Micro Industry's Arc

Chapter 5 of 14

Marko's words followed Silas out the door. Willa Wroth wouldn't take a signature. She had forensic proof the harbor victim was drugged before he died. Silas knew that fact too, but no complaint could explain how. If he stayed silent, her evidence would tear his story open. So he went to find the one person who could give him a real answer. Wren Farley sat on the porch of the boarding house, pen scratching across a page. Ink stained her fingers. Her canvas satchel leaned against the rail. She was the writer whose stories predicted crimes before anyone solved them. Her tale had handed Silas the net weight and the ice worker. He hoped she'd handed him more. "You wrote the drowning," Silas said. Coffee slopped over his notepad as he sat. "Did your story say anything about the man being drugged first?" Wren didn't look up. "Page nine. The killer slipped something bitter in the man's cup. Sleeping powder." She closed her book. "I never told the detective. No one asked." Silas's chest tightened. There it was. The source he needed, and it was already true before the crime happened. "Then that's my answer," he said. "I read it in your story. Same as everything else." "You want me to stand behind that," Wren said. It wasn't a question. She studied him over her wire glasses. "The agency keeps a file on me, Inspector. If I say my fiction told you, they'll test it. Willa first of all." "Then let her test it." Silas leaned forward. "You gave me the net weight before it was found. You can give me this. It's the only truth I have that holds." Wren was quiet a long moment. She opened the satchel and drew out a worn manuscript. She turned to page nine and set it on the table between them. The drugged cup. The bitter powder. Written three days before the murder. "Take it," she said. "Show her the page. Let her match my words to her poison." Silas took the pages to the Main Street Police Station. Willa waited in the front room, white coat starched, poison bottles ranked on her belt. She read page nine twice. Her eyes moved from the manuscript to her own report and back. "Impossible," she said. "But it's here. Same drug. Written first." She looked at Silas hard. "I believe you didn't drug him. I believe you read it." Silas breathed out. His story held. The forged complaint no longer had to explain the drug. Wren's page did. Willa set the manuscript down. "But this raises a worse question, Inspector. If her stories come true, someone at that agency has been reading them for years. Someone who knew the murder before it happened." She tapped her report. "And now I have to find out who."