Chapter 97 | Investigation

Chapter 97: Chapter 97 | Investigation

Three days after the noodle shop.

The investigation team had entered the canyon Monday morning. The node documentation was being verified on-site. Denko said the confirmation would come by Tuesday. It was now Wednesday and neither wife had asked about it once.

The world had said their names and they had heard it and come home and made tea and run the form and that, apparently, was sufficient.

Kai was at the counter making the specialty rotation when it happened.

He had his back to the kitchen doorway. Both blends going. The particular sequence he had run every morning for fifty Chapters without thinking about the order anymore. It had become something the hands did while the mind was somewhere else.

He heard Shira wheel in.

He did not turn around.

The chair stopped at the counter to his left.

He kept making the specialty rotation.

Then he heard something that was not the chair. Not the form. Not the physio sheet being consulted.

He turned.

Shira had her left hand flat on the counter.

Not the armrest. The counter.

She was looking at her hand.

As he watched, she moved all five fingers.

Not in the form. Not tracking a sequence. Not in the clinic with the monitoring equipment running.

In the kitchen. At the counter. In the morning light.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Then all five together.

Then she put her hand back in her lap.

She looked at the counter.

He looked at the counter.

He turned back to the specialty rotation.

He finished both blends.

He brought her cup to the counter.

She picked it up with her right hand.

She drank it.

---

Mira came out at seven-thirty.

She found her chair. She found her bowl. She sat with the board in her lap and ate in the focused way she ate when the RF-7 sessions had gone long the night before.

Halfway through the board appeared.

’’The confirmation.’’

"Not yet," Kai said. "Denko said today or tomorrow."

’’The team is still in the canyon.’’

"Yes."

She ate.

’’Forty-eight hours,’’ the board came back. ’’That’s longer than expected.’’

"Denko says the node is more complex than the documentation suggested," Kai said. "They’re being thorough."

’’More complex,’’ Mira wrote. Then, after a pause: ’’Joel was right.’’

Kai looked at her.

She was eating.

He looked at his bowl.

"Yes," he said.

She ate.

Shira had not said anything since the kitchen. She was at the window now, the physio sheet in her lap, the particular quality of sitting that meant she was working on something internally and would share it when she was ready and not before.

Mira’s board appeared.

It was facing Shira.

It said: ’’Your hand.’’

Shira did not look at the board.

"Yes," she said.

’’All five.’’

"Yes."

’’At the counter.’’

"Yes."

Mira held the board.

She looked at the table.

She wrote: ’’How long.’’

Shira looked at the window.

"The range was coming back for three weeks," she said. "I noticed it during the form two weeks ago. The fourth and fifth finger following the sequence independently rather than as a unit." She looked at the window. "I was not sure until this morning."

Mira held the board.

’’Why this morning.’’

Shira looked at the window.

She was quiet for a long moment.

"I don’t know," she said.

The board came back up.

’’I do,’’ it said.

Shira looked at it. ℯ

Mira was eating.

She did not elaborate.

Shira looked at the board.

She looked at the window.

The corner of her mouth moved.

She ate.

---

At ten the phone rang.

Kai took it in the hallway.

"The node is confirmed," Denko said. "Eight-forty hertz. Second-generation deposit. Exactly as the documentation specified. Exactly as Mira Elys’s Gift assessment indicated." He sounded like a man who had been waiting a long time to say something and was finally allowed to say it. "The investigation committee will issue a formal statement this afternoon. The Renmei family criminal prosecution — all counts — will proceed on the confirmed motive."

Kai looked at the hallway.

Both wives at the table now. Shira with her tea. Mira with the board face-down.

"Thank you," he said.

"One more thing," Denko said. "Carson Webb. He was asked to provide the committee with the official forty-one minute record documentation for the corrected registry filing."

"I know who Carson Webb is," Kai said.

"He wants to meet them," Denko said. "Not for the committee. Personally. He was the one who went public with the record. He says—" A pause. "He says he needs to see that they’re all right."

Kai looked at the hallway.

"I’ll ask," he said.

He hung up.

He went to the table.

"The node is confirmed," he said.

Shira was very still.

Mira picked up the marker.

She held the board but did not write anything yet.

"All counts proceed," Kai said. "Formal statement this afternoon."

Shira looked at her tea.

She looked at it for a long time.

She set it down.

She picked it up again.

She drank it.

Mira’s board appeared.

"Second-generation."

"Yes," Kai said.

She held the board.

She lowered it.

She left it face-down on the table.

She sat with her hands in her lap and looked at the table and did not write anything else.

Kai looked at both of them.

He went to make more tea.

---

Dorothy Callahan knocked at eleven.

She had the container. Rice porridge. But when Kai opened the door she was also wearing her good coat and her reading glasses were not on her head. They were in her bag.

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

"The confirmation," she said.

"Yes," he said.

She held out the container.

He took it.

She stood in the doorway.

She looked past him.

Shira was at the window. Mira was at the table. The board face-down. Both of them very quiet.

Dorothy said: "My husband filed the first complaint in his nineteenth year. He was not the only one who filed. There were four others, over thirty years, about different dungeons, different contractors. All returned. All the same senior assessor."

She looked at the container.

"He kept every document," she said. "Every return notice. Every procedural rejection. In a box in the storage closet. Behind the winter coats." She looked at Kai. "I gave them to you."

"Yes," Kai said. "Denko has them. They are part of the prosecution."

She looked at him.

"Good," she said.

She looked past him at Shira.

"Mrs Voss," she said.

Shira turned from the window.

Dorothy looked at her.

"My husband attended forty-one committee hearings in thirty years," she said. "I told you this."

"Yes," Shira said.