The Valdorian Power Authority's regional headquarters occupied an entire block in the center of Verneux, a building designed in the brutalist style that had been fashionable in the capital thirty years ago—raw concrete, narrow windows, a facade that seemed to scowl at the street. Clara stood across the road, rain soaking through her coat, watching the main entrance. Employees streamed in and out through the revolving doors, their faces marked by the particular weariness of people who spent their days in fluorescent-lit offices pushing papers that never stopped coming. She had no plan beyond finding Hugo Blanchard. She did not know what he looked like. She did not know which department he worked in. She knew only that he was a junior engineer, that he had helped Eric, and that he was, according to Eric's notebook, "scared."
The sedan with the fogged windows had parked at the end of the block. The man inside was patient. He did not get out. He did not need to. His presence was the message: wherever you go, I will be there.
Clara turned away from the entrance and walked along the side of the building, looking for another way in. She found it around the back, a service entrance where delivery trucks idled and men in overalls unloaded crates of equipment. She waited until a truck pulled away, then slipped through the open bay doors into a loading dock. The air inside was warm and smelled of diesel and industrial lubricant. No one challenged her. She had learned, in the past few days, that looking like you belonged was often more effective than any disguise.
She navigated through a maze of corridors, following signs toward the engineering division. The building's interior was as severe as its exterior—grey walls, grey floors, grey ceiling tiles stained with the ghosts of old leaks. The fluorescent lights hummed at a frequency that seemed to vibrate in her teeth. She passed office doors with nameplates, each one bearing a title and a department code. None of them said Blanchard.
Finally, she stopped a young woman carrying a stack of files. "I'm looking for Hugo Blanchard. Engineering division."
The woman glanced at Clara's rain-soaked coat, her expression flickering with something between suspicion and pity. "Third floor, room 312. But he might not be there. He's been... out of the office a lot lately." She said this last part carefully, as if the words themselves were dangerous.
Clara climbed the stairs to the third floor. Room 312 was at the end of a corridor, its door half-open. She knocked and pushed it wider.
Hugo Blanchard looked up from his desk with the startled expression of a man who had been expecting bad news and was relieved, if only momentarily, to see that it had arrived in a different form than he had feared. He was in his early thirties, thin, with the pale complexion of someone who spent too many hours under artificial light. His desk was cluttered with blueprints and technical manuals, and his eyes, behind thick spectacles, were ringed with dark circles.
"Madame Moreau," he said, and his voice was barely a whisper. "Close the door. Please."
Clara did as he asked. The office was small, with a single window that looked out onto an air shaft. A dying plant sat on the windowsill, its leaves brown at the edges.
"How do you know who I am?" Clara asked.
Blanchard gestured toward a folded newspaper on his desk. The front page carried a photograph of the Gorges Dam and a headline about the "tragic accident" that had claimed the life of a lineman. "I've been expecting someone. Either you or the police. I didn't know which would come first." He paused, and his hands fidgeted with a mechanical pencil. "I'm sorry about Eric. He was a good man. Better than most of us."
"You helped him," Clara said. "You gave him copies of your reports."
Blanchard flinched. "I shouldn't have. Or maybe I should have done more. I don't know. Every choice feels wrong after something like this." He stood up and walked to the window, his back to her. "I've been an engineer here for six years. In that time, I've filed twenty-seven maintenance requests for the Gorges Dam alone. Fifteen were rejected due to budget constraints. Eight were approved but never implemented. Three were lost—simply disappeared from the system. And one, the most important one, the request to replace the isolators on transformer three, was denied by Fontaine himself with a handwritten note that said, and I quote, 'These hysterical requests waste administrative resources.'"
"Hysterical," Clara repeated.
"Hysterical. That was the word he used. I still have the memo. I kept it. I don't know why. Maybe because I knew, even then, that someday someone would ask me what happened, and I would need proof that I had tried to stop it." He turned back to face her. "Your husband was the only one on that crew who took the reports seriously. The others—they all knew, but they didn't want to know. Knowing is dangerous in this organization. It makes you a liability."
Clara sat down in the chair across from his desk without waiting to be invited. "What happened the night Eric died? You were there. You were on shift."
Blanchard's face went pale, then flushed. "I gave my statement to the gendarme. I was in the control room. I didn't see anything."
"That's not what I asked. I asked what happened."
For a long moment, he said nothing. The fluorescent lights hummed. The dying plant drooped on the windowsill. Then, very quietly, he said, "I heard an argument."
Clara's heart lurched. "Between whom?"
"Eric and Fontaine. It was about an hour before the shift change. I was in the control room reviewing load data. The door was open. I heard them in the corridor—Fontaine's voice, mostly. He was angry. He said Eric had been making calls to the inspectorate in Orlac. He said Eric was trying to destroy the department's reputation. He said there would be consequences." Blanchard's voice shook. "Eric didn't back down. He said he had evidence. He said he had proof that the Authority had been covering up safety violations for years. He said he was going to take it to the press if no one in the organization would act."
"And Fontaine?"
"Fontaine told him to come to his office at the end of the shift to discuss it. Calmly. That's what bothered me—the calmness. One minute he was shouting, the next he was reasonable. It felt like a performance. Like he had already decided what he was going to do and the shouting was just... theater." Blanchard removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. "I told Eric to be careful. I told him not to go to that meeting alone. He said he had already arranged to meet someone else that night, someone who was bringing him more evidence. He said if anything happened to him, I should tell you—" He stopped.
