Chapter 5 - The Room That Wasn't on the Plans
The old North House stood behind a fenced lot on the edge of town. Its windows were boarded, and a plastic wreath hung crookedly from the gate. A developer’s sign promised luxury apartments coming soon.
Arthur arrived with Miriam and Detective Ruiz, not with the private guards Frederick would expect. Anna stayed at the hotel with Rosie and a family-support worker. Arthur had learned that wanting to rescue a child did not give him permission to drag her into danger.
The building’s current owner granted police access. The official floor plan showed eight rooms upstairs. At the end of the hall, Ruiz found a newer section of drywall behind a bank of lockers. A contractor opened it under her supervision.
There was Room 9.
Inside stood a narrow bed, a desk, and a Christmas stocking nailed to the wall. The room had no exterior window. Someone had scratched dates into the paint, stopping twelve years earlier.
Arthur gripped his cane. “Were children kept here?”
Ruiz photographed everything before answering. “We need to establish who used the room and when.”
In the desk was a metal cash box, empty except for a receipt bearing Anna’s old employee number. The receipt showed she had signed for a shipment of winter coats.
“She didn't,” Arthur said immediately.
Ruiz raised an eyebrow. “You know that?”
“I know we have to ask her.” He caught himself. “I won't make the same mistake twice.”
Back at the hotel, Anna examined the receipt. “They used my number after they fired me. Lucy noticed. That's how we knew somebody was changing the books.”
Rosie sat at the table coloring. She had drawn three people beneath a Christmas tree, but one had no face.
“Who's that?” Arthur asked.
“June. I don't remember her face anymore.”
Anna looked down. “I have pictures, honey.”
“Not the ones where she's happy.”
The remark cut deeper than accusation. Anna went to her suitcase and found an old disposable-camera print: June laughing on a beach, hair blown across her eyes. Rosie studied it for a long time.
“She looks like me.”
“A little,” Anna said.
Arthur noticed that June wore Lucy’s blue-and-gold bird necklace in the photograph. He asked where it had gone.
“June gave it to a woman who promised to keep the North House records safe,” Anna said. “I never knew her name.”
Ruiz called with another discovery. Room 9 had been listed in an old fire-inspection report as a records closet. A former maintenance worker remembered hearing a baby crying there during the evacuation. He reported it to Leonard Shaw, who told him it was a television.
“A baby?” Anna whispered.
Miriam opened Lucy’s letter again. Lucy had written, There will be a child.
Arthur could no longer ignore the possibility that the case involved far more than stolen money.
That evening Gordon Pike called Anna. He offered her back pay if she signed a statement saying Rosie had assaulted him at the market. Anna put the call on speaker with Ruiz listening.
“My daughter is eight,” she said.
“She scratched my wrist.”
“You grabbed her.”
“You want to work again or not?”
“No,” Anna said. “Not for you.”
She hung up trembling. Arthur wanted to applaud, but she looked exhausted rather than triumphant. He quietly asked whether she would like a cup of tea.
Later, Rosie slipped him the Christmas card June had sent. The bird on the front had one blue wing and one gold. Inside was a single sentence: The little one is not the only one who came out.
Arthur read it to Ruiz. The detective examined the postmark.
It had been mailed from a town forty miles away, near the care facility where Frederick’s wife had lived before her death.
May you like
Arthur stared at the envelope. His brother had visited that facility every Sunday for years. He had told everyone it was because he was devoted.
Perhaps devotion had been only the part he wanted people to see.
