By noon, the building was sealed, the police had taken everyone’s statements, and the news vans had arrived like birds smelling blood.
Ava sat in a conference room with a detective named Mara Quill, who asked the same questions in different clothes.
“What exactly did you see?”
“A figure.”
“Male or female?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you noticed a red scarf.”
“Yes.”
“And an access card.”
“Yes.”
“Could it have belonged to Mr. Marrick?”
Ava’s throat tightened. Across the glass wall, Leo stood alone near the elevators, speaking to no one. He looked carved out of ash.
“I couldn’t read the name.”
Detective Quill did not blink. “That isn’t what I asked.”
Before Ava could answer, shouting erupted in the lobby.
A woman with wet gray hair had forced her way past security. She was small but moved with a fury that made larger men step aside. In her hands she clutched a photograph of a smiling young woman wearing a yellow hard hat.
“Where is Vale?” the woman shouted. “Where is the man who buried my daughter twice?”
Dorian Vale was dead, so no one knew how to answer.
The woman’s name was Nora Bell. Her daughter, Tessa, had been a site engineer on Kestrel & Vale’s riverfront housing project three years earlier. Officially, Tessa had died in a crane accident caused by her own negligence. Unofficially—according to Nora, who had written letters to newspapers, councils, ministers, and anyone with an inbox—Tessa had discovered illegal material substitutions that made the towers unsafe.
Ava knew the project. Everyone did. It had won awards.
Nora locked eyes with Ava through the conference room glass. Something passed between them: recognition without history. A mother’s instinct landing on a stranger like a hand on a shoulder.
“You,” Nora said, pointing. “You saw something.”
Detective Quill moved quickly. “Mrs. Bell, you can’t be here.”
“I can if the dead finally start answering.” Nora turned to the cameras outside, already filming through the glass doors. “Ask them about Level Five. Ask them about the files Vale kept off-server. Ask them why my daughter called me crying the night before she died and said, ‘If anything happens, it’s not an accident.’”
The lobby fell silent.
Leo’s face changed—not guilt, Ava thought, but recognition.
That evening, Ava found him on the rooftop terrace where employees usually came to pretend they were not smoking. Rain had stopped. The city shone below, every window a tiny verdict.
“Did you know Tessa Bell?” Ava asked.
Leo did not turn. “Yes.”
“You never mentioned her.”
“I was a junior designer then. She was the only person on that project who knew what she was doing.”
“Did Vale kill her?”
At last he looked at Ava. “I don’t know. But I know she sent me a file the week she died. I was scared and stupid, and I didn’t open it until after the accident. By then it was corrupted.”
Ava felt cold creep up her spine. “And today?”
“Today Vale asked me to meet him on Level Five. He said he wanted to confess something about Tessa before the safety inquiry reopened.”
“Then why was your access card up there?”
Leo reached into his pocket and pulled out his lanyard. The plastic sleeve was empty.
“Because someone took it from my desk this morning.”
Ava wanted to believe him so badly it frightened her.
Behind them, the rooftop door clicked shut.
Detective Quill emerged, phone in hand.
“Leo Marrick,” she said, “you’re under arrest on suspicion of murder.”
