Micro Industry's Arc

Chapter 3 of 14

The confession was logged, and Silas's name sat on top of it. By morning the whole town knew he cracked the harbor case. That was the trap. The chief inspector had summoned him for nine o'clock. One question would end him: how did you know? Silas had no answer that didn't sound like madness or guilt. A writer dreamed it up, sir. He knocked over his coffee cup rehearsing the words. He needed a real source, something on paper. He went to the boarding house and found Amos Kettridge in the back room, tapping his white cane against the floor while he counted coins by touch. The filing cabinet tattooed up his arm caught the lamplight. Silas set a dollar on the table. "I need a record," Silas said. "Something that shows how I could've found the ice worker. Legally. Any complaint filed against him. Anything." Amos smiled without turning his head. "You want a trail you can walk in daylight." He tapped his forearm twice. "A dock worker filed a noise complaint. Said a stranger threatened him over a debt, eleven days back. Never signed by name. I have it filed all the same." Silas wrote it down, hand shaking. A paper complaint. A reason to look. A story he could tell out loud. But Amos raised a finger. "One more secret, free. The pharmacist asked me the same thing yesterday. Willa Wroth." Silas turned. The woman stood in the doorway. Silver-streaked hair, white coat, small bottles clipped to her belt. She helped the detective agency name how the dead had died. She studied Silas the way she studied a corpse. "The victim didn't drown clean," Willa said. "There was a drug in him first. I logged it this morning." She stepped closer. "You named the killer before I named the poison. I'd like to know how." Silas felt the floor tilt. "A complaint pointed me at him. That's all." "No," Willa said. "A complaint says a man was angry. It doesn't say he tied a net weight to a body no one had searched." She tilted her head. "You knew a detail even I didn't have. That interests me more than it frightens you." Silas made his choice. He took the noise complaint to the chief inspector at nine. He laid it flat and named the debt, the threat, the timing. He said instinct did the rest. The chief inspector read it twice, then nodded slow. "Clean work, Munk," he said. "You've earned a longer look." Silas walked out with his name safe and his badge one step closer. Then he saw Willa waiting on the steps, hands folded, patient. She had let him pass the room. She had not let go of the question. "Your paper fooled him," she said. "It won't fool me. Come to the agency. I'll show you what killed that man, and you'll tell me the truth of how you knew."