The Investigator Put My Forged Signature Beside A Missing Woman

"No," I said. "And tomorrow hasn't happened."

Haruto Sato looked down at the form, then back at me.

"May I show you the other page?"

I let him stand inside the doorway while I read his card. He worked as a financial investigator on a joint task force. I called the office number I found myself and asked for him before I invited him farther in.

He waited without taking offense.

Haruto was a Japanese American man of fifty-four, with dark hair going gray at the temples, narrow glasses, and a quiet way of holding his shoulders. He wore a plain brown coat. Rain had gathered on one cuff.

"I can come back during business hours," he said.

"You're already wet. Sit down."

The second page was a $48,000 invoice from Monroe Aquarium Care. It claimed I had supplied a new tank and removed the old one, including all contents.

My real invoice that week had been $320.

"Someone used this to explain a cash withdrawal," he said. "We checked the business name. Yours exists. The account number on the payment record belongs to someone else."

"Lucian Voss sent you this?"

"It came from records we obtained. I can't discuss all of them."

I liked that answer better than a smooth promise.

I fetched my invoice book. Its copies were numbered, with no torn pages. He laid my real bill beside the fake one.

"Do you keep equipment records?"

"I keep everything that might get blamed on me."

He almost smiled.

Then he opened a folder to a photograph of a woman in a red knit cap.

I knew her.

"That's Mara. She used to bring deliveries to the Voss house."

"Mara Bell," he said. "Her sister reported her missing three weeks ago."

He showed me a second picture. A young man with a round face and tired eyes.

"Eli Ward. Missing eleven days. Both worked for the same courier company."

The kitchen seemed to lose heat.

"Are they dead?"

"We don't know."

I put my hands around my mug. I hadn't noticed that I was cold.

"There are tubes behind his coral," I said. "Numbered ones. They change."

Haruto set his pen down.

"Tell me what you saw. Please don't go back to look."

I described the rack and the gray caps. I told him what Lucian had asked me to do, and what had happened to my route afterward.

He wrote my words, then turned his notes so I could read them.

"Pictures?" he asked.

"Four years of service pictures. His house and the places he referred."

He didn't reach for my laptop.

"Would you be willing to bring the originals to our office? A technician can copy them and record where they came from. You'll get a receipt."

"Do you need my whole computer? My other clients have private homes."

"We can start with the relevant service folders, with your permission. We'll document exactly what you provide."

I agreed to a morning appointment.

Before he left, he gave me a contact number and asked whether anyone else had a key to my home.

"My niece, June. She's in Dover."

"Tell her what's happening. If anyone threatens you, save the message and call us. An immediate danger goes to emergency services."

"You're very careful with your promises."

"People have to live with them."

After he left, I called June. Then I checked my archive without changing a single file.

C417 had first appeared in a March photograph. C422 had shown up in April. Sometimes they stood in Lucian's rack. Sometimes the same labels sat behind coral in another client's tank.

I had thought they were equipment belonging to the company that supplied the displays.

Now I opened one picture after another until midnight.

In the morning, at the task force office, a technician copied the folders while I watched. She made a digital check that would show if a file changed later. My signed receipt listed each folder and the two drives I had brought.

Haruto asked me to explain the angles.

"Why photograph this corner every visit?"

"The intake draws loose gravel. If the screen clogs, the return slows. I photograph it before and after cleaning."

"And the ruler?"

"Shows the gap. A picture without scale can lie by accident."

He wrote that down too.

I signed a statement. Every place where I wasn't certain, I made him write that I wasn't certain.

As I stood to leave, another investigator brought him a sheet.

Haruto read it twice.

"You said you saw C417 yesterday?"

"Yes."

He placed the sheet on the desk. It was a courier dispatch record obtained from the company. Mara's name appeared beside C417.

Below it, a box had been stamped RETURNED.

The date was four days after her sister had reported her missing.