Chapter 1: The Body on Rookstairs

The Rookstairs Tavern leaned into the weather as if it had learned to live with it. Salt wind rattled the signboard. The SCU van door opened and shut with a hollow thump, and Mira felt the town watching from behind wet glass.

Yara Venn took the narrow stairs two at a time. “No one in or out,” she told the local constable at the landing. “Not your bartender, not your owner, not your priest.”

The constable’s jaw tightened. “Superintendent Faure said it was an overdose. We already cleared the room.”

“Then you will not mind me looking at what you cleared,” Yara said, calm enough to make it sound like kindness.

Inside, the rented room smelled of old ale and damp wool. A man lay on the bed, shoes still on, hands folded as if someone had tried to make him dignified after the fact. Joryn Pell, retired officer, once of the coastal service. Mira knew the name before she saw the face. The knowledge hit her like cold water.

Grell Sato knelt by the bedside table, gloved fingers hovering over a saucer with pale grit. “Pill residue,” he murmured. “Crushed. Some of it’s stuck to the glaze.”

Mira kept her voice even. “Photographs first.” She raised her camera, framing the bedside, the window latch, the rumpled blanket, the faint scuff near the bedpost. She forced herself to treat Pell like any other decedent. She counted shots. She counted breaths.

Grell shifted, careful not to disturb anything. “No glass,” he said. “No bottle. If he took something, it wasn’t from a drink left here.”

Yara checked the doorframe, then the lock. “No obvious forced entry,” she said. “But that only tells us the lock wasn’t kicked in.”

Mira moved closer, letting her eyes do what her chest refused to. Pell’s lips were slightly stained, a faint chalky smear at one corner. His jaw sat wrong, not open, not closed. Someone had tried to set him into stillness and missed.

Downstairs, the bartender waited with crossed arms and a look that promised nothing. Mira met him at the foot of the stairs.

“You found him?” she asked.

“Aye,” the bartender said. “Morning. He didn’t come down for breakfast. I knocked. No answer. I let myself in.”

“Did you touch anything?”

“I checked if he was breathing. That’s all.” His eyes slid past her to the doorway. “You people always make it worse.”

Yara’s voice carried from above. “Mira. Get up here.”

On the floor by the washstand lay a half-burned ID card, curled and blackened at the edges like a dead leaf. Grell lifted it with tweezers. A municipal crest was still visible. A name, mostly intact, was not Joryn Pell.

Mira stared at the card until the room felt smaller. “Why would he have that?”

Grell sealed it in an evidence sleeve. “Or why would someone want him to have it,” he said quietly.

Outside, the wind pressed its palm to the windowpane, listening.

Chapter 2: Hostile Harbor Welcome

The quay at Blackharbor was a strip of slick stone and knotted rope. Fishing boats bobbed with a tired rhythm, and the locals moved around the SCU as if around a spill they did not want on their boots.

Dockmaster-in-Chief Lorne Ravich waited near a stack of lobster pots, coat collar up, eyes narrowed. Superintendent Corentin Faure stood beside him, hands clasped behind his back, face composed into a practiced neutrality.

Mira approached with her badge visible. “Superintendent Faure. Dockmaster Ravich.”

Ravich did not offer his hand. “You’re the ones from Greyhaven. Special Crimes.”

“Provincial jurisdiction,” Mira said. “Retired officer. Suspicious circumstances.”

Faure’s smile was thin. “Circumstances are not suspicious. The man overdosed. Blackharbor has buried its own before you were issued your first warrant.”

Mira felt the old instinct to placate, to keep doors open. She forced it down. “We’ll determine that. I need Pell’s retirement file and your incident report. And I need a list of everyone who entered that room before SCU arrival, with times.”

Faure’s eyes flicked, quick as a gull. “Why? To write a story that makes us look incompetent?”

“To write the truth,” Mira said.

Elias Kade leaned out of the van, a portable drive case in hand. “I’ll pull whatever camera coverage exists. Tavern interior, dock road, any municipal street boxes.”

Ravich barked a laugh. “Cameras. In Blackharbor. We have storms and superstition. Not your city toys.”

“There’s a unit on the tavern’s back entrance,” Elias said, already walking. “And one on the fish auction shed. I saw the housings.”

Faure stepped closer to Mira, lowering his voice. “You should leave local matters alone. The harbor doesn’t like outsiders prying.”

Mira held his gaze. “Then maybe the harbor should not stage overdoses in rented rooms.”

For the first time, Faure’s composure slipped. “Mind your tongue.”

