Chapter 4 - THE SIGNATURE ON THE LOCKER
Dominic did not deny that his credentials had been used to open the storage locker. He denied going there.
"I was with the district attorney's investigators," he said over the phone. "They can confirm the time."
"Then who had your credentials?"
"Victor could authorize access to my office accounts. Some of those permissions were still active when I dismissed him. I should have disabled them sooner."
I sat at the little kitchen table and pressed my thumb against the chipped edge. "You keep saying that."
"Because it's true."
"It doesn't make Lucia any less missing."
"No."
"Or Mateo any less frightened."
"No."
His refusal to fight me made me angrier than an excuse might have. I had spent years building my ability to withstand dismissal. I was less practiced at hearing a powerful man admit something without asking to be thanked.
"Can you tell me what the third book contains?" he asked.
"I don't have it."
"I didn't ask whether you have it."
I took a breath. "It names people responsible for transfers. According to Marsh. She wouldn't give me more."
"Good. She shouldn't."
I closed my eyes. "Dominic, do you understand why I'm struggling to believe you?"
"Because the man who hurt you worked for me. Because I signed papers I didn't read. Because my name is on a program that appears to have used families as leverage. I'd struggle too."
I looked through the apartment window at a strip of pale winter sky. "Then let the investigators do their job."
"I will."
After we hung up, I realized he had not asked for my address. I had expected him to demand it; I had been ready with a refusal. Instead, he had given me information and left my location alone. The relief that followed embarrassed me. Ordinary restraint should not have felt miraculous.
That afternoon Marsh and another investigator met me at a neutral office. They had retrieved security footage from the locker facility. It showed a person in a hooded coat using an electronic authorization code. The camera above the desk had captured only the lower half of the person's face, but the hand visible at the keypad wore a silver watch with a cracked face.
Gerald Voss.
"Are you certain?" Marsh asked.
"About the watch, yes. The man in the photograph at the shelter has one. I saw it when he interviewed me. It was damaged along the left edge."
The investigator wrote that down. "We'll seek better identification."
"He might be a victim," I said. "The shelter director told me he was going to expose the missing supplies."
"That's one possibility," Marsh said. "It's also possible he was trying to move evidence before anyone could inspect it. We have to test both."
I nodded. The old me might have called that indecision. The new me understood it as a way to protect the truth from whatever story I wanted most.
Later, Felicia accompanied me to visit Mateo in the hospital. He was sitting upright with a nebulizer beside the bed, watching a science program about volcanic islands. Rosa sat near the window knitting a scarf the color of oranges.
"You look better," I said.
"I slept twelve hours," he replied. "I think they put sleep in the medicine."
"That sounds like a useful invention."
He smiled, then glanced toward the door. "Is Mr. Moretti angry at me?"
"For what?"
"I heard things I wasn't supposed to. I went near the loading dock because I was looking for my inhaler, and a man was arguing with a driver. He said if the girls refused to get on the bus, they'd mark them as owing placement fees. Then the driver laughed."
Rosa's knitting stopped.
"You told that to the police?" I asked.
"Some of it. I couldn't remember the words before."
"You can tell the advocate whenever you're ready. You haven't done anything wrong."
Mateo picked at a loose thread on his blanket. "The driver wore a ring with a blue stone. He smelled like peppermint."
I knew the ring. Victor wore one on his right hand, a gift from Dominic after a security operation three years earlier. But it was not Victor at the loading dock. Mateo knew Victor well enough to recognize him.
"Was the driver older?" I asked.
"Maybe forty. His beard was white at the chin. He said his name was Benny."
I wrote it down but did not question him further. The child advocate arrived soon afterward, and I left them to speak privately. In the hallway, I told Felicia what Mateo had remembered, then asked her to relay it to Marsh.
When I reached the sidewalk, snow had begun to fall. I stood under the hospital awning, waiting for a rideshare. A dark sedan slowed near the curb. My body tensed before the window opened.
