I stood up, resting my weight on the desk until the joint held.
"If Whitcomb wants to claim Sloan was running an authorized audit," I said, "take two of your men and open the junction box under booth twelve. If you find only my envelope, Sloan walks. But if you find other bank envelopes from the last two months, Whitcomb can't bury the docket without hanging himself from the same ceiling."
Callahan didn't hesitate.
He picked up the notched brass key, closed his thick fingers around it, and turned toward the heavy iron door that led back into the cold belly of the tunnels.
"Reyes," Callahan barked into his collar set as he shoved the door wide into the darkness.
"Meet me at the north service gate. Bring the heavy bolt cutters and the county property seals. We’re going under the floor."
The concrete tunnel beneath Booth 12 smelled of damp lye, rotting timber, and sixty years of accumulated electrical grease.
Captain Callahan held the heavy halogen lantern low, its beam cutting across the warped floorboards until the light hit the rusted flange of the junction box.
Lieutenant Elena Reyes dropped to his knees on the salt-eaten ballast stone, wedging the crowbar under the cedar runners.
Beside him, Officer Novak kept his back pressed against the service railing, his eyes locked on the dark corridor behind us, his service weapon unstrapped and resting loose in its holster.
"The seal on the hasp is modern," Reyes said, his breathing loud and shallow inside the narrow void.
He pointed the tip of the pry bar at a bright zinc padlock.
"Master lock, series four hundred. This didn't come out of any depot supply cage. It's retail hardware."
"Pop it," Callahan ordered.
I went only as far as the protected service passage, where an officer placed a stool against the brick. The active track area remained beyond a secured boundary. Years of workshop experience did not give me the balance of a young man or permission to wander around electrical equipment. Reyes told me where to sit, and I obeyed without treating the instruction as an insult. Its purpose had been explained. I could see the hazard it addressed.
The property officer compared the space with the old plan. Some timber had been replaced since Peter worked there, but the conduit followed the same route. Callahan photographed the entrance and the access authorization. The box stood on a raised ledge above a dark water stain. It was an old housing with a newer lock, the kind of detail a maintenance man noticed before he decided whether it mattered.
They paused before cutting anything. Reyes spoke to the prosecutor by radio relay while another officer kept the recorder running. I could not hear every word, and later I would rely on the official record for the legal steps. I remember the waiting. A drop of water struck the same metal surface every few seconds. My knee throbbed in time with it until I shifted the stool and broke the rhythm.
Permission confirmed and the necessary authority documented, they proceeded. Nobody cheered when the shackle separated. The sound was ugly and abrupt. Reyes kept the pieces with the other physical evidence. I watched him place a scale beside the box before photographing the contents. They were treating the place as something that would need to be explained to people who had never smelled this corridor or held a lamp in shaking hands.
Five envelopes lay above the water line. Their edges were worn, but the paper remained dry. There was also a ledger with a blue emblem on its cover. I recognized the kind sold at office supply counters near the courthouse. It was not a secret cipher or an expensive account book. Whoever used it had expected secrecy to come from the place it was hidden and the authority of the men who could discourage questions.
One envelope had been folded the way Teresa folded her pay packets, with the corner tucked beneath the flap. I caught myself leaning forward and stopped. A familiar fold did not establish ownership. I told Reyes about it anyway, carefully. He wrote down my observation and said the contents and other records would be compared. His answer disappointed me for a moment. Then I recognized it as the same care that had kept my own envelope from becoming just a story told by an old man.
The steel jaws of the bolt cutters bit into the shackle.