Chapter 4 - The Woman Who Kept the Ledger
Lena Ortiz lived above a laundromat two counties away. She opened the door with a chain still attached and stared at my face until her eyes filled.
"You have Nora's eyes," she said.
"I need to know what happened at the warehouse."
"Then you need to understand why nobody talks about it."
She pulled me inside and closed the blinds. On the table lay a newspaper clipping about the fire, its edges yellow and brittle. Three employees had died: my mother, a night custodian, and a forklift driver who'd gone back to help.
"Richard ordered everyone to keep the east loading door locked," Lena said. "He said thieves were stealing chemical drums. Nora told him it violated the fire code. She put her complaint in writing."
"Where is it?"
"I sent it to the fire investigator. It vanished from the file."
Lena had seen fake orders and shell-company payments. At the fire scene, she watched Richard point Daniel out to a detective.
"Daniel was at home when the fire started," she told me. "His timecard was changed. I know because I changed it."
My stomach dropped. "You helped put my father in prison?"
"Richard said he'd have my son arrested for something he didn't do. I was a coward." Her voice cracked. "I kept the original payroll printout. Cowards sometimes keep receipts."
She gave me the paper, wrapped in plastic, and an old digital recorder. A surviving security guard had spoken into it while drunk and frightened. The recording was full of traffic noise, but one sentence came through clearly: "Nora was still inside when the door got chained."
I stood so fast my chair scraped the floor. "Who chained it?"
Lena reached for a glass of water, missed, and knocked it over.
A car door slammed downstairs. She peered through the curtain and went rigid.
"You have to go. Back stairs. Now."
"Who is it?"
"Richard's head of security. He found me once before."
She shoved the ledger into my bag and opened the kitchen window onto a rusted fire escape. I climbed out as heavy footsteps hit the landing.
May you like
From inside the apartment, a man's voice called, "Lena, we're just here to talk."
Then I heard glass break.