A woman leaned toward me. She looked about fifty, with short salt-and-pepper hair and a serious mouth.
"Elena Vega?"
I stepped backward. "Who are you?"
"My name is Mara Serrano. Lucia is my daughter. Elena Collins told me you might know something."
I did not approach the car. "Please call the police if you have information."
Mara nodded. "I have. I'm not asking you to get inside. I only wanted to tell you why my daughter took that job."
She held up a photograph through the window. Lucia stood outside a brick apartment building with a little girl balanced on one hip.
"She wanted to support her sister and this baby," Mara said. "They told her she'd earn enough in six months to pay a medical debt. Instead, they made her sign a paper saying she owed training, transportation, housing. Then her phone stopped working."
My throat tightened. "Did you speak with her afterward?"
"Once. She called from a number I didn't know. She said there was a dormitory outside Newburgh, that the windows were painted so nobody could see in. Someone interrupted the call."
"Did she give you an address?"
"She said a name. Coldwater House."
I promised nothing except that I would give the information to Marsh. Mara thanked me for listening, which seemed inadequate to the moment. After she drove away, I sat on a bench and cried for a young woman I'd never met. I cried because I had carried bread to people whose names were turned into numbers, and because I now understood the difference between a charity's glossy brochure and its locked doors.
The next morning the news reported that investigators had searched a warehouse operated by a subcontractor of Moretti Civic Relief. Several workers were found living in cramped rooms without access to their own identification documents. Authorities arranged medical care and independent legal services. None of the articles named Coldwater House.
I read every line twice. I did not see Lucia's name. I did not tell myself she was safe.
Dominic appeared on a local television station that evening. He had not been invited to discuss charity. He had been asked about a waterfront development agreement. Instead, he announced that he was removing himself from the charity's board pending an independent investigation, releasing financial records through counsel, and placing discretionary funds under temporary administration by an outside trustee.
The interviewer asked whether he was admitting wrongdoing.
"I'm admitting that people were harmed under an organization bearing my name," he said. "That requires scrutiny, not a speech."
I watched from my kitchen. His expression was controlled, but his voice sounded rough. I wondered how much of that came from shame and how much from fear of losing the empire he'd built. I decided I did not need to choose an answer that night.
Two hours later Marsh called. The search of the warehouse had recovered a small batch of employee files and a handwritten notebook. One page carried the names of all the women placed through Fairline during the past year. Beside Lucia's name was a date, and beside that a location.
COLDWATER — TRANSFER PENDING.
"Does that mean she's alive?" I asked.
"It means someone recorded a transfer. We can't make a promise about her condition. But we're coordinating with agencies in that county to check the property immediately."
I sat down because my legs were shaking.
"There's something else," Marsh said. "We found the third book. Gerald had divided it into parts. One portion was under the false bottom of a drawer in his office. Another was in a sealed envelope at his attorney's firm."
"Then you have the names."
"We have names and transactions. Now we need witnesses who can explain what the entries mean. Gerald is alive, and we've located him. He has requested protection in exchange for cooperation."
I exhaled. Somewhere a radio played in the pharmacy downstairs, an old song about getting home before dark.
"Does the book name Victor?" I asked.
"Yes."
"What about Dominic?"
A pause.
"There are entries authorized with his signature. We are investigating whether he understood their purpose."
I stared at the blank wall for a long time after we hung up. I had wanted proof that Victor was the only monster. Instead, the evidence suggested a network of people with different degrees of knowledge, different levels of responsibility, and one shared habit of looking away.
At midnight a message arrived on my prepaid phone. It contained only a photograph of the east hallway's newly repaired window. On the sill was a blue stone ring.
May you like
Below it someone had written: HE KNOWS WHICH DOORS YOU LOCK.
I sent the image to Marsh. Then I checked the apartment's deadbolt twice, not because I believed a lock could solve everything, but because tonight I was allowed to have one that belonged to me.
