Micro Industry's Arc

Chapter 8 of 14

The morning after Clara's warning, the chief inspector called Silas into his office. A folder sat on the desk. The harbor case, stamped closed. "Sign it," the chief said. "The ice worker confessed. It's done." He watched Silas over folded hands. "I hear you're still poking around the agency. A man who can't let go looks obsessed. Obsessed men lose their badges." Silas held the pen. Under his coat, his notepad pressed against his ribs, the pages ringed with old coffee stains. He wanted to say the killer still worked at night. But he had a name and no proof a court would take. He had scraps in a locker. If he argued now, the chief would think him mad. So he signed. The harbor case closed. His badge stayed on his chest. But the case that mattered had no file. He carried that problem to the boarding house, to the back room where Amos Kettridge kept his table. The blind clerk traced a document he could not see. His forearm bore an inked cabinet of drawers, and he seemed to hold every filed paper in town inside his head. "You signed something today," Amos said before Silas sat. "I can hear a closed case in a man's footsteps. Lighter and heavier both." "They shut the harbor case," Silas said. "I can't chase the consultant as a cop now. Not without a reason on paper." Amos smiled. "Then give yourself a reason. Not a murder. Something small and legal." He tapped the table. "That consultant is a visiting worker at the agency. Visiting workers file permits. Permits expire. I remember one that lapsed two years back and was never renewed." Silas leaned forward. "An expired permit lets me knock on the agency door." "A clerk's errand," Amos said. "Nobody calls that obsessed. It's paperwork. And paperwork opens rooms a badge can't." Silas nearly knocked the lamp with his elbow. He caught it. He wrote the permit number Amos gave him, ink smearing across a coffee ring. Now he had a lawful key to the agency, an excuse the chief could never call madness. Outside, Clara Voss waited on the boarding house porch, her habit hemmed with dried mud. She had followed the trail of his worry. "You found a way in," she said. It was not a question. "A permit," Silas said. "Legal. Quiet." Clara's hands stayed folded. "The one who confessed to me is frightened now. They said the reader knows someone's watching." She met his eyes. "Your quiet way won't stay quiet long." Silas felt the cold settle in his gut. He had kept his badge and found a lawful path to the consultant's door. But the killer had sensed the net closing. The permit would get Silas inside. It would not get him there before the consultant moved. He had time, and it was already running out.