Chapter 8 - A Signature With No Hand
The loading order was an excellent forgery until Mave looked at the margins.
Agent Ortiz showed her a copy at the precinct the next morning. Mave sat beside Miriam, with June on the other side of the table. The document showed her studio's logo, her name in an elegant scripted signature, and an instruction approving the movement of refrigerated goods through Pier Nineteen's sealed corridor. A driver claimed a woman had presented it at the gate and said she was the architect responsible for the site.
“I wasn't there,” Mave said.
“We're asking you to help us understand the document, not to prove a negative by yourself,” Ortiz replied.
Mave looked closer. “This isn't our invoice template. Whoever made it used the cover page of a historic theater proposal. See that little crooked line beside the date? Our old printer caused it. We fixed the printer in August.”
June leaned forward. “And the logo has a green border. We changed it to blue when we incorporated the partnership.”
Mave turned the page. “The signature is mine, but it came from a drawing submission I signed last year. Someone copied it. I always initial the bottom right corner of a loading inspection I actually conduct, and I never describe a corridor as sealed if I've just photographed it in use.”
Ortiz didn't declare the matter solved. She asked where the older proposal had been stored, which client had received it, and whether the studio had supplied electronic signatures on earlier foundation contracts. Mave answered each question as carefully as she could. The task force would have to authenticate the files, examine the driver, and establish who had assembled the false order. Her observations were a lead, not a verdict.
On the way out, June pressed the elevator button three times. “I hate that someone can put your name on a lie and make you spend your own morning explaining it.”
“So do I.” Mave held her bag closer. “But I used to tell architects that a missing measurement is a missing measurement, not whatever answer helps the contractor. I'm trying to follow my own advice.”
At the same hour, a different set of documents was being opened in another government building. Vivien, accompanied by Miriam's colleague, submitted the foundation reports she'd signed, along with correspondence showing when she had asked for supporting invoices and been refused. She acknowledged that she'd lent her name to a public charity without checking it as carefully as she should have. She did not ask investigators to pretend she had been powerless. She asked them to distinguish her negligence from approvals issued after her access had been revoked.
Her father called while she was still in the building. She answered with her attorney present and put him on speaker.
“Vivien, sweetheart,” Rafe said. His voice possessed the bland warmth of a man accustomed to having other people finish his sentences. “There has been a misunderstanding. Come home. We'll settle this before the press makes it ugly.”
“I am home,” she said. “Just not in your house.”
“You have a husband who runs half the docks and a sister who needs a doctor. Do you really want to alienate everyone who can help you?”
“Iris has a doctor. And a lawyer. So do I.”
Rafe's tone sharpened. “You have no idea what you're setting in motion.”
“That's why I'm asking questions instead of signing what you put in front of me.”
She ended the call. Later, she would tell Mave she'd been shaking so badly she'd had to set the phone on the table. The victory was not that she'd sounded brave. It was that she'd spoken, shaken and all.
That afternoon, the task force searched Vale's former security office and a leased storage unit under warrants. Investigators recovered courier uniforms, copies of studio correspondence, and communications connecting Vale with the men who had forced entry into the townhouse. Mave received an update about those facts because they directly concerned the threats against her. She was not told everything found in the unit. She didn't need to be.
Silas called once, through his lawyer, to ask whether she would meet him at Miriam's office. This time Mave agreed. Not because she wanted comfort. Because the documents had left one question unanswered: what had he done when he first noticed the missing medical shipments?
He arrived without a coat, looking as though the weight of it might be too much. He kept his distance across the conference table.
“Last winter,” Silas began, “my accountant flagged an unusual variance in Creel's refrigerated freight invoices. I asked Vale to look into it.”
“And?”
“He told me the clinic had lost stock during a power failure. He gave me paperwork. I believed him because believing him meant I could keep the contract.”
“You knew the mileage was wrong,” Mave said.
“Yes. I knew there was likely fraud in the routing charges. I authorized the invoices anyway. Later I suspected the stock wasn't spoiled at all. I did nothing.”
“Because confronting it would cost you money.”
“And because I didn't want to know what else it would cost.”
Mave looked down at her hands. “You told me you were working nights to keep people safe.”
“Some nights I was. That doesn't erase the others.”
“Did you ever plan to tell me about Vivien before the television did?”
He stared at the tabletop. “I planned conversations. I didn't set a day. I kept choosing later.”
“Then that was the plan. Later forever.”
Silas's face tightened. “Yes.”
She had imagined this conversation while trying to sleep, imagined him producing a perfect reason and her anger collapsing into relief. The truth offered no relief at all. It did offer solid ground.
When he rose to leave, he did not ask her to wait for him. Miriam's colleague appeared at the door and asked Silas to take a call from his defense attorney. He listened in the hallway, shoulders straight, then returned to collect his folder.
“What is it?” Mave asked.
“The government is preparing charges related to the shipping contracts. My lawyer says I should expect to surrender when they're filed.”
Mave searched his face for the familiar assurance that he'd make the problem go away. He gave her none.
“I won't ask you to stand beside me,” he said.
“Good,” she replied. “Because I don't know yet what standing beside you would mean.”
May you like
That evening, Vivien sent Mave one photograph. It showed Iris sitting upright in a hospital bed, holding a ceramic frog with a crooked grin. Beneath it she wrote: She asked me to tell you that whoever drew that missing corridor deserves a thank-you.
Mave saved the photo. Somewhere between a forged signature and a real girl's crooked grin, the story was finally becoming about more than Silas's lies.
