Chapter 5 - The Paper Trail
By eight o’clock the next morning, Naira’s legal office in town smelled of burnt dark roast coffee and damp legal briefs.
Naira sat behind her mahogany desk with a magnifying glass in one hand and a high-resolution scanner illuminated on her desktop screen. She had taken the graphite rubbing I made from Brennan’s notebook and run it through a digital contrast filter.
The text burned crisp and white against the dark background:
Dispatch Log #409 - Hydraulic Fluid Cut - G.R.
"This isn't just evidence of fraud anymore, Cassian," Naira said, her eyes fixed on the screen. "If we can link Greg Ross to Dispatch Log #409 at the sawmill on the night Brennan died, this becomes a capital murder investigation."
"The problem is the original dispatch logs," I said, leaning over the desk. "The mill uses a digital logging system managed by the front office. Greg took over as operations manager three days after Brennan’s funeral. If that log existed in their local server, he’s already wiped it."
"He might have wiped the local server," Naira murmured, a sharp, cold smile touching her lips, "but small-industrial facilities like Blackwood Sawmill don't write their own software. They license it from third-party logistics firms. Those systems auto-backup to off-site cloud servers every midnight."
She picked up her desk phone and dialed a ten-digit number without looking at the keypad.
"Naira, who are you calling?"
"A friend at the State Attorney General's Special Investigations Unit," she replied as the call connected. "We aren't going through the local county police department anymore, Cassian. Deputy Vance is a good man, but his chief plays golf with the sawmill’s board of directors. We're going over their heads."
While Naira spoke in rapid, crisp legal terms to her contact, I looked out the window down to the parking lot.
Hollis was sitting in the front passenger seat of my truck, wearing a yellow raincoat I’d bought her that morning. She was holding a drawing pad, coloring a picture of a giant brown bear inside a metal house. Every few seconds, she’d look up toward the second-story window of Naira's office, making sure I was still in sight.
When I caught her eye, I gave her a simple thumbs-up. She mirrored it with her tiny, smudge-covered hand before returning to her drawing.
Naira hung up the phone with a decisive click.
"Subpoenas are being drafted for the cloud server logs," she announced. "But we have a time problem. The full custody hearing before Judge Miller is scheduled for Friday morning. Brenda’s attorney just filed a motion alleging that you are mentally unstable due to your military service and that you're manipulating Hollis to steal the timberland estate."
"They're trying to discredit me before the state can review the logs," I said.
"Exactly," Naira said. "They know if they regain physical custody of Hollis for even twenty-four hours, Brenda can sign the land transfer over to the investment group as her legal guardian. Once that deed is recorded at the county courthouse, reversing it will take years of civil litigation—and the timber will already be clear-cut."
"What do we need to stop them on Friday?"
"We need the original hard copy of the land trust Brennan drafted before he died," Naira said, leaning forward. "Brennan told you he put the sixty acres into a private trust for Hollis, right?"
"He told me he had it drafted by a notary over in Pine Ridge."
"If that trust was signed and notarized before his death, Brenda never had the legal right to sell the land in the first place—and Greg’s entire motive for murder falls into plain sight."
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"Pine Ridge is forty miles north," I said. "I’ll go today."
"Take Hollis with you," Naira advised, her tone softening. "Don't leave her out of your sight for a single second until Friday morning. Greg is getting desperate, Cassian. Desperate men don't play by courtroom rules."
