Elena wiped her eyes.
"What?"
"The recording ends before we hear what happened. Where was Daniel when you left the evidence office?"
She looked at Sloane.
The former detective took a long breath.
"Daniel was alive when I left."
Marcus stood so quickly that his chair struck the wall behind him.
"You left him there?"
"I was ordered to leave."
"By whom?"
Sloane's eyes shifted toward the window.
"By Victor Raines."
"And you obeyed him?"
"I believed that if I stayed, they would kill all three of us."
"So you walked away and left my brother alone with the people threatening him."
Sloane did not defend himself.
"Yes."
Marcus wanted to strike him. He wanted to seize him by the collar and demand that he explain how a man could live with such a decision for seventeen years.
Instead, he forced himself to sit down.
"What happened afterward?"
Sloane looked at Elena.
"She was the last person to see Daniel alive."
Marcus turned toward her.
Elena's tears had stopped, leaving her face pale and exhausted.
"Is that true?"
She nodded.
"What happened?"
For several seconds, she appeared unable to speak.
Then she reached into her bag and removed a small folded piece of paper.
"I kept this because I couldn't bear to destroy it."
Marcus unfolded the paper.
It contained a handwritten note in Daniel's familiar script.
Marcus, if you ever find this, remember the key. The truth is not where they hid the evidence. It is where they never thought to look.
Marcus read the sentence twice.
The key.
The small brass key Daniel had given him when they were boys.
He slipped the note into his pocket beside the photograph.
Then he looked at Elena.
"Tell me what happened after Sloane left."
Elena stared at the table.
"I heard Daniel arguing with Raines. I was in the corridor, trying to call the district attorney's office. When I returned, the room was empty."
"Empty?"
"Daniel was gone. The documents were gone. There was blood on the floor beside the filing cabinet."
Marcus felt a chill move through him.
"Whose blood?"
"I don't know."
"And you didn't call the police?"
"I did. But by the time officers arrived, the room had been cleaned. Whitaker told them that Daniel had left the building voluntarily, and Cross ordered the investigation to be handled internally."
"Why didn't you tell anyone what you had seen?"
"Because Raines found me the following morning. He told me that if I spoke about the recording, I would be charged with stealing confidential evidence. He said he could make it appear that Daniel had been working with Raymond Cole to manipulate the investigation."
Marcus shook his head.
"You were a prosecutor. You knew how to report misconduct."
"I was twenty-eight years old, Marcus. I had no protection, no independent evidence, and no one in the department willing to support me. My supervisor had already been pressured to remove me from the case. I believed that if I spoke, I would be silenced before I could get anything into the public record."
"So you disappeared from the investigation."
"I left the prosecutor's office six months later."
"And spent seventeen years waiting?"
Elena looked up.
"I spent seventeen years trying to find someone who could prove what happened without destroying the evidence in the process."
Marcus leaned back.
He wanted to blame her. Part of him believed he had every right to do so. She had known that Daniel was in danger, had witnessed the aftermath of his disappearance, and had withheld information from the family.
But he also recognized the fear in her face.
She had been young, isolated, and confronted by men who possessed the power to destroy her career and perhaps her life.
Fear did not make her innocent.
But it did not necessarily make her guilty either.
Marcus looked toward Miriam.
"Where are the documents Daniel mentioned?"
Miriam opened the metal box again and removed the intake ledger.
"Perhaps we should begin here."
She turned to a page marked with a narrow strip of paper.
Several entries appeared beneath a date from seventeen years earlier. Each entry contained a document number, a brief description, and the signature of the employee who had received it.
One line had been crossed out.
Beneath the black ink, Marcus could still make out several words.
Transfer to Archive Storage, Section D-14.
He read the line again.
"Archive Storage?"
Miriam nodded.
"The department maintained a secure records facility beneath the old courthouse. It was closed after a flood damaged part of the building, but some materials were transferred to an off-site warehouse."
"Where?"
"I don't know. The records were moved twice after the courthouse closed."
Elena leaned over the ledger.
"Wait."
She pointed to the margin.
Beside the crossed-out entry was a handwritten number.
714.
Marcus frowned.
"What does that mean?"
Miriam examined it through her glasses.
"It could be a storage reference."
Sloane shook his head.