THE FRIDAY TRAIN HOME

Detective Anika Shah met them on Monday at a diner across from the station. She was not impressed by Max's reputation or Cece's account of the scarf. She wanted dates, documents, and the distinction between what each person had seen and what someone else had told them.

Cece liked her immediately.

"I saw the scarf in the van door," Cece said. "I didn't see Iris. The camera shows a driver carrying a case out of the baggage building. I don't know what's in it."

"Thank you," Shah said. "That saves us ten minutes of untangling."

Max put his palms flat on the booth. "Iris and I argued on October fourth. She said Warren was moving donated refrigerated goods through a route the company didn't recognize. I told her to make a formal report. She said she'd tried."

"And then?" Shah asked.

"I told her Warren had kept the company alive during a recession and deserved a chance to explain."

"Did she?"

"She said I always gave other people the benefit of the doubt when they knew how to flatter me."

Cece stirred her coffee. He was telling the truth, or at least a version painful enough to be worth writing down.

Shah said the department had obtained a lawful copy of public-area station footage from the day Iris disappeared. It showed Iris disembarking from the 4:17 in Hawthorne after all. Max's breath caught. She was wearing the yellow scarf and carrying a backpack. Before she could reach the station exit, a woman in a red coat spoke to her. They walked together into the main street, voluntarily as far as the image showed.

"Who is the woman?" Max asked.

"We have an identification lead. We aren't sharing her name yet." Shah paused. "I cannot tell you Iris is safe until I've confirmed it. But I also cannot treat walking away with another adult as proof of abduction."

Max nodded with difficulty. Cece imagined how much easier it would have been for Shah to offer certainty she didn't possess. She did not.

Afterward, Max asked Cece whether she'd go for a walk. The rain had finally stopped. They took the sidewalk along the canal, past a bakery whose windows had fogged from the ovens. Marcus trailed at a distance at Max's request, far enough that Cece could forget him for thirty seconds at a time.

"Iris's mother died when she was twelve," Max said. "A sudden aneurysm. She was making sandwiches in the kitchen. Iris came home from school and found me sitting on the floor. I couldn't tell her anything."

"I'm sorry."

"I thought if I made sure she never needed money, she'd never be scared again. When she started asking about the company, I heard criticism instead of fear."

Cece watched a gull try to open a paper bag beside a trash can. "You can't build a child a world that won't hurt them," she said. "My father tried. He taught me timetables so I wouldn't be afraid of getting lost. The trains still went places he couldn't follow."

Max glanced at her. "Was he a conductor?"

"Thirty-two years. His name was Peter. He knew which kids liked to sit near the windows and which regulars needed an extra minute at the door. He once held a train for a woman carrying a wedding cake, and the bride sent him a slice."

"Iris would have liked him."

"He would've told you to get out of the rain."

They stopped at a pedestrian bridge. Max's phone rang. Warren again.

"I heard you spoke to the police," Warren said when Max answered on speaker. "You should have called legal first."

"I'm calling legal next. The independent kind."

Warren's voice hardened. "We've kept those shipments confidential for commercial reasons. You don't want investigators confusing donations with inventory."

"Then produce the books. All of them."

"You've never cared about a packing slip in your life."

"That might be the problem."

Warren hung up. Max stood motionless, looking at a rusted bolt on the railing. Then he called his counsel and asked for an independent review, including a preservation notice to employees and contractors. He did not ask Cece to investigate for him. She respected him more for that than she expected.

Tuesday brought a different sort of trouble. A passenger photographed Cece beside Max at the canal. By noon, someone had posted the picture with a caption implying she was accepting gifts to grant a dangerous man access to station records. Her supervisor's regional manager, Ellen Price, requested a meeting.

"I gave the investigators a witness statement," Cece told Ellen. "Dale handled the station video through the proper process. I haven't provided anyone restricted access."

Ellen was concerned about perception. She was also concerned about the contractor that paid for station improvements. Cece asked her to identify a rule she'd broken and to put any concerns in writing.

"You're making this confrontational," Ellen said.

"I'm making it accurate."

Dale sat beside Cece and confirmed her account. Ellen said there would be a review, but no immediate disciplinary action. Cece returned to the ticket window furious, not because she'd been questioned, but because one photograph had made her fifteen years of dependable work seem negotiable.

At closing time, an envelope waited in her work mailbox. It bore no stamp. Inside was a copied passenger ticket for October fourth, the day Iris vanished, and a small handwritten message.

Cece, you helped me when the signal failed last winter. I need you to believe I got off the train myself. Don't let my father turn this into a rescue.

The writing slanted sharply uphill. Below it was a signature.

Iris Corvelli.

Cece read the letter twice. Whoever delivered it knew her workplace and knew something about a snowy breakdown she remembered vividly. She photographed the envelope for Shah, touching only the edges she'd already handled.