Page 45 of A.I.AM.

“No,” said Code.

“Then the report discarded evidence,” frowned Bron. He divided them by floors. Hayes and Hiro took the exterior and attic. Ace and AJ began with the living spaces. Carl and Pigsty examined the garage and accessibility modifications. Code, Tanner, and Bron went to the basement door but did not open it.

“Why wait?” Code asked.

“Because every search began there,” Bron said. “Including ours.”

Tanner studied the doorframe. The lower right side bore a series of small impacts at the height of a wheelchair footrest. Most were old. One had cut through the paint recently.

“He used this door every day,” Tanner said. “But near the end he struck it harder.”

“Pain,” Code said. “Fatigue. Urgency. Or something changed in the opening.”

Bron crouched. The threshold had been replaced with a low brass strip, newer than the surrounding floor. Two screw heads were marred.

“Removed once,” he said. Code touched the metal but did not lift it.

“After the deaths, investigators removed floor sections for electrical reconstruction.”

“Then our first useful fact is contaminated,” Tanner said. From upstairs came three knocks, then one. Hiro’s improvised signal. They found him in the attic beside an open knee wall. He held a fragment of yellow insulation in one hand and an older piece in the other.

“Different ages,” he said. “This cavity was reopened after the house was insulated.”

Hayes shone his lamp into the narrow space. Copper pipes descended toward the basement. A third pipe, painted to match, ended in the wall without connecting to anything.

“Decoy conduit,” Code said.

“Or speaking tube,” Tanner replied. Pigsty arrived and bent close to the open pipe.

“Want me to yell?” he asked with a mischievous expression.

“No,” frowned Tanner.

“Whisper?” Pigsty grinned.

“No,” Tanner repeated.

“I’m running out of communication styles.” Code held a strip of tissue near the opening. It did not move.

“Sealed below.” AJ came up behind them holding the framed photograph that had once faced the wall in the basement.

“You need to see this.”

The photograph showed Elias in uniform beside three soldiers beneath hard sunlight. On the back, hidden by the frame, someone had written a line in pencil.

The house is not where you live.

Ace read it twice.

“Whose handwriting?” asked Hayes.

“Not Elias’s,” AJ said. “At least not the handwriting in his notebooks.” Carl stood in the attic opening.

“Could be one of the soldiers.”

“Three died,” Bron said. Tanner looked at the turned photograph.

“Elias faced this toward the wall before Fallon arrived. Not away from himself. Toward the wall.” Code followed his gaze to the dead pipe. “The frame was a marker.” They returned the photograph to its place in the basement before touching the wall.