Page 131 of In the Dark of the Past

“That’s a strong case,” she said finally.

“It’s a good case,” I said. “I want Solis to tell me it’s airtight.”

“Evan’s statement gives us the recruitment pipeline,” she said. “The mechanism. The logging road. Vale’s confirmation directly ties Grant to the order. That connects the institutional structure to the man at the top in a way the financial records alone don’t.” She set the mug down. “The question is how Solis will want to handle a deathbed confirmation from a man who isn’t available to cross-examine.”

“That is the question,” I agreed. “Which is why I need him in the same room as me.”

“Evan will hold.” She said it with the certainty of someone who had sat in that room with him last night and read it correctly. “He’s been carrying this for fourteen years. He’s been waiting for someone to ask him the right questions. Give him Solis and let me prep him first.”

I looked at her. “You’d do that?”

“I’m a clinical psychologist,” she said. “Preparing traumatized witnesses for formal statements is a part of my job.” A pause. “Also, he needs it. It’s not just about the case.”

That was River. The case and the person inside the case, always both at once.

“I got a text earlier. Solis is coming here at nine,” I said. “He drove overnight.” I watched her. “That means they’re taking it seriously at the state level.”

She absorbed that. “Good,” she said.

Atlas brought Evan over at seven-thirty. They came in through the back, Atlas with his jacket still on from the night before and the efficient, slightly hollowed look of a man who hadn’t slept either but wasn’t letting it be anyone else’s problem. Evan looked steadier than I expected. Not unaffected, his eyes had the weight of someone who had watched a man die and was still in the early hours of carrying it, but he was here. Decided.

“He ate,” Atlas said, by way of status report. “He’s ready.”

River took Evan to the front room. I stayed out of it. I heard them through the wall, not the words exactly, just the register. River’s voice was low and even, and Evan’s came in halting at first, then steadier, then with something that sounded almost like relief. A person being told that what they’d witnessed mattered—not what they’d participated in.

Atlas sat at the kitchen table with his laptop and didn’t speak, which was its own form of competence.

Solis arrived at 8:52. He was younger than I expected, maybe mid-forties, compact, with the economical manner of someone who had done this work long enough to have stopped being surprised by anything. He shook my hand, looked at the four pages of legal pad notes without touching them, and said, “Walk me through it.”

I did. Forty minutes in, Solis asked three questions, all of them good, all of them the ones I’d been asking myself earlier. He took no notes, just listened the way good investigators did, with his whole attention, not a performance but actual action.

When I finished, he was quiet for a moment. Then, “The annex records are clean chain-of-custody?” he asked.

“Atlas documented the retrieval. Photographs, timestamps, the condition of the space. We took originals for the three most recent cycles and photographed the rest in situ.”

“The DA’s cooperation. Is that formalized?” Atlas asked.

“Sean Callahan walked into our Portland office at four-fifteen yesterday afternoon with his attorney,” Solis said. He said it the way he delivered facts, without inflection, letting the weight carry itself. “Full voluntary surrender. His counsel is Rachel Odom. I’m sure you recognize the name. The proffer session ran until nine. He gave us three mid-level Fund operatives we didn’t have, the complete MR-7 transfer authorization chain, and a formal account of the coercion structure going back to his first year in office.” A pause. “He kept his word.”

I set the coffee mug down carefully. Across the table, Atlas didn’t look up from his laptop, which was his version of giving me a moment.

I took it.

“And the eyewitness?” Solis said. “To the Jenkins murder?”

“River Bennett is prepping him now in the other room.”

“I know who Dr. Bennett is,” Solis said, not unkindly. “I’ve read her father’s file. The original and the one your department opened more recently.” He looked at me with the direct, neutral expression of a man who had learned to communicate without tipping his hand. “This is a complicated case for you personally.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You understand that complicated means scrutinized.”

“I do.”

“The deathbed confirmation,” he said. “Vale’s statement placing Grant’s direct order. Walk me through the conditions.”

I did. Told him about the alley, the loading dock, the cabin, the witnesses, the sequence. I went over Evan’s account first, with Vale confirming without prompting, using the exact words he used. Reiterating that we had a recording. Solis listened the same way he’d listened to everything else.