"I know what's there," I said. "I built the manifold."
I signed the provisional receivership papers with the cheap plastic pen Harris handed me. My fingers were black around the nails from the transformer soot, and the ink bled slightly into the coarse paper. When I stood, my knees were stiff from crawling through the drainage culvert, but my spine was straight.
We came out into the corridor just as the side security doors opened. Clara was standing near the metal detector, wrapped in an oversized trench coat someone had draped over her emerald silk dress. The hem of the gown was spattered with wet grit from the courthouse stairs. Her hair, perfectly curled two hours earlier, hung loose against her collar, and the heavy diamond choker Richard had bought with the harbor reserve lay twisted against her throat.
When she saw me, she took two quick steps forward, her fingers knotting in the fabric of her coat. Her voice was thin, stripped of the brittle laughter she had aimed at my jacket in the ballroom.
"Thomas," she said, her breath catching. "They won't let me into the holding cells. The detectives took his phone, and the bank froze the hotel accounts before we even got down to the street. I didn't know about the valves. You have to believe me. He told me the state inspectors signed off on the pump failure. He told me you walked away because you were guilty."
I stopped four feet from her. Frank stood by the exterior glass, his hands clasped behind his back, looking out into the rain.
"You knew what the shift logs looked like, Clara," I said, my voice level and quiet in the empty hallway. "You helped me file them every Friday for four years before the fire. You knew Marcus never missed a relief pressure check in twenty-two years on that dock. You didn't believe Richard because he had proof. You believed him because he had a lease on the forty-second floor and a lease on you."
Her face went pale, the last remnant of her practiced composure crumbling. "Thomas, please. I have nowhere to go tonight. My name is on the apartment lease at the tower, and the management company told security to change the deadbolts until the grand jury subpoena is processed. What am I supposed to do?"
"You do what I did eighteen months ago," I said, reaching past her to push open the heavy exterior door. "You find an honest pair of shoes, you find an honest room, and you stop telling people that other men broke what you chose to throw away."
I walked down the granite steps into the downpour without looking back. Behind me, the glass door swung shut with a dull hydraulic click, cutting off her voice entirely.
Frank opened the rear door of the Lincoln. "First stop, Thomas?"
"East 14th Street," I told him. "Mrs. Reyes."
We drove across the low drawbridge into the working-class wards behind the rail yards. The houses here were small, narrow-frame bungalows built during the ship-building boom of the fifties, their shingles dark with decades of sea spray and coal dust. At 3:15 AM, the street was dead silent except for the gutters running full toward the storm drains.
A single yellow porch light burned at the end of the block.
Elena Reyes answered the door on the second knock. She was wearing a thick wool cardigan over a faded cotton nightgown, her gray-streaked hair tied back with an elastic band. Her eyes were wide, shadowed with the permanent exhaustion that widows of industrial disasters carry like a second pulse. When she saw me standing under the porch awning, her hand tightened against the edge of the screen door.
"Thomas," she whispered. There was no anger in the word, only the terrible, defensive weariness of a woman who had spent a year and a half being told her husband had died because of his own crewโs carelessness. "It's three in the morning. If this is about the insurance appeal, the company lawyer said there is no more money in the escrow fund."
"The company lawyer lied, Elena," I said gently.
I didn't step inside. I stayed on the porch floorboards, water dripping from the hem of my trousers. Frank walked up the steps behind me, carrying the blue-backed folder containing the original indenture records.
"Richard Vance was arrested an hour ago by the port police," I said. "The telemetry tapes from the South Canal manifold were recovered intact tonight. Marcus didn't miss the pressure spike. He didn't leave the pilot valve open. Richard Vance sent an administrative override from his private terminal that locked the nitrogen flush closed while Marcus was trying to vent the tank."
Elena stared at me. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her gaze dropped to the blue backing of the court document in my hand, then moved slowly up to my eyes, searching for a lie, an exaggeration, or a false comfort.