Micro Industry's Arc

Chapter 15 of 14

The recommendation was in Silas's pocket, but the ruling was still days away. Monday morning, a young officer stopped him near the station door. "You should hear what folks are saying," she muttered. A colleague who had bet against Silas was whispering through the building. The story was simple and ugly: Silas had coached his witnesses. Told Willa what to log. Told Noel what to remember. If the board heard it, the recommendation meant nothing. Silas found the man at his desk, grinning over a cup. "Four people, one story," the man said. "Awful tidy for a lucky fool." Silas set down his coffee-stained notepad. His hand shook, and the cup tipped, spreading a fresh brown ring across the wood. The man laughed. That laugh followed Silas out the door. He needed proof the witnesses were never coached. Proof they never spoke to each other before the board. He drove to the boarding house and sat across from Amos Kettridge. The blind clerk tapped his white cane once against the floor. "You want dates," Amos said, before Silas asked. "You always want dates." "Every filing Willa, Wren, and Noel made," Silas said. "When each one was logged. Before Friday or after." Amos smiled and turned his tattooed forearm up. "Willa filed her forensic log two years back. Marina's death, logged the same week it happened. Wren's manuscript drafts carry a printer's stamp, dated the day she wrote them." He named each date from memory. "Noel's ferry book is bound. You can't slip a page in a bound book. His entry was inked the night the man ran." Silas understood. The records existed long before Friday. Long before he could have coached anyone. "Nobody could fake all that," he said. "Nobody," Amos agreed. "But a whisper doesn't need to be true. It needs to be heard." That afternoon, Clara Voss came to the station. The young nun kept her hands folded, her habit hemmed with mud. She never gossiped. She only listened, and half the town confessed to her. "Someone told me who started the rumor," she said quietly. "And why. He lost money on you, Silas. That's the whole reason." Silas asked her one thing. Would she tell the board plainly what she knew? Clara nodded. "I'll say only what's true. The dates prove no coaching. The bet proves the motive." Silas laid it before the board that same day. Amos read the filing dates aloud. Each record predated Friday by months or years. Then Clara named the wager without malice. The board saw the shape of it. Skill, not a lie. The head of the board looked at the whispering colleague. "Slander a candidate again," she said, "and you'll answer for it." The rumor died in that room. Silas walked out lighter. The recommendation still held. But now the board knew someone had tried to break him. And they would remember it Friday, when they ruled on the badge.