Vinny McCabe's Arc

Chapter 5 of 9

He sat on a bench outside the records building and studied the permit dates again. Four days between her death and the demolition filing. That meant paperwork started before she died, maybe a week earlier. Maybe more. He closed his notebook and looked back at the stone facade. Someone inside that building had processed those permits without asking questions. Someone had stamped them, filed them, made them official. He needed to know who. Vinny went back inside and waited at the counter until the same clerk appeared. He asked if the inspector who signed off on the townhouse was still working. The clerk checked a logbook and said the inspector had retired eight months ago. Vinny asked for a forwarding address. The clerk said personnel records weren't public. Vinny thanked him and left. Outside, he stopped at the side entrance where a maintenance worker was unloading supplies. He asked if anyone knew where the old inspector lived. The worker said he'd moved out of state. Vinny slipped him two dollars and asked if he remembered anything about the townhouse job. The worker shook his head and went back to unloading. Vinny walked around to the alley behind the building. A row of metal bins stood against the brick wall, overflowing with discarded files and construction debris. He pulled back a tarp covering one of the bins and found fragments of old permits, water-damaged forms, torn blueprints. At the bottom, wedged between two cracked wooden boards, he saw the edge of a stained glass panel. He pulled it out carefully. The glass was intact—muted reds and yellows, a violet border along one side. It was too ornate for standard construction. He turned it over and saw a fragment of an address etched into the lead frame. The same townhouse number. He carried the panel back to his car and set it on the passenger seat. The townhouse had been gutted, rebuilt, and cleared in three weeks. But they'd missed this. Someone had thrown it out with the rest of the debris, and it had ended up here instead of a landfill. The stained glass didn't prove what his wife had found inside. But it proved the place had existed before the demolition, that it had been real, lived-in, specific. The network had erased the interior, paid off the inspector, and filed the permits to make it all look routine. But they hadn't controlled everything. He started the engine and pulled onto the street. He had a piece of the townhouse now. And he knew exactly where to start looking for the rest.