Thomas looked at the notebook. “Was she involved with the records?”
Mara nodded slowly. “She helped me copy the payroll files. She knew about the payments.”
Cho called the state team.
The investigation had just found another possible victim.
• • •
Miriam Voss's accident report was retrieved from a county archive. The file contained photographs, a diagram, and a brief witness statement. The road had been dry. The weather was clear. The vehicle had left the road on a straight stretch and struck a tree.
The report noted that the brake system had failed.
A mechanic's inspection had been completed by a contractor connected to Vale Industrial.
Cho read the report in silence.
“Same pattern,” Naomi said.
“Possibly,” he replied. “We need the vehicle records.”
The car had been scrapped years earlier. The scrapyard had closed. Its owner had died. But the state found an archived photograph of the vehicle before it was dismantled. A damaged brake line was visible beneath the front wheel.
Thomas looked at it.
“That isn't a failure,” he said. “That's a cut.”
“Can you tell from the photograph?” Eli asked.
“I worked on these systems for years. The line is too clean. It was cut with a blade.”
Mara sat down.
“My sister was thirty-four.”
No one spoke.
Cho placed the photograph in a sleeve. “We'll reopen the case.”
Mara looked at him. “Will it matter?”
“It matters now.”
She turned to Thomas. “You knew Miriam helped me.”
“I knew someone in payroll helped. I didn't know it was your sister.”
“She was the brave one,” Mara said. “I was always afraid.”
Thomas shook his head. “You kept the records.”
Mara looked down at her hands. “I kept copies. I didn't keep her safe.”
“You didn't cause what happened.”
She did not answer.
• • •
Gideon Shaw was eventually located in a rented house outside Montreal. He had used a different name to cross the border, but he had made one mistake: he had continued using a bank account linked to his consulting firm.
Canadian authorities detained him while the bureau prepared an extradition request. He denied involvement in Thomas's disappearance and claimed the notebook was fabricated. But the evidence had become too extensive to dismiss.
When Cho interviewed him, Shaw was calm.
“You people have built a story around a car,” he said. “A rusty car and a young man who ran away.”
“Thomas Bell is alive,” Cho replied.
Shaw's expression barely changed.
“Then he should be grateful.”
“He spent twenty-two years hiding.”
“That's his choice.”
“You were at the quarry.”
“I don't remember.”
“We have a photograph.”
“Photographs can be misleading.”
“We have Danner's statement.”
“Danner is a liar.”
“We have the ledger, the payments, and your own notes.”
Shaw leaned back.
“Arthur Vale is dead. Eleanor is finished. Rusk has made a deal. Danner is old. You're looking for a villain because you need one.”
Cho closed the folder.
“We're looking for the truth.”
Shaw smiled faintly. “The truth is whatever you can prove.”
“Then we'll prove it.”
• • •
The extradition process took months. During that time, the bureau continued to identify victims and trace payments. Several families learned that accidents they had been told were unavoidable might have been deliberately caused. Some had spent years believing their relatives were careless. Others had been denied compensation because the company blamed equipment misuse.
The state created a review panel. It was not enough to repair every injustice, but it gave families a place to bring questions that had been ignored for decades.
Walter attended the first public hearing with Thomas beside him. He did not speak at first. He listened as a woman described losing her husband in a warehouse fire. A former inspector admitted that he had been pressured to change his report. A retired driver said he had been told to sign a statement he could not read.
When Walter finally stood, he held the letter Thomas had written.
“My son was not a runaway,” he said. “He was not a thief. He was not a boy who forgot his family. He was a young man who saw something wrong and believed the truth mattered.”
His voice shook, but he continued.
“For twenty-two years, I was asked to accept silence as an answer. I won't ask anyone else to do that.”
Thomas sat in the front row, tears in his eyes.
After the hearing, a woman approached them. She was in her seventies and carried a small photograph of a man in a work uniform.
“My husband was one of the drivers,” she said. “They told me he caused his own accident. I believed them because I didn't know what else to believe.”