Micro Industry's Arc

Chapter 7 of 14

Silas had a name and a killer, but no way to prove it. His evidence lived on scraps and torn cards. He spread them across his station desk and reached for his coffee. His elbow caught the notepad. Coffee ran across three cards. The ink on the top one bled to a gray smear. He swore and mopped it with his sleeve. The desk was too small. He had knocked over his own case twice this week. He needed a quiet place to lay it all out. Somewhere no one could ruin it, or read it. He carried the mess to the boarding house. Amos Kettridge kept a back room there. The blind clerk sat at his table, fingers tracing a folded paper he could not see but seemed to know. The filing cabinet inked up his forearm caught the lamplight. "Inspector," Amos said before Silas spoke. "You spill more than you file. I hear the coffee before I hear you." "I need a place to lay out a case," Silas said. "Flat. Dry. Locked. My desk keeps eating my evidence." Amos tapped his cane once. "The station has lockers by the back hall. Number twenty-seven's empty. Steel door, numbered latch. Nobody's claimed it in years." He smiled. "A secret keeps better behind a lock than under a coffee cup." Silas went back and found the locker. It stood in a dim corner, gray and dented, the number stamped on a blue plate. He worked the latch open. Inside was dry and dark and his alone. He laid the cards along the shelf, in order, weighted flat. No wind. No coffee. No sleepy clerk to glance over his shoulder. For the first time the whole case sat clear before his eyes. A soft voice spoke behind him. "You look like a man hiding something." He turned. A young nun stood there, her habit hemmed with dried mud. Clara Voss. Half the town whispered its worst to her in the confession booth, and she forgot none of it. Silas had never wanted her attention. Her eyes went to the cards, then to the name on top. "That name," she said quietly. "Someone confessed a fear to me once. That the wrong person was reading things meant to stay buried." She folded her hands. "They said the reader visited the agency after dark." Silas's mouth went dry. "You knew?" "I know pieces. I don't know what they build." She looked at his locked locker. "You do now. Keep it shut, Inspector. That name has a key to more doors than yours." She left. Silas shut the steel door and turned the latch. His evidence was safe at last. But now he knew the consultant moved at night, into a room Willa thought was locked. The killer wasn't waiting to be caught. The killer was still working.