amos folded his hands. "A dollar first. Then the drawer opens." Silas dug through his coat and set a crumpled bill on the table. His sleeve knocked a cold cup of coffee. It tipped and ran across his notepad, pooling into the old rings already stained there. He grabbed the pad and shook it. "Every case I've ever solved is on this thing," he muttered. "And it drinks more coffee than I do." Amos almost smiled. He tilted his head and opened the drawer in his mind. "Two weeks back, your consultant filed a change of address. Most men wouldn't. But he owned a lockbox at the river dock, and the law makes you list where to send its contents." Silas leaned in. "Where." "A town upriver. North. He listed it himself, in his own hand." Amos tapped the table once. "A man clearing his shelves to disappear made one mistake. He told the county where to mail his box." Silas wrote it fast, ink cutting through the wet coffee. North. Upriver. Not the highway. Not across. "He gave himself away filling out a form," Silas said. "Paper remembers," Amos said. "Even when the man forgets he signed it." Silas drove the address straight to the Main Street Police Station. He set the notepad page on the chief inspector's table beside the sealed scarf report. "He ran north, upriver," Silas said. "Filed a forwarding address two weeks ago. It's on record. It's his own handwriting." The chief inspector read the page. He picked up the phone and called the county line north of the river. Then he set it down. "They've got a man matching him at a rented room," he said. "You found the road, Munk." Silas felt the ground turn solid under him. "So I bring him back." The chief inspector looked at him a long moment. "You don't have the authority to cross county lines and make that arrest. Not yet." He slid a form across the table. "You'd need a badge for that."