“You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” he says, his voice is different now. The warmth is gone and what’s underneath is colder, the voice of a man who spent decades in city government, not a man who counts boxes in a supply room. “You think you’ve figured something out. You haven’t. You’ve pulled a thread and you have no idea where it goes.”
“Then tell me where it goes,” I say.
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“You owe my father. You owe everyone in Rothwell whose life you destroyed. You signed the contracts that funneled public money into shell companies. You blocked the audit that would have exposed it. You approved the property transfers that turned stolen money into real estate. This building. This place. You bought it with money that was supposed to fund schools and hospitals and nursing homes.”
Sting stiffens beside me. Dorothy’s nursing home. His mother’s job. I didn’t plan to say it that way but the words came out and they’re true.
Tommy—Fischer—looks at me. The friendly mask is completely gone now. What’s behind it isn’t evil. It’s tired. It’s the face of a man who’s been hiding for years and is suddenly sick of it.
“You think I was the architect,” he says. “But I wasn’t. I was just a cog. A useful one. I signed what I was told to sign. I blocked what I was told to block. The people above me, the people actually running the operation, they’re not in this building. They’re not even in Rothwell anymore.”
“Who are they?”
“People you don’t want to find. People who make me look like a clerk. Which is what I was. A clerk who got in too deep and couldn’t get out.”
“My heart bleeds for you,” I say. “You signed the papers that destroyed my father.”
Something crosses his face. Fast. Controlled. But not fast enough.
“Your father, the mayor, knew what he was getting into.”
“He was investigating corruption. He was doing his job,” I say.
“He was doing more than his job. He was building a case, methodically, for a year. And when it became clear that the case was going to reach the people who couldn’t be reached, he made a decision.”
“What decision?”
Fischer leans forward. “Your father is a smart man, Vi. Smarter than the people he was investigating. Smarter than me. When he realized what he was up against, he didn’t fight. He didn’t go public. He did the one thing none of us expected.”
The room has gone completely still.
Because he saidis.
Your fatherisa smart man.
Not was. Is.
Present tense.
I stop breathing and the words replay in my head.Your father is a smart man.Not the past tense you use about a dead person. The present tense you use about someone who’s alive.
Fischer sees it on my face. The moment I catch it, his mouth tightens. A micro-expression. He knows he slipped. He knows I heard it.
“What did you just say?” I whisper.
“I said your father was a smart man.”
“No. You didn’t. You saidis.”
Five people stare at one man across a table.
Fischer doesn’t respond. His face has closed. The tired openness from a moment ago is gone. What’s left is locked, sealed. He’s a man who realized he said too much and is never going to say anything again.
“Is my father alive?”
Nothing.
