They went into the outer office, and Ellin sat down at a battered metal desk. “See, I’ve had this job for almost thirty years; it’s not like I had to worry about anyone going through my desk, finding this list, and getting suspicious. It’s just a list of names, doesn’t say anything about them. And if I get killed in a car wreck or drop dead from a heart attack, then I guess I don’t care if anybody finds it, right?”
“No worries,” Milla said, shaking her head.
“You got it.” She opened a desk drawer, pulled out a fat file, and placed it in front of her on the desk.
Milla was astonished. “That many?”
“Hmm? No, of course not. This is a bunch of other stuff.” She began thumbing through the papers. She reached the end, grunted, and started back at the beginning. “Must have overlooked it.” She didn’t find what she was looking for on the second thumb-through, either. An alarmed expression crossing her face, she went through the file a third time, one sheet of paper at a time. “It isn’t here. Damn it, I know it was here!”
For some reason, Milla believed her. Ellin’s upset was too genuine. A new worry crept into her mind. “Could someone—like perhaps True—have broken in and taken the list?”
“He didn’t know it existed. Why would he do something like that? The sheriff’s department is right next door; it isn’t like breaking in would be an easy thing to do. Besides, we’re on camera.” She nodded toward a huge metal shelving unit that was stacked high with huge ledgers.
Milla looked, but didn’t see any cameras. “Where?”
“Tiny little bastard; the upper-left-hand corner. See the holes in the braces for moving the shelves around? Third hole down.”
Ah. Now she saw where the third hole looked as if it had been blocked. “That’s the camera?”
“Sneaky, isn’t it? See, one of the county commissioners suspected his wife was having an affair with the probate judge before the one we got now, coming down here at night for some private, extracurricular activity. So one weekend he sneaked in a security company and had the offices wired. Caught them, too.”
“Can we look at the tape? Or is it possible you moved the list?”
“I never moved the list,” Ellin said flatly. “Ever. And it was here just a month or so ago, I saw it when I was going through the file looking for something else. But all is not lost, as Shakespeare would say. Like I said, do I look stupid? There’s a copy in my safe-deposit box.”
Milla went weak with relief. Thank God, thank God, she thought fervently. To come this close and hit a wall was more than she thought she could bear.
“Let’s have a look at that tape, though; I’m curious if someone came snooping around.” Plus Ellin needed to know exactly where she stood, so she could protect herself if maybe True had known about her list after all, and decided he needed some leverage in his present situation. The same thought occurred to Milla. If that was the case, Ellin would do better to come forward immediately and use the list for her own protection, before True could use it.
She led them down a set of narrow stairs to the dusty, musty basement level. An older Hispanic man sat at a metal desk reading a newspaper. “Ellin,” he said in greeting.
“Morning, Jesus. We want to take a look at the security tapes.”
“Sure, no problem. Or is there?”
“We don’t know. Someone could have been in my office.”
“Last night?”
“Have no idea. Could have been any time in the last month or so.”
“The tape resets and records over itself every seven days. If it was that long ago, you won’t find anything.”
He fetched the tape from the security system’s recorder, and slapped it into a VCR hooked up to a thirteen-inch television. He punched Play, then Rewind, and they all gathered around to watch everything in reverse. Milla and Rip were the most recent visitors, of course. There had been several more during the morning, plus one fairly busy stretch when there was actually a line three people deep waiting for Ellin’s help.
Then there was a long stretch, before the office opened, when nothing happened. They watched daylight reverse into night, with only one light left burning in the office. Then, suddenly, there was a dark figure in Ellin’s office.
“There!”
“Well, how about that,” Jesus said, sitting up alertly. “How did that rascal get in? There’s no sign of a break-in, everything was locked up tight as a drum when I got here this morning.” He let the tape continue to rewind until it picked up the dark figure coming in the door, then he stopped it and played it forward.
Milla’s heart skipped a beat, then another. Beside her, Rip said, “Son of a bitch!”
They watched the man, dressed head to foot in black, walk calmly around the office orienting himself. He came to Ellin’s desk, saw her name plaque on it, and sat down in her chair. He began opening drawers, taking out files and going through them as casually as if he had all the time in the world, as if there wasn’t a nerve in his body. Eventually he came to the correct file, and leafed through it one page at a time. When he reached a certain page, he paused and seemed to read it, then pulled it out of the file and laid it aside. He continued his systematic search of the desk, but pulled out no other papers. He even examined the undersides of the drawers.
“What in tarnation is he looking for?” Jesus said. No one answered.
Then the man extended his search to the rest of the office. Finally, evidently satisfied he’d found what he wanted, he went back to Ellin’s desk and picked up the single page. He took the sheet over to a machine and fed it into it.