She felt it then, the tug of memory. Pell’s voice in a training yard. Pell’s hand correcting her grip on a baton. Pell’s eyes, stern but not unkind, when she had been twenty and reckless.

“I knew him,” Mira said before she could stop herself.

Faure’s brows rose. “Did you.”

“He trained me,” she said. The words tasted like rust. “So yes. I’m asking for his file again.”

Faure’s gaze hardened into something personal. “You think that gives you special claim? It gives you bias.”

“It gives me reason,” Mira replied.

Elias returned, wiping rain from his forehead. “Tavern camera is on a loop. I can copy the last forty-eight hours, if no one has ‘accidentally’ overwritten it.”

Ravich’s mouth twitched. “You’re not welcome here.”

Mira looked past them, out at the water. The sea was grey and close, like an eye that refused to blink. “We’re not here to be welcome,” she said. “We’re here because someone wanted Joryn Pell to die with the wrong name in his pocket.”

Chapter 3: A Name That Does Not Fit

The SCU mobile lab van rocked gently in the wind, its interior lit with a steady white that made Blackharbor’s grey feel even heavier. Grell set a small vial into the analyzer and watched the readout like it might lie if he didn’t.

Mira stood behind him, arms folded tight. Yara leaned on the counter, face unreadable.

“Preliminary tox is back,” Grell said. “Sedative plus an opioid. Not a standard prescription combination. Not for someone Pell’s age unless there’s a serious condition.”

Mira exhaled. “He had no such condition.”

Grell glanced at her. “You know his medical history?”

“I knew his habits,” she corrected. “He was strict. He hated anything that dulled the mind.”

Yara pushed off the counter. “So staged overdose.”

“Likely,” Grell said. “Also the residue was crushed. Could be dissolved and forced. We need full lab confirmation and post findings, but this doesn’t read like a tidy self-administered dose.”

Elias’s fingers tapped on a keyboard at the van’s small workstation. The half-burned ID card sat in a light box, photographed and enhanced. “Running it through provincial registries now,” he said. “Name is intact enough.”

Mira and Yara left him to it and stepped back into the harbor’s damp breath. They started the boardinghouses along the tavern road, knocking on doors that opened only a fraction.

At the third house, an elderly woman with a net-mender’s hands peered out. “We heard,” she said. “You’re the ones making trouble.”

Mira kept her voice gentle. “Did you see Joryn Pell last night? Anyone with him?”

The woman’s eyes flicked to the street, then back. “He walked alone. Late. He looked… wrong.”

“Wrong how?” Yara asked.

“Like he’d forgotten his own steps,” the woman said. “Like he was listening to someone behind him, but there was no one there.”

Mira wrote it down. “Did he speak to anyone?”

The woman hesitated. “A boy from the docks offered to carry his bag. Pell said no. Firm. Then he went into the Rookstairs.”

They thanked her and moved on, collecting fragments. A fisherman saw Pell at dusk buying tea leaves. A tavern regular swore he heard Pell arguing in the hallway, but could not name the other voice. Another woman said she heard the back door open and close sometime after midnight, but storms made sounds into lies.

Back at the van, Elias looked up, face tight. “The ID belongs to a Marleaux municipal aide. Name: Senn Valtier. Date of birth matches registry. Address matches. And he’s still alive.”

Mira stared at the screen. “So Pell had someone else’s ID.”

“Or someone wanted him to,” Elias said. “If the goal was to make the body look like Valtier, they failed. But they tried to plant the idea.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “Why half-burn it?”

“To suggest Pell tried to destroy it,” Mira said, the reasoning clicking into place with a sick calm. “To make it look like guilt. Or panic.”

Grell sealed the residue sample. “We’ll see if there’s binder or sweetener in it,” he said. “Something to mask bitterness. That can tell us whether it was meant to be swallowed fast.”

Outside, the harbor bell rang once, then went quiet. Mira felt the town holding its breath, waiting for them to leave. She looked at Pell’s photo on the file header and heard his old admonition: Follow the paper. Follow the people. Do not follow the noise.

Chapter 4: The Regatta Red Herring

The Blackrock Regatta was not on any official calendar. In Blackharbor, it lived in murmurs, in the way young men disappeared for a night and came back with new boots and salt-stiff hair. The locals spoke of it like a storm: inevitable, dangerous, and not to be named too loudly.

A fisherman called it in, voice eager. “Your dead officer argued with a regatta crew,” he told Mira at the quay. “Said they owed the harbor. Said he’d make them pay.”

Yara’s eyes sharpened. “Where?”

“By the net sheds,” the fisherman said. “Night before he died.”

Faure arrived late, rain on his shoulders. “You’re chasing ghost races now?”

