2. Clara's Nightmare

The coffee had gone cold hours ago, but Clara Moreau did not move from the kitchen table. The photograph lay faceup before her—Eric on their wedding day, his collar slightly askew, his smile wide and unguarded. She had been tracing the edge of the frame with her thumb, a repetitive motion that seemed to be the only thing holding her together. Outside, the November dawn bled grey through the curtains, and the distant hum of the Gorges Dam rode the air like a second heartbeat.

She had not slept. After the young gendarme had left the previous evening, she had stood in the doorway for a long time, listening to the silence of the house. Then she had walked from room to room, touching the objects Eric had touched: his chipped coffee mug still on the drying rack, his work gloves draped over the radiator, the worn copy of a mechanical engineering manual on the nightstand with a train ticket stub marking his place. The stub was dated three days before his death, a round trip to the town of Verneux, where the Valdorian Power Authority kept its regional administrative offices. He had not mentioned the trip to her.

Now, in the watery morning light, she replayed their last breakfast together. It had been a Thursday. Eric had come home late the night before, his face drawn, and had barely touched his dinner. At breakfast he had been quiet until she asked him directly what was wrong. He had looked at her then with an expression she had never seen before—not anger, not fear, but something closer to resignation, the look of a man who had come to understand that the walls were closing in and there was no door.

“I filed a report two weeks ago,” he had said, stirring his coffee long after the sugar had dissolved. “The isolators on the number three transformer bank. They’re cracked. Been cracked for months. I put it in writing, sent it up the chain. Fontaine signed off on it and passed it to the regional engineering office.” He had paused, the spoon clinking against the cup. “Yesterday I got a memo back. The request was denied. Insufficient priority. They said it could wait until the spring maintenance cycle.”

Clara had frowned. “But you said if those isolators fail, the whole auxiliary circuit could—”

“Could arc,” Eric had finished. “Could kill someone. I know what I said.”

“Then go higher. Go to the safety division in the capital. There must be someone who—”

“I did,” he had said, and his voice had dropped to something barely above a whisper. “I called a man I know in the inspectorate’s office in Orlac. Told him what was happening. He said he’d look into it. That was ten days ago. Yesterday I received a written warning in my personnel file. Insubordination. Bypassing the chain of command.” He had laughed then, a dry, humorless sound. “Fontaine handed it to me personally. He said I was making trouble for no reason. He said if I kept pushing, I’d find myself reassigned to the northern substations. You know what that means. The isolation postings. Six months alone in a concrete hut checking meters. Some men don’t come back from those—not because of the work, but because of what it does to their minds.”

Clara had reached across the table and taken his hand. “Then stop pushing. Let it go. It’s just a job.”

Eric had pulled his hand away, not angrily, but with a gentleness that broke her heart. “It’s not just a job. If those isolators fail and someone dies, it’s on me. I’m the one who saw it. I’m the one who reported it. And if I stay quiet, I’m the one who let it happen.” He had stood up and kissed her forehead. “I’ll figure it out. There’s a way to make them listen. There’s always a way.”

That was the last real conversation they ever had. The next day, he had worked a double shift. The day after that, he had come home with a bruise on his forearm that he would not explain. And three days later, he was dead at the base of the very transformer whose isolators he had tried to have replaced.

Clara pushed back from the table and walked to the window. The street outside was empty, the cobblestones still wet from the night’s drizzle. Across the road, a man in a dark overcoat was leaning against the wall of the shuttered tobacconist’s shop, smoking a cigarette. He had been there for twenty minutes. She had noticed him earlier, when she had first opened the curtains, and he had not moved. His face was half-hidden by the brim of his hat, but his posture was relaxed, a man with nowhere to go and all the time in the world to get there.

She drew the curtain closed and stepped back. Her heart was beating faster now. She told herself it was nothing—a loiterer, a traveler waiting for the morning bus. But Saint-Arnaud was a small town, and strangers were noticed, and men who loitered across from a widow’s house on the morning after her husband’s death were not common occurrences.

She dressed quickly, pulling on a wool skirt and a heavy sweater, and let herself out the back door into the narrow garden. The gate at the end of the yard led to an alley that ran behind the row of houses, and she followed it to the next street over, emerging near the baker’s shop where Tomas Haas rented his flat. She did not know Haas personally, but Eric had mentioned him once or twice—a quiet man, skilled with electrical diagnostics, the kind of worker who kept his head down and his opinions to himself. Eric had said he was reliable, and in Eric’s vocabulary, that was the highest praise.

The bakery was already open, the warm smell of fresh bread spilling onto the street. Clara hesitated at the door, then pushed it open. A young woman behind the counter looked up with the practiced smile of someone who had been awake since four in the morning.

“I’m looking for Monsieur Haas,” Clara said. “He lives upstairs, I believe.”

The smile flickered. “He left early this morning. Before dawn. He took his toolbox and said he had been called to a job at the dam. Is something wrong?”

Clara felt a cold knot tighten in her stomach. “Did he say who called him?”

The woman shook her head. “No, madame. He just said it was urgent. He looked… I don’t know. Frightened, maybe. He paid his rent through the end of the month and told me he might be away for a while.”

Clara thanked her and stepped back onto the street. The morning was fully light now, the fog burned off, and the town was beginning to stir. A delivery truck rumbled past, and a group of schoolchildren hurried along the pavement, their laughter jarring against the weight in her chest. She walked to the main square and found the office of the Metalworkers and Electrical Trades Union, a narrow building squeezed between a cobbler’s shop and a wine merchant. The door was unlocked, and inside, a man with thick grey hair and the build of a former boxer was hunched over a desk cluttered with papers.

