Chapter 4 - The Ledger of the Dead
I looked down at the open ledger.
The handwriting in the journal was unmistakable: the cramped, precise, left-slanted cursive of Bartholomew Duca, written in archival black iron-gall ink. Bartholomew had been the senior partner at Duca, Hale & Sterling for forty-two years, the quiet architect who sat in the shadows of the State House while governors and district attorneys took their marching orders from his mahogany office.
I turned the heavy vellum page.
OCTOBER 14, 2022 — RE: BOSTON HARBOR BERTH 44
DISBURSEMENT: $1,400,000 CASH VIA G. HARPER MARITIME SERVICES.
CARGO: NON-MANIFESTED INDUSTRIAL SOLVENTS.
RECIPIENT OF CLEARANCE: COUNCILMAN J. STERLING.
NOTE: G. HARPER THREATENED TO FILE WHISTLEBLOWER DISCLOSURE. RESOLUTION REQUIRED BEFORE WINTER BOND VOTE.
Two weeks after that journal entry, Thomas Harper—Grace’s husband, a master mechanic for the port authority—had been killed when a fuel line exploded in the engine compartment of a harbor tugboat. The city coroner had ruled it an accidental industrial asphyxiation within four hours of the body arriving at the morgue.
"Thomas didn't die because of an engine failure, did he?" I asked, my hand gripping the cold edge of the steel desk.
"Thomas found the falsified customs stamps in Berth 44," Grace said, her voice shaking with four years of buried, frozen grief. "He called your uncle Bartholomew because everyone on the docks believed Bartholomew Duca was an honest lawyer who protected working families. Bartholomew told him to bring the physical receipts to this house on a Friday night."
She looked up at me, her eyes burning with a feverish, desperate clarity.
"Thomas came here on October twentieth. He never came home. When they pulled his body from the slip two days later, Julian Sterling came to my kitchen in South Boston. He sat at my table, looked at Mia in her high chair, and placed five thousand dollars in an envelope."
"What did he tell you?"
"He told me that Thomas had stolen money from your uncle," Grace wept, tears finally breaking free, carving pale tracks through the dust on her cheeks. "He said if I ever spoke to an investigator, he would have child services declare me unfit and take Mia away. He said the only way I could repay Thomas’s debt and keep my daughter was to come work in this brownstone as a domestic... and keep my mouth shut."
The pieces of the puzzle fell into place with the sickening, concussive finality of a guillotine blade.
For eight years, I had walked past this woman every morning. I had left my dry cleaning on the bench, complained about starch in my collars, and left twenty-dollar tips on the hall table at Christmas, completely blind to the fact that the house I inherited was a prison built over the bones of her family.
"And the knocks?" I asked, looking up at the ceiling vents. "What was Mia hearing at two in the morning?"
Grace pointed toward the back of the chamber, where a secondary steel pipe ran upward through the brickwork toward the roofline.
"Julian Sterling comes through the rear carriage house entrance every Tuesday and Thursday at two," Grace whispered, checking the brass clock on the desk. Its hands now stood at 2:42 a.m.
"He uses the service key to inspect the drawers I've scanned. When he reaches the sub-basement landing, he taps three times on the vent pipe to let me know he’s coming through the outer airlock."
My pulse slowed, turning cold, deliberate, and predatory.
"Is he coming tonight?"
May you like
Grace looked at the clock, then up at me, her pupils dilated with pure, unadulterated terror.
"He's five minutes away."