"Tell me what?"
Blanchard looked at her with an expression that was part guilt, part fear. "He said I should tell you that the truth is in the vault. And that you should find the inspector. The one from Orlac. The one who disappeared."
Clara felt the pendant cold against her chest. "I've already found the vault. Who is the inspector? What was his name?"
"Vasseur. Not the young one who died—his uncle. The older Vasseur worked in the inspectorate's office. He was the one who investigated the first accident, the one fifteen years ago. He was forced out after he tried to reopen the case. Eric found him. He was living in Orlac, or somewhere near there. Eric said he had the original files—the ones that were never altered." Blanchard's voice dropped even lower. "But Eric said the old man was terrified. He had been threatened. His family had been threatened. He would only meet in secret. The meeting at the dam that night—it was supposed to be with him, or with someone bringing the files from him."
Clara's mind raced. The meeting Eric had written about in his notebook—the meeting after dark, the meeting he didn't trust, the meeting that might be a trap. "And did the inspector come? Did anyone come?"
"I don't know," Blanchard said. "I went off shift at ten. Eric was still there. The next thing I heard, he was dead." He hesitated. "There's something else. The morning after the accident, before the gendarme arrived, Fontaine called a meeting of all the crew who had been on site. He told us that the official narrative was that Moreau had been working alone, in violation of protocol. He said anyone who contradicted that narrative would find themselves at an isolation posting within the week. He said our families depended on our discretion. Then he asked if anyone had anything to add. No one did."
Clara stood up. Her legs felt unsteady, but her voice was firm. "You need to come with me. To the police. To the magistrate. You need to tell them what you just told me."
Blanchard shook his head, a frantic, jerky motion. "I can't. You don't understand. I have a wife. A daughter. My father-in-law is on the pension board. If I lose this job, I lose everything—housing, medical care, my daughter's school tuition. The Authority doesn't just employ us. It owns us. Every part of our lives is tied to this organization."
"Then give me something," Clara said. "Something I can use. A name, a document, anything."
Blanchard walked to a filing cabinet and opened the bottom drawer. From beneath a stack of outdated technical manuals, he withdrew a manila envelope. "These are copies of every report I filed that was rejected. And this—" he pulled out a smaller envelope, sealed, "—is a letter Eric gave me two weeks ago. He said if anything happened to him, I should give it to you. I was too afraid to bring it to you myself. I was waiting for you to come to me."
Clara took the letter. Her husband's handwriting was on the envelope, just her name: Clara. She did not open it. She was not ready. She tucked it into her coat pocket, next to the pendant and the key.
"There's someone else you should talk to," Blanchard said. "Tomas Haas. The electrician. He was on shift that night. He saw something—I know he did. He's been a wreck ever since. He took leave the morning after the accident, said he was going to stay with his mother. But I don't think that's where he went."
"Do you know where he is?"
"No. But I know who might. His union representative—Antoine Girard. Girard has been protecting workers from the Authority for years. If anyone knows where Haas went, it's him." Blanchard paused. "Girard is not a subtle man. He's loud and he's angry and he drinks too much. But he's the only one who's never been afraid to say what he thinks. If you want to find the truth about what happened at that dam, you need Girard on your side."
Clara thought of the union secretary in Saint-Arnaud, the man who had given her Bouchard's name. She had already started down the path he had pointed her toward. Perhaps it was time to go back.
She put the manila envelope under her arm and turned toward the door. Then she stopped. "Monsieur Blanchard, there is a man following me. A man in a dark overcoat. He works for the Authority's security division. He's outside this building right now. If he knows I came to see you, he may come to question you."
Blanchard's face went grey. "What should I tell him?"
"Tell him the truth," Clara said. "Tell him I asked you about the maintenance reports, and you told me you didn't know anything. But don't tell him about the letter. Or the inspector. Or anything else you just told me. If they know you talked, you're in danger. If they think you stayed silent, you're just another frightened employee."
"And what will you do?"
Clara looked at the envelope in her hands, at the letter in her pocket, at the rain-streaked window and the grey sky beyond. "I'm going to find Tomas Haas. And the inspector in Orlac. And anyone else who knows what my husband knew. And then I'm going to make sure the truth comes out, even if I have to print it myself and nail it to every door in the province."
She left the office and walked back through the corridors, retracing her steps to the loading dock. The rain had intensified, and the streets were running with water. She could see the sedan still parked at the end of the block, its engine idling, its headlights glowing in the grey afternoon like the eyes of a patient predator.
She turned and walked in the opposite direction, toward the train station. She did not go to the lockbox—not yet. She would come back for it when she had a way to retrieve it without being seen. For now, she had a letter to read and a union secretary to find and a missing electrician whose memory might be the key to everything.
She boarded a bus heading east, toward Saint-Arnaud. Through the window, she watched the sedan pull away from the curb and follow at a discreet distance. Let him follow, she thought. Let him see where I go. I am no longer running from him. I am leading him to the truth, and the truth is a current that will sweep away everything in its path.
She opened the letter from Eric.
The first line was in his handwriting, small and hurried but unmistakably his: "My dearest Clara, if you are reading this, then the worst has happened, and I am sorrier than I can say." She stopped reading and pressed the paper to her lips. The bus lurched over a pothole, and the rain hammered on the roof, and somewhere behind her, the sedan kept its steady pace.
She would read the rest when she was somewhere safe. Somewhere the man in the dark overcoat could not see her cry.
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