Antoine Girard, the union secretary, looked up as she entered. His face was worn, the skin around his eyes creased with the particular exhaustion of a man who had spent decades fighting battles he knew he could not win. He recognized her immediately—he had been at Eric’s wedding, she remembered, and had given a toast that was equal parts coarse humor and genuine affection.

“Clara,” he said, rising from his chair. “I heard. I was going to come by this afternoon. I’m so sorry.”

She sat down in the chair across from his desk without waiting to be invited. “Eric filed a report about the isolators on transformer three. Did you know?”

Girard’s expression did not change, but his hands, resting on the desk, curled slightly inward. “He mentioned it to me. A few weeks ago. He was worried.”

“He was more than worried,” Clara said. “He was being threatened. Fontaine gave him a written warning. Told him he’d be sent to a northern posting if he didn’t drop it. And now he’s dead.”

Girard was silent for a long moment. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a tin of lozenges, popping one into his mouth. “The Power Authority says it was an accident. They say he was working on a live circuit alone, in violation of every safety protocol we’ve ever negotiated. I don’t believe it either. Eric was the most careful man on that crew. But what the Power Authority says carries weight in this province. It carries more weight than anything I can say, or you can say.”

“Then what good is the union?” Clara’s voice was sharper than she intended, and she saw Girard flinch.

“The union,” he said slowly, “is a collection of men who need their jobs. They’re scared. The Power Authority is the largest employer in the valley. If a man gets a reputation for making trouble, he doesn’t just lose his position—he loses his pension, his housing allotment, his children’s chance at the technical school. The Authority doesn’t fire people. It just reassigns them to places where their voices can’t carry.” He leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. “But I’ll tell you this. I’ve heard things over the years. Rumors. Accidents that weren’t accidents. The dam has a long memory, and some of it isn’t pretty. If you want the truth about what happened to Eric, you need to find out what he knew that they didn’t want known.”

Clara stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘accidents that weren’t accidents’?”

Girard glanced at the door, which was still ajar, and lowered his voice. “Ten years ago, there was an apprentice named Julien Vasseur. Nineteen years old. He fell from the inspection catwalk into the spillway. The official report said he was reckless, that he had been drinking. But the men who worked with him said he was sober as a stone and careful to a fault. They said he had been asking questions about missing maintenance funds. A few weeks later, he was dead. The investigation lasted two days. The file is sealed.”

Clara felt the room tilt slightly. “And you think Eric’s death is connected to this?”

“I think,” Girard said, “that institutions like the Power Authority don’t change their nature. They protect themselves. They always have. If Eric was seen as a threat—if he had something that could embarrass them or cost them money—then the dam is a very convenient place for a man to have an accident.” He paused, and his eyes met hers with an intensity that was almost painful. “Be careful, Clara. The people who run the Authority don’t like to be questioned. And they have friends in the police, in the courts, in the capital itself. If you start making noise, they will notice.”

She stood up, her legs unsteady. “Thank you for your honesty, Monsieur Girard.”

“Antoine,” he said. “And I haven’t been honest with you. I’ve been careful. There’s a difference.” He scribbled something on a scrap of paper and handed it to her. “This is the name of a retired inspector. Marcel Bouchard. He lives in a care home on the outskirts of Verneux. He investigated the Vasseur case. He might talk to you. He might not. But if anyone knows what really goes on at that dam, it’s him.”

Clara took the paper and folded it into her coat pocket. As she turned to leave, Girard spoke again.

“One more thing. The man who was watching your house this morning—I know who he works for. Private security contractor, hired by the Power Authority’s corporate protection division. They like to keep an eye on people who ask questions. Don’t go home tonight. Do you have somewhere you can stay?”

Clara thought of her sister in the next valley, of the cramped apartment above the bakery that no longer seemed safe, of the train ticket stub in Eric’s manual. “I’ll find somewhere,” she said.

She walked out into the square, the scrap of paper burning in her pocket. The man in the dark overcoat was no longer outside the tobacconist’s shop, but she knew he had not gone far. The town felt different now, its familiar streets suddenly lined with shadows that had not been there before. The church clock struck ten, and the sound echoed off the stone buildings like a warning.

Back in her kitchen, Clara Moreau made a decision. She would not sit and wait for the Power Authority’s version of events to harden into fact. She would not let Eric’s death be smoothed over by polite reports and bureaucratic indifference. She would find Marcel Bouchard. She would find Tomas Haas. She would find the truth, even if it meant walking into the very current that had killed her husband.

She packed a small bag with a change of clothes and her husband’s mechanical manual—the one with the train ticket still inside. As she opened the manual to retrieve the ticket, a slip of paper fell out from between the pages, covered in Eric’s cramped handwriting. It was not a note to her, but a list: dates, initials, and what looked like abbreviated financial figures. At the bottom, underlined twice, were the words: “Transférer au coffre de Verneux—clé sous le tiroir.”

Transfer to the Verneux vault—key under the drawer.

She stared at the note, her heart pounding. Eric had kept a safety deposit box in Verneux. She had not known. And whatever was inside it, he had thought it important enough to hide the key.

She pulled open the drawer of his nightstand. Tucked beneath it, attached with a strip of yellowed tape, was a small brass key with a number stamped on its head: 237.

She put the key in her coat pocket, next to the scrap of paper from Girard. Then she picked up her bag and walked out the back door into the alley, leaving her house behind without looking back. The current had taken her husband. But it had not yet taken the truth. And as long as that truth existed somewhere, buried in a vault or in the failing memory of a retired inspector, Clara Moreau intended to find it.

Behind her, the man in the dark overcoat appeared at the end of the alley, watching her go. He pulled a notebook from his pocket and wrote something down. Then he turned and walked toward the railway station, where the morning train to Verneux was already boarding.