Chapter 8: The Outbuilding
Colt's contact was a woman named Petra.
She arrived the next morning in a plain white van with magnetic signs on the side that read *Hendricks Property Services.* She was in her fifties, compact, with gray-streaked hair pulled back and the kind of face that gave nothing away.
She didn't shake hands.
She looked at Dex and said: "Colt says there's a padlocked outbuilding and you need to know what's inside without triggering whatever's watching it."
"That's right."
"Cameras?"
"One visible on the main house eave.
Probably more."
"Motion sensors?"
"Unknown."
She nodded like this was all perfectly routine.
"I'll need two hours.
I'll need you not to be anywhere near the property."
"Done."
She left.
Dex waited.
Grace called at ten in the morning.
Her voice was different from the day before — quieter, and with a careful flatness that told him she'd found something she hadn't expected.
"I have the placement records," she said.
"My contact pulled them last night."
"How many children?"
A pause.
"Over the past six years, Clearview Family Services filed placement documentation for thirty-one children through that property."
Dex closed his eyes for one second.
"Where are they now?"
"That's the problem.
Twenty-two of them have follow-up records — transfers to other placements, family reunifications, aging out.
They're traceable." She paused.
"Nine of them have no follow-up documentation at all.
They appear in the intake records and then they simply stop appearing.
No transfer.
No discharge.
No explanation."
"Nine children."
"Yes."
"And Nora?
Is her name anywhere in those records?"
The pause this time was the longest yet.
"Not as a child," Grace said.
"But there's a staff listing attached to the Clearview license application from six years ago.
A support worker listed as Nora Callahan." She paused.
"The listing was removed from subsequent filings.
Starting five years and eight months ago."
Four months after she'd been placed there.
If the timeline was right.
"She went in as a worker," Dex said, more to himself than to Grace.
"It looks that way.
And then she stopped appearing in the paperwork." Grace's voice was careful.
"Dex.
Nine missing children and a staff member who vanished from the records.
This is not something you can handle alone."
"I know."
"I mean it.
This needs to go to someone with authority.
Someone who isn't connected to Marsh."
"I'm working on that."
"Who?"
He thought of the men around the table the night before.
He thought of Marsh's words: *I have people in this county.
Judges.
Sheriffs.* County was compromised.
That meant going higher.
"Federal," he said.
Silence.
Then: "Do you have a contact?"
"I know someone who knows someone." He paused.
"It's going to take a day."
"Then move fast," Grace said.
"Because if Marsh knows you were at that property yesterday, he's already thinking about what to move and where."
She hung up.
Petra called at noon.
"I'm out," she said.
"Clean."
"What was in it?"
"Filing cabinets.
Four of them.
Folders.
Looked like financial records, correspondence, some kind of ledger." A pause.
"And a laptop.
Old one.
Taped to the underside of the bottom drawer of the last cabinet."
"Did you—"
"I photographed everything I could reach.
Sixty-one images.
I'm sending them now." Another pause.
"Dex.
I've done a lot of jobs.
I don't rattle easily." Her voice was flat and deliberate.
"Rattle me."
The photos came through while she was still on the line.
He opened the first one.
A ledger page.
Columns of numbers.
Dates.
And in the leftmost column, where a name or case number might go — a series of codes.
Letters and numbers that meant nothing by themselves.
He opened the second photo.
A letter.
Formal header.
A name at the bottom that he didn't recognize.
He opened the third.
It was a photograph.
Printed on regular paper, slightly blurred.
A woman sitting at a table in a room with no windows.
Her head was turned slightly away from the camera.
But he knew the angle of her jaw.
He knew the way she held her shoulders.
His thumb went still on the screen.
"Petra," he said.
"Yeah."
"I need to find a federal contact.
Today.
Not tomorrow."
May you like
"I'll make a call," she said.
And hung up.
