Chapter 2 - The Audit of Souls
The kitchen was quiet when Lily finally came out of her room at 7:00 AM.
She wasn't wearing the Levi’s jacket. She had on an oversized gray sweatshirt that had belonged to me, the sleeves hanging past her knuckles. Her hair was clean, but it was still damp at the ends, and her eyes were small and rimmed with red. She didn't look at me as she sat down at the table. She just stared at the bowl of oatmeal I had placed there.
"You don't have to go today, Lily," I said, keeping my voice gentle, the grease from my hands scrubbed away but my skin still smelling of raw soap.
"If I stay home, they win," she whispered. Her voice was small, but it had a hard edge that reminded me so much of Hannah it made my chest ache. "They’ll think I’m hiding."
"You aren't hiding. You're taking a breath."
"No," she said, finally looking up. "They’re already talking about me on the bus app. If I’m not there, Chloe will tell everyone I got suspended for causing a scene. She’s already telling people I tried to hit her."
I walked over to the back of her chair and placed my hands on her shoulders. She felt so small beneath the heavy fleece of my old sweatshirt. "I washed the jacket, Lil. The daisy is fine."
She squeezed her eyes shut, and a single tear escaped, tracing a path down her pale cheek. "Does it still smell like her?"
"It smells like the soap she liked," I lied. The truth was, the sweet, heavy scent of the caramel soda had completely erased the faint smell of Hannah’s lavender perfume. But some lies are necessary for survival.
She took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and nodded. "Okay. I'll wear it."
I went to the bathroom, brought the jacket back, and helped her slip it on. She pulled the collar up around her neck, her fingers finding the small, stitched daisy beneath the fold. She closed her eyes for three seconds, holding onto that thread as if it were a safety line over a cliff.
"I'll drive you," I said.
"No," she replied, her voice steadying. "The bus. If you drive me, they'll see you. They'll laugh more."
I didn't argue. I knew she was right, even if every instinct in my body screamed to put her in my truck, lock the doors, and drive until the town of Riverton was nothing but a speck in our rearview mirror.
After the yellow bus pulled away from our gravel driveway, leaving a cloud of diesel exhaust in the cold morning air, Dave stepped out of his Suburban. He had a small earpiece tucked into his right ear and was typing on his tablet with one hand while holding a paper cup of lukewarm water in the other.
"The school's network is outdated," Dave said without looking up. "They use a standard Cisco firewall from 2018. It took me four minutes to get administrative access to the student database and the internal email servers."
"What did you find?"
"Denham has been deleting emails," Dave said, his fingers flicking across the screen. "Specifically, emails from parents who complained about Chloe Vance's bullying over the last two years. There are six different families who tried to report her. One girl transferred schools entirely last spring. Another boy was hospitalized after a 'hazing incident' during the debate team's retreat. Every single record of those complaints was purged from the official files."
"But not from the backup servers," I murmured.
"Never the backups," Dave agreed. "People like Denham think that when they hit 'delete' and empty the trash, the data disappears into the ether. They don't understand that digital footprints are like grease on a workshop floor—you can try to mop it up, but the stain stays in the concrete forever."
He handed me the tablet.
I looked at the screen. It was a PDF of an internal email sent from Principal Denham’s private account to Mayor Thomas Vance’s personal address, dated three months ago.
Thomas, The situation with the Henderson boy has been resolved. The family agreed to sign the non-disclosure agreement in exchange for the medical coverage we discussed. I have removed the disciplinary logs from Chloe’s file. However, we need to be careful. If the state accreditation board does a spot check of our incident reports before the municipal vote, this could become problematic. Let’s make sure the next donation to the athletic fund is processed through the standard channels. Best, Arthur
"They're not just protecting her," I said, my grip tightening on the tablet until the plastic casing groaned. "They're trading her behavior for cash."
"It's a transaction," Dave said. "The Vance family buys the school's silence, the school gets its new science wing, and the mayor gets to keep his daughter's record clean so she can go to Stanford and tell everyone she’s a self-made leader. It’s a perfect circle. Until someone cuts the power."
"Let's cut the power," I said.
"We need more than emails, Sam," Dave said, his voice dropping into that dark, clinical tone. "Emails can be explained away as 'political negotiations' or 'administrative administrative adjustments' by a clever lawyer. We need something that can't be argued. We need the actual financial trail. We need to find where the money from Riverton Crest is actually landing."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, magnetic black box no larger than a matchbook.
"This is an OBD-II cellular tracker," Dave said. "The mayor’s personal Cadillac is currently parked in the executive space at City Hall. He has a meeting at 10:00 AM with the state transit auditors. I need you to do what you do best, Sam."
I looked at the tracker. It was an old-school play, but in a town like Riverton, old-school was often the most effective.
May you like
"I have to change the alternator on the city clerk’s personal car this morning," I said, a slow, quiet determination settling into my chest. "She always leaves her keys on the peg in the garage entrance of City Hall. I’ll have fifteen minutes before anyone notices I’m there."
"Good," Dave said. "I'll be waiting in the alley. Let's see where the mayor goes when he thinks nobody is watching."
