Page 36 of Flint’s Strike

“I think he did.”

We let the quiet hang between us. Outside the conference room, phones ring and people move through the bullpen, but it all feels strangely distant. My attention is glued to the floor plan. To that impossible route. To the official documents insisting everything was fine.

“What if this isn’t the only thing?” I ask.

A humorless smile crosses Nate’s face. “Exactly.”

He reaches over and taps a stack of reports thick enough to choke a horse.

“We’ve been treating this like a fire scene.” He pauses, then shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at.”

I glance at the signatures. The official stamps. And Eliot’s preliminary report that says the fire burned too hot and too fast to be natural.

The last vestiges of exhaustion banished, my voice is steadier than it’s been all morning. “It’s a fraud scene someone set on fire.”

Once we start pulling on threads, the next two hours disappear under a paper trail that would defeat a bloodhound.

We spend most of it trying to track down the inspectors who signed off on the missing egress.

The signatures were both illegible, but the license numbers were enough to start pulling records. Two hours later, we’ve got more questions than answers. Because one belongs to a man who seems to have disappeared, and the other doesn’t exist in any state database.

The conference room grows steadily messier. Piles migrate across the table. Nate’s color-coded filing system somehow becomes even more elaborate as he discovers new categories of things that irritate him.

“A fifth color,” he mutters, breaking the seal on a new box of highlighters. “I’ve never needed a fifth color before.”

“You’ve been dying to use a fifth color for years. Forget Captain Root Canal. You’re Captain Color Coding from now on.”

“Too long. Captain Collation? Captain Curious?”

I throw a wadded-up piece of legal paper at him. He bats it straight into the trash can in the corner of the room.

“Show off.”

“Captain Slam Dunk has a nice ring to it,” he says, a hint of weariness in his tone. “Or Captain Comatose. I need a coffee refill. Want one?”

“God, yes.” I gesture to my laptop. “The missing inspector might as well be a ghost. His driver’s license is expired, I can’t find utility bills or credit cards tied to any of his three known addresses, and the state has no record of him filing income taxes last year.”

Nate pauses at the door, mugs in hand. “If he turns up while I’m gone, tell him I want to know how he’s managing that level of commitment to not existing.”

I manage a weak laugh as the conference door snicks shut.

Opening a new search, I check death records next. Nothing under his social security number. Missing persons? His full name, Roger Haight, doesn’t return a thing. So I move on to misspellings.

The query is still running when Nate slips back into the room with two cups of steaming motor oil. My stomach twists in protest before I even catch a whiff from the mugs.

“You find that ghost yet?” he asks, setting my cup in front of me.

“It’s been five minutes. Cut me some slack.”

“Four.”

“What?”

“I was gone four minutes. Thus you get extra slack for the next sixty seconds.”

Checking my watch, I shake my head. “Should I be concerned you were counting?”

“I’m concerned about a lot of things. Like lunch. Lunch is a very big concern of mine right now.” He sinks back into his chair and stares at the coffee mug like it’s about to bite him. “I had to dig into my emergency stash of granola bars hours ago.”