“Witness places Pell in conflict with them,” Mira said. “We follow leads.”

Ravich hovered behind Faure, arms folded. “Regatta boys are idiots, not killers.”

“Idiots can kill,” Yara replied. “So can smugglers.”

They moved on a boathouse at the edge of the inlet, its door painted with warding symbols in flaking white. Faure’s backup officers looked resentful, hands on batons, as if the SCU had dragged them into a family argument.

Yara produced the warrant. “Open it.”

A young man with windburned cheeks spat into the water. “Outsiders with paper,” he said. “Always the same.”

Inside, the boathouse smelled of fuel and wet rope. Grell’s gloved hands lifted a tarp to reveal a crate of blister packs. Painkillers, stamped with Marleaux pharmacy codes.

Faure swore under his breath. “This is what you wanted. Congratulations.”

Yara turned to the crew leader, a broad-shouldered man with a sailor’s tattoo of a compass rose. “Name.”

“Derrin Holt,” he said. “And I don’t know your dead man.”

Mira stepped in, voice steady. “Joryn Pell argued with you. About owing the harbor.”

Holt’s eyes flicked once, then held. “Lots of old men argue in taverns.”

“Where were you the night he died?” Yara asked.

Holt shrugged. “On the water. Regatta run. Ask anyone who isn’t too afraid of Ravich.”

Ravich bristled. “Watch your mouth.”

Yara ignored him. “We will. We will ask.”

They did. Two separate witnesses, hostile but consistent, placed Holt and his crew on the outer channel at the time Pell was likely dying upstairs. Elias checked the dock road camera: Holt’s truck left the boathouse hours earlier, did not return until dawn. The tavern’s back entrance camera caught only weather and blur, but it did not show Holt.

Back at the van, Mira laid the timeline out on the table. “Contraband is real,” she said. “But it’s not our homicide.”

Yara’s jaw tightened. “It was too easy. The town wanted us to grab them and go.”

Grell sealed the pills as separate evidence. “Still useful,” he said. “If these match what killed Pell, it ties supply.”

Elias shook his head. “Different imprint. Different batch.”

Mira looked out through the van window at the boathouse symbols, the superstitious paint meant to keep misfortune out. In Blackharbor, misfortune was always invited in, then blamed on strangers.

Chapter 5: Mira’s Private File

Greyhaven’s SCU archives smelled of dust, toner, and old decisions. Mira sat at a terminal with a hot cup of bitter tea cooling beside her, scrolling through Joryn Pell’s training evaluations and internal memos. Yara stood behind her, reading over her shoulder. Elias paced, phone in hand, waiting on a call from Blackharbor.

Mira clicked open a flagged report dated twelve years ago. Pell’s handwriting had been digitized but kept its sharp angles.

“Pattern of paper officers,” the report read. “Credentials inconsistent with provincial standards. Assignments concentrated in Marleaux Coastal Municipality. Recommend audit of staffing logs and credential issuance.”

Yara let out a low whistle. “He was seeing it back then.”

Mira’s throat tightened. “And nothing happened.”

Elias stopped pacing. “Or something did happen and got buried.”

Mira scrolled further, finding a note appended to her own early file. The memory came with it, unwanted. A complaint she had earned, a night patrol gone wrong, a civilian frightened by her impatience. She had expected discipline. Instead, the file showed “resolved informally.”

Her hands went cold on the mouse. She saw it again, not as a report but as a moment: Pell in the corridor outside the briefing room, rain on his coat, voice low so no one else could collect it.

“You’re fast,” he had said. “That’s not the same as right. Slow down before you hurt someone you can’t apologize to.”

She had snapped something defensive back. He had not raised his voice. He had just looked at her until she heard herself.

Now, in the archive’s fluorescent quiet, Mira swallowed. “He protected me.”

Yara’s tone softened, but only slightly. “You sure?”

Mira nodded, eyes fixed on the screen. “He was the reviewing officer. He could have forwarded it. He didn’t.”

Elias watched her carefully. “Mira. That’s your challenge right there.”

“I know,” she said, too quickly. “I can stay objective.”

Yara leaned closer. “Then say it out loud. What did he want from you? Why was he in Blackharbor at all?”

Mira swallowed. “He called me two weeks ago. Private line. He asked if I’d heard rumors about Marleaux hiring. He said the coast was filling with people who did not exist.”

Elias’s phone buzzed. He answered, listened, then hung up. “Blackharbor constabulary says Pell checked into the Rookstairs under his own name. Paid cash. No luggage beyond a satchel.”

