Vinny McCabe's Arc

Chapter 6 of 9

He needed a name. The stained glass panel proved the townhouse had been real, but the demolition company was the thread that connected the permits to whoever ordered them. Vinny drove to the municipal hall and pulled the permit copy again. The contractor's name was listed at the bottom: Barlow & Sons Demolition. The company yard sat behind a chain-link fence near the rail district. Vinny parked across the street and watched workers moving between stacks of salvaged brick and rusted equipment. A small office shack stood near the gate. He couldn't walk in as himself—not if they'd been paid to stay quiet. He needed credentials. At a print shop two blocks over, he paid a man five dollars to produce a worker badge with a false name and a red stamp that looked official enough to pass a quick glance. The man handed it over without questions. Vinny clipped it to his coat and drove back to the yard. Inside the office, a foreman looked up from a stack of job orders. Vinny said he was reviewing old contracts for a municipal audit and needed to see records from two years back. The foreman hesitated, then pulled a ledger from a metal file cabinet. Vinny scanned the entries until he found the townhouse address. The job had been paid in cash. No client name listed. Just an invoice number and a notation: interior removal only. The foreman asked if that was all. Vinny nodded and left. He sat in his car and wrote down the invoice number. The demolition had been ordered anonymously, paid for without a paper trail, and executed fast enough to erase everything before anyone could ask why. But now he had proof it wasn't routine. Someone had wanted that townhouse gutted specifically, and they'd paid to make sure no one would remember. The network had covered their tracks with permits and cash payments, but they'd left a pattern. Anonymous orders didn't just happen. Someone at Barlow & Sons had taken that money and asked no questions. Vinny looked back at the yard, at the tool chest sitting open near the fence, filled with sledgehammers and pry bars that had torn through walls and floors. The same tools that had destroyed whatever his wife had found inside. He started the engine. The crew who did the work were still here, and one of them would remember what they'd been paid to forget.