Chapter 15 - Under the Table
Table Seven was bolted to the dining hall floor.
At first, investigators found nothing.
They checked the seats, the metal frame, the underside of the tabletop.
Then a maintenance worker noticed one bolt looked newer than the others.
He removed it.
The bolt was hollow.
Inside was a tightly rolled strip of paper wrapped in plastic.
Not the ledger.
A map.
Hand-drawn.
Laundry room. Kitchen corridor. Chapel storage. Recreation shed.
Four locations marked with small Xs.
Shaw spread the map across a conference table.
“Caches,” Ana said.
Keller looked at her. “That would be my guess.”
They searched all four.
The laundry room held commissary items.
The kitchen corridor held two prepaid phones.
The chapel storage closet held letters from Marco Vega.
The recreation shed held nothing.
At first.
Then a dog alerted on a sealed maintenance cabinet.
Inside, behind old volleyball nets, investigators found a plastic container.
The ledger was there.
It was not dramatic.
A cheap black notebook.
But page after page documented years of extortion.
Initials.
Dates.
Amounts.
Camera numbers.
Shift changes.
Staff nicknames.
One entry read:
P - EAST HALL CAM DEAD - 2 COFFEE + 1 CARD.
Another:
R.S. - SEARCH LIST EARLY - $40 OUTSIDE.
Keller went pale.
“R.S.?” Ana asked.
Keller did not answer.
Shaw turned several pages.
Then stopped.
“Robert Sloane.”
Ana recognized the name.
Deputy Warden Sloane.
The man responsible for security operations.
The man who had approved Phelps’s post assignments.
The man whose office signed surveillance maintenance requests.
Keller sat down slowly.
“No.”
Shaw pointed at the dates.
“It could be fabricated.”
Keller looked at her. “Lucia wrote down every packet of coffee for three years. She did not fabricate this for fun.”
That night, Deputy Warden Sloane was placed on administrative leave.
At 1:10 a.m., a fire alarm sounded in the evidence building.
Smoke poured from a records room.
Sprinklers activated.
Staff evacuated.
May you like
By the time the fire was contained, one locked evidence cabinet had been forced open.
The ledger was gone.
