I reached beneath the intake desk, pulled the spare probate transit envelope from the bottom drawer, and slid the severed carbon slip and the lead seal inside. Silence wouldn't save my job, and waiting for the morning audit would only give Mercer time to drop the evidence into a melting pot.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
I pulled open the lowest steel drawer of the intake desk, where the shop’s master duplicate registry was secured beneath a double-tumbler latch. My key was shaking against the brass escutcheon, but the cylinder turned. Inside lay the blue calfskin ledger Bellamy & Rowe had used since 1984 to record every court-ordered intake.
I flipped to page four hundred and twelve. At 5:15 PM, attorney Arthur Pendelton had written the intake description in brown India ink: Box 114, Estate of Captain Thomas Rowe, sealed with County Seal #4092-B, dual custody pending probate court clearance. Beside his signature was my own countersignature and the stamped weight at delivery: 4,820 grams gross weight.
I laid the sheared lead seal onto the page. The stamped numbers matched. The broken lead disc Mercer had dropped onto the blotter bore the raised impression: 4092-B.
Now I faced the legal trap Mercer had built for me. Under Section 14-A of the State Probate and Fiduciary Act, a licensed vault clerk who abandoned a bonded premises during an active breach forfeited his bond, invalidated his testimony, and faced an automatic ten-year felony presumption for custodial theft. If I stayed in the showroom until the morning shift arrived at eight, Gantry’s recovery team would find me standing over a smashed safe, holding a severed carbon slip with my own probate license number scribbled across the receiving line. Mercer would swear under oath that he had answered a burglar alarm, found the door kicked open, and caught me trying to smuggle the Miller estate bullion out through the rear alley.
If I left the shop to carry the proof to the county prosecutor, I became a fugitive who had walked away from an unsecured municipal repository in the dead of night.
I did not hesitate. Silence would leave me in a holding cell by breakfast, and waiting for the morning audit would give Gantry four hours to melt the stamped evidence bars into slag.
I took the brown transit envelope. I slid the sheared lead seal #4092-B inside, followed by the severed carbon slip bearing Mercer’s stolen evidence room stamp and my slanted license number. Then I took the shop’s heavy carbon duplicate receipt from page four hundred and twelve, sliced the tissue from the ledger binding with my bench scalpel, and sealed the flap with red archival wax.
I stepped over the broken glass, pulled the heavy steel accordion gate across the shattered entrance, and locked the exterior padlock with the shop’s master deadbolt key. The front window was ruined, but the inner iron barrier was solid cold-rolled steel. Anyone trying to clear the counter would need an acetylene torch and twenty minutes of noise.
The sleet hit my face like crushed glass as I stepped onto Forty-Eighth Street. The avenue was empty, the streetlamps reflecting yellow and sick against the frozen slush in the gutters. The telephone booth at the corner of Maple had its receiver dangling from severed copper cords—Mercer had made sure no call would leave this block before daybreak.
I didn't head for my apartment on Thirty-Ninth, and I didn't head for the precinct house. I turned north, walking fast against the freezing wind toward Townsend Terrace, four blocks away.
Townsend Terrace was a row of narrow three-story brownstones built in the late twenties, home to retired city clerks, transit foremen, and widowed police officers. Captain Thomas Rowe had lived at number twenty-six for forty years. When he died three weeks ago from congestive heart failure, his widow, Martha, had refused the precinct’s ceremonial honor guard, turning away the patrol cars that Gantry had sent to escort the hearse.
The iron gate of number twenty-six was chained, but the side latch gave way under my shoulder. I climbed the stone steps, my wet boots squeaking against the sleet, and pressed the brass doorbell three times in the short, sharp rhythm old man Rowe used to use when he checked in from patrol.
The curtains on the parlor window twitched. A second later, a deadbolt turned inside the heavy oak door, followed by the dry click of a brass safety chain.
Martha Rowe opened the door two inches. She was sixty-eight years old, wrapped in a thick wool cardigan over a faded flannel nightgown, holding a heavy iron fireplace poker level with my ribs. Her hair was pulled back in a grey braid, and her eyes were pale, dry, and watchful.
"Vance," she said, her voice barely louder than the wind rattling the iron railing. "What are you doing on my porch at one in the morning? Your coat is covered in glass."
"Mercer kicked the door off Bellamy & Rowe twenty minutes ago, Mrs. Rowe," I told her, holding my hands flat where she could see the bloodied linen wrapping on my knuckles. "He cut the wire, broke into holding locker four, and took Box 114."
Martha Rowe didn't flinch. Her knuckles didn't tighten on the poker, and she didn't ask if I had called the station. She unhooked the brass safety chain with a steady hand, pulled the heavy door wide, and motioned me into the dark hallway.