Part17
The newspaper clipping remained on my dining room table long after the sun came up.
I stared at the woman standing beside Helmut Schneider.
She looked no older than thirty.
Dark hair.
Sharp eyes.
One hand resting on a thick folder as reporters crowded around the courthouse steps.
Across the bottom of the photograph someone had written:
Find Eleanor Richter.
Lila arrived just after breakfast carrying two coffees.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she admitted.
“Neither could I.”
She looked at the clipping.
“Do you think she’s still alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“But someone wanted us to find her.”
We spent the morning searching every public record we could access.
The first result appeared within minutes.
Eleanor Richter.
Date of birth: April 3, 1964.
Date of death: September 18, 2012.
Lila frowned.
“She’s dead?”
According to the records…
Yes.
Cause of death.
Heart failure.
Place of burial.
Rosewood Memorial Cemetery.
The mystery should have ended there.
Instead, it became stranger.
Because attached to the record was a scanned obituary.
It contained only three names.
No husband.
No children.
No surviving relatives.
Almost as though she had lived completely alone.
Something about it felt wrong.
People leave traces.
Neighbors.
Friends.
Coworkers.
Someone remembers them.
Eleanor Richter seemed to disappear from history the moment she died.
…
That afternoon we drove to Rosewood Memorial Cemetery.
The caretaker greeted us kindly.
“I’m looking for Eleanor Richter,” I said.
He checked an old computer behind the front desk.
Then his smile faded.
“That’s odd.”
“What is?”
“Her name is still in the system.”
“So?”
“There isn’t a grave.”
Lila and I exchanged a glance.
“No grave?”
“No headstone.”
“No burial location.”
He searched again.
“The paperwork says she was buried here.”
“But there’s no record of where.”
“Has that ever happened before?” I asked.
The caretaker slowly shook his head.
“Not once in twenty-three years.”
…
As we walked back toward the parking lot, Lila stopped suddenly.
“Aunt Nora.”
A black SUV sat across the street.
Its windows were too dark to see inside.
The engine was running.
The moment I looked directly at it, the vehicle pulled away without making a sound.
I memorized the first three characters on the license plate.
“That’s the second time,” Lila whispered.
“I know.”
“They’re following us.”
“No.”
I watched the SUV disappear around the corner.
“They’re making sure we keep looking.”
…
That evening I received another package.
No stamp.
No return address.
Inside was an old cassette tape.
Nothing else.
I turned it over in my hands.
A label had been attached years earlier.
Written in faded blue ink were six words.
Warehouse Interview.
May 17, 1994.
Lila looked at me.
“Should we play it?”
I nodded.
We found an old cassette player in the storage room of my office.
The tape crackled loudly before a man’s voice filled the room.
“This interview begins at 8:17 p.m.”
I froze.
The pocket watch.
Its hands had stopped at exactly…
8:17.
Another voice spoke.
Calm.
Confident.
One I had never heard before.
“My name is Eleanor Richter.”
She paused.
“If anything happens to me after tonight…”
“…it means Helmut Schneider finally discovered what I know.”
The recording suddenly cut off.
The tape kept spinning.
But no more voices came.
Lila stared at me.
“Aunt Nora…”
I slowly pressed the stop button.
“Eleanor didn’t disappear after 1994.”
“She was trying to warn someone.”
Before either of us could say another word, my office lights went out.
The entire building fell into darkness.
Then…
Three slow knocks echoed against the front door.
Part18
The three knocks echoed through the dark office.
Neither Lila nor I moved.
The emergency lights flickered once before turning on.
A faint glow stretched across the hallway.
Whoever stood outside knocked again.
Slow.
Patient.
Almost familiar.
I stepped closer to the door without making a sound.
“Who is it?” I asked.
No answer.
Only silence.
Then something slid beneath the door.
A single envelope.
By the time I opened the door, the hallway was empty.
The elevator doors were closing at the far end of the corridor.
I caught only the silhouette of someone wearing a dark coat before the doors shut.
Lila hurried beside me.
“Did you see them?”
“Not clearly.”
We looked inside the envelope.
There was no letter.
Only an old black-and-white photograph.
It showed a warehouse.
Smoke poured from broken windows.
Several firefighters stood outside.
Someone had circled a man near the back entrance.
Not Helmut.
Not Felix.
Not Max.
Written across the bottom were four words.
He started the fire.
…
I placed the photograph beside the newspaper clipping.
The circled man appeared nowhere in the article.
Almost as if someone had deliberately removed him from history.
Lila looked at the back of the photograph.
“There are numbers.”
Faded pencil marks.
A17.
B42.
C8.
“What do you think they mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“But they’re not random.”
Just then Daniel Cross called.
“I’ve found something.”
“What?”
“Eleanor Richter wasn’t a reporter.”
I frowned.
“The tape sounded like an interview.”
“It was.”
“But she wasn’t interviewing anyone.”
“What was she?”
Daniel hesitated.
“She worked as a forensic accountant.”
The room fell silent.
“She specialized in investigating financial fraud.”
I looked at the folders Felix had hidden.
Suddenly everything began fitting together.
Warehouse.
Company records.
Bank transfers.
Max.
Helmut.
This had never been only about a fire.
It was about money.
A lot of money.
…
The following morning we visited the city archives.
Boxes of old business records filled an entire basement room.
Hours passed before Lila suddenly called my name.
“Aunt Nora.”
She held up a thick ledger.
“The warehouse inventory.”
Most of the pages listed ordinary shipments.
Furniture.
Electronics.
Office equipment.
Then one page stopped me cold.
Everything after April 1994 had been covered with correction fluid.
Someone had intentionally erased every entry.
Lila carefully tilted the page beneath a reading lamp.
Faint writing slowly appeared beneath the white coating.
Only one shipment remained readable.
Destination:
Richter Storage Facility.
Sender:
Schneider Industrial Group.
Delivery Date:
May 13, 1994.
Exactly one day before the warehouse fire.
…
That evening another unknown number called.
I answered immediately.
“You’ve made good progress,” the familiar voice said.
“Who are you?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
“Why are you helping us?”
A long silence followed.
Then the caller quietly replied,
“Because Felix couldn’t finish what he started.”
Before I could ask another question, the line went dead.
Lila looked at me.
“I don’t think he’s our enemy.”
“No.”
I stared at the old warehouse photograph.
“I think he’s trying to keep us alive.”
As I turned the picture over one more time, something slipped from behind the faded cardboard backing.
A tiny brass key.
Smaller than the one from Locker 214.
Attached to it was a paper tag with only one sentence.
Evidence Room 8….
