Chapter 12 - Room B
"June knows where the copies are," Lucie said. "Why didn't she tell us before?"
Valérie stared after the departing bus. "Because you don't say certain things out loud until you're sure who's listening."
By breakfast, Briar Creek was under a weather warning. Thunder rolled over the rooftops. Staff hurried to secure basement windows, and a water leak closed the old records corridor.
Raines arranged for Lucie and Valérie to join an emergency cleanup crew. The assignment was official. His reason for assigning them wasn't.
"The left stairwell," he murmured. "Room B has been locked since a pipe burst last year. You've got twelve minutes before inspection."
They descended past a boiler that rattled like an animal inside a cage. A faded sign read RECORDS—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Beyond it, a heavy door stood behind a stack of broken chairs.
Valérie reached into her sock and produced a thin piece of brass. "Duplicate key. Thomas made me hold it after he realized Mercer had compromised the chapel inventory."
"You could've given me that yesterday."
"Yesterday I wasn't sure you'd leave Nico alive if you had to choose between him and the evidence."
Lucie looked at her. "I don't punish children for their parents."
Valérie opened the door without answering.
Room B contained five shelves of damp boxes and one metal cabinet. Its bottom drawer held carbon copies of transport orders: Denise Bell, four other missing women, and a long chain of signatures from prison officials, county contractors, and the prosecutor's office.
At the back lay a handwritten ledger, its margins crowded with initials and dollar amounts.
Lucie turned to a page dated seven years earlier. Beside Thomas Navarro's name was a payment of eighty thousand dollars.
"He did take the money," she whispered.
May you like
Valérie touched another line. "Look who authorized it."
The signature below Thomas's payment belonged to Mara Finch.
