Chapter 4 - Ghosts of South Boston
The rain turned into a heavy, freezing fog as we slipped out the back of the diner. I drove Clara’s rusted station wagon, my vision swimming occasionally from the concussion, while Clara sat in the passenger seat with a loaded revolver—my revolver—resting on her lap. Lily was fast asleep in the backseat, wrapped in a faded fleece blanket.
The workshop was hidden in the basement of a ruined textile mill near the docks. The air inside smelled of machine oil, sawdust, and time. Dust motes danced in the beam of Clara’s flashlight as she led me to a heavy steel door hidden behind a rack of discarded iron pipes.
She pulled a small brass key from her own necklace and unlocked the door. Inside was a tiny room filled with filing cabinets, old computer monitors, and a single cot against the brick wall.
“Julian spent weeks here before he died,” Clara said, turning on a dim desk lamp. “He told me if anything ever happened to him, I was never to come here unless I had no other choice.”
I sat heavily on the edge of the cot, my breathing shallow. “He was protecting you. If Vincent knew about this room, he would have torn it down brick by brick.”
Clara walked over to the desk and began running her fingers over the dusty surface. Suddenly, her hand stopped over an old wooden framing photo of the three of them—Julian, Clara, and a newborn Lily.
She turned the frame over, popped the back off, and pulled out a small, folded piece of yellowed paper.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Julian’s handwriting,” she whispered, unfolding it carefully. “It’s a list of codes. And a location.”
I leaned forward, inspecting the paper under the lamp light. The numbers matched the access code sequence for the security protocols at the Harbor Trust Bank, but below them was a hand-drawn map of the sub-basement vaults beneath the old city sector.
“He didn’t just hide the evidence in a deposit box,” I realized, the picture finally coming into focus. “He linked the box to an automatic ledger system. If the silver key isn’t inserted into the master console alongside the safe key every thirty days, the entire digital record automatically broadcasts to the Department of Justice.”
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Clara looked up, her eyes wide. “When was the last time the key was turned?”
I pulled out my watch, checking the date. “Twenty-nine days ago. That’s why Vincent ambushed me tonight. He didn’t just want to kill me—he needed this key before sunrise, or the system would trigger an automatic release at eight o’clock this morning!”
