Chapter 2: A Name She Shouldn't Know

Elena counted six women between Mara's table and the nearest officer's post. Three had turned toward her when she said Victor Hale's name. Only one had looked at Mara before looking at Elena.

The woman with the graying braids.

Elena carried that observation through the evening count and into a cell she shared with a woman named Ruth Mercer. Ruth was folding a worn paperback beneath her pillow when Elena came in.

“You made an impression,” Ruth said.

Elena hung her damp uniform shirt over the back of the chair. “Was there a version of today where I didn't?”

“There was, until you went to Mara's table.” Ruth studied her. “You've heard of her now.”

“Enough to know she doesn't take jokes well.”

“She doesn't take witnesses well either.”

Ruth turned off the small reading light. Elena lay awake listening to footsteps beyond the cell door.

At the county jail, she had copied a handful of figures into the notebook after her attorney confirmed she could keep an ordinary personal notebook, subject to inspection. There were no original records in it. The investigators already had those. If someone seized the notebook, they would find dates and names Elena could remember without it.

But Mara hadn't reached for the notebook first. She had reached for Elena's wrist when she heard about the warehouse.

The next morning, Elena reported for the interview scheduled as part of her transfer. An officer escorted her down a corridor to a small room with a bolted table. Two people waited there: federal investigator Naomi Price, whom Elena had met before, and a state investigator who introduced himself as Daniel Reed.

Price took one look at Elena's still-damp hair. “Did somebody hurt you?”

“A carton of milk. No injury.” Elena sat. “A woman named Mara Quinn threw it.”

Reed opened his folder. “We heard there was an incident.”

“I want the dining hall footage preserved.”

“For the milk?”

“For what happened after.”

Elena recited the exchange as closely as she could, separating what she had said from what Mara had said. She described Mara's hand on her wrist and named the women she could identify by appearance. She told them about the offered carton.

When she finished, Reed tapped his pen once against the folder. “You confronted a possible subject in front of half the facility.”

“I recognized the surname. I needed to see whether those names meant anything to her.”

“You could have brought that to us.”

“I am bringing it to you.” Elena met his eyes. “Her reaction isn't proof. The footage may help establish what she said. Your records will have to do the rest.”

Price leaned forward. “Did Quinn know who you were?”

“She used my surname before the officer did.”

Reed glanced at Price. It was brief, but Elena saw it.

“What?” she asked.

Price closed the folder in front of her. “We were going to ask if anyone approached you after arrival.”

“Mara did more than approach me.”

“Your placement information was accessed yesterday.”

Elena looked between them. “By whom?”

“We don't have a name we can give you yet,” Price said. “The access was outside the usual transfer workflow. It happened before you reached this facility.”

“Did you know before you sent me here?”

Price did not answer quickly enough.

Elena pushed back from the table, then stopped herself. Anger would make it easy for them to call her careless and end the conversation. She needed something more useful.

“I want the time of that access checked against any contact Mara had,” she said. “Calls, visits, messages. Whatever records this facility keeps.”

Reed wrote it down. “We can review what's available.”

“And I want it recorded that I'm telling you this now. If she tries to reach me again, you need to know why.”

Price nodded. “We'll document it.”

They moved to the ledger Elena had already given them. Northbridge had sent repeated payments to Greyline. Greyline's description of the work changed from invoice to invoice, though the amounts followed a pattern Elena had once considered too regular to be ordinary business.

“You said the warehouse might tie the payments to a real shipment,” Price said.

“If the access records still exist. I never saw them.”

Reed studied a copy of an invoice. “What did you see?”

“A payment made after one of the shipments was supposedly canceled. Victor Hale approved it. Someone with the surname Quinn confirmed receipt.”

Elena had concealed the problem with that sentence for months: a surname was not an identity. There could be another Quinn. Mara's reaction narrowed the question, but it did not answer it.

“Find the person who signed,” she said. “Then you can tell me whether I was right.”

When the interview ended, Price walked her to the door. “Until we understand how that information got out, don't test Quinn again.”

“I hadn't planned on a second demonstration.”

“Elena.”

She stopped.

“You're right to be concerned,” Price said. “So let us follow the records.”

Back in the cell block, Ruth was waiting beside the laundry cart. She held out a clean shirt. Elena took it, surprised.

“The laundry clerk was there yesterday,” Ruth said. “She said you could have this one.”

“Why?”

“Because someone should.” Ruth glanced toward the common room. “And because Mara's been asking who sat near you.”

Elena folded the clean shirt over her arm. “Did anyone answer?”

“Not where I could hear.”

The woman with the braids came around the corner, saw Elena, and changed direction so abruptly she nearly walked into an officer.

Ruth followed Elena's gaze. “That's Tessa Ward.”

“She was at the next table.”

“She usually is.”

Elena watched Tessa disappear into the laundry room. She needed to tell Price that Mara had begun looking for witnesses. She also wanted to know why Tessa had offered her the milk.

Inside the room, Tessa was pushing a cart of folded towels. Elena approached slowly and stopped where Tessa could see her.

“I wanted to thank you for yesterday,” Elena said.

Tessa kept both hands on the cart. “Then do me a favor.”

“What favor?”

“Don't tell Mara I talked to you.”