Mira stared at the archive note again. Pell had been an officer who believed in procedure, but he also believed in quiet interventions. He had saved her career without telling her. Now he was dead, made to look like someone else.

Yara crossed her arms. “This is personal.”

“It is,” Mira admitted. The words hurt less than the denial would have. “But it’s also a lead. He was tracking false identities. That burned ID is not random.”

Elias sat on the edge of the desk. “Then we follow the thread to Marleaux. Staffing logs. Credential issuance. Whoever made paper officers can make paper deaths.”

Mira closed the file and stood. “And whoever wanted him silent chose a method that looks like shame,” she said. “Overdose. Wrong ID. A story the harbor can swallow.”

Yara met her gaze. “We will not let them feed it to us.”

When they left the archives, Mira felt the weight of Pell’s old protection like a hand on her shoulder. It did not guide her. It reminded her what could be hidden in plain paperwork.

Chapter 6: Cross-City Paper Trails

Marleaux’s municipal offices were bright in a way Blackharbor never was, all polished stone and glass meant to suggest transparency. Mira found it almost insulting. The receptionist’s smile faltered as soon as she saw the warrants.

“We’re requesting staffing logs tied to Senn Valtier,” Mira said. “And any credential issuance records connected to his role. Also printer access logs and print-release records for the last six months.”

A municipal legal aide appeared, lips pursed. “This is disruptive.”

“Disruption is sometimes necessary,” Yara replied. “We’ll take it in digital form. Now.”

Elias set up in a side office under supervision, imaging a workstation drive with methodical care. “Chain of custody starts here,” he said to the aide, who watched like a hawk. “You’ll sign the inventory sheet when I’m done, and you’ll get a copy.”

“You’re treating us like criminals,” the aide snapped.

Elias did not look up. “I’m treating the data like evidence.”

Celeste Arbour joined them remotely on a secure call, her voice crisp through the speaker. “Send me samples of any personnel PDFs you find,” she said. “Metadata, formatting, anything. And if you can, pull the payroll export that corresponds to those names. Ghost staffing leaves money footprints.”

Hours later, Elias leaned back, eyes narrowed at his screen. “Here,” he said, rotating the laptop toward Mira and Yara. “Batch of edited personnel PDFs. Same template, but the headers are slightly misaligned. Someone patched them. And the document creation times cluster in late-night blocks.”

Mira studied the files. Names, positions, dates. Too clean. Too consistent. “They’re trying to look official,” she said, “but they don’t know what real mess looks like.”

Yara tapped a line item. “And Valtier’s record?”

Elias opened it. “Looks pristine. Almost too pristine. No leave entries, no payroll anomalies, no supervisor notes.”

Celeste’s voice came again. “That formatting,” she said after a pause, “matches an older forgery ring we saw during coastal election cycles. Same footer spacing. Same font substitution trick. They used it to create ghost canvassers and inflate staffing claims.”

Mira felt the case shift under her feet. “So Pell was right. Paper officers.”

“And those paper officers do something,” Yara said, voice tightening. “They pad payrolls for patronage, they place loyal bodies in coastal enforcement, and they manufacture legitimacy. A committee can claim support it didn’t earn and muscle control over who gets watched and who gets waved through.”

The municipal aide stiffened. “Are you accusing this office of fraud?”

Mira kept her voice level. “I’m saying someone used your systems. Either with access or with permission.”

Elias highlighted a print history log. “Documents were printed in batches,” he said. “Not all here. Some routed to an external printer profile. And there are delivery receipts for sealed packets sent to a coastal committee address. Same courier code, repeated.”

Celeste whistled softly through the speaker. “Private print shop, likely. Those rings love physical packets. Makes it feel real.”

Yara looked toward the office window, where Marleaux traffic moved with indifferent purpose. “Committees,” she said. “Election season tools dressed up as staffing.”

Mira pictured Pell in Blackharbor, listening over his shoulder. “He came back to the coast because he saw it happening again,” she murmured. “And someone decided he remembered too much.”

Elias closed the imaging case. “We have enough to justify expanding. Printer patterns, external shop, committee connections, and delivery receipts. We follow the paper.”

Outside the municipal building, Mira paused as the wind off the sea found her, faintly salted even here. It carried the same chill as Blackharbor, just dressed in cleaner clothes.

Chapter 7: Competing Fires

The call from SCU command came while they were still loading gear into the van. Elias listened, face tightening with each sentence.

He hung up and looked at Mira. “I’m being diverted. Province-wide malware incident. Twelve hours. They need me on-site.”

Yara’s eyes flashed. “Now?”

“Now,” Elias said. “Command order.”

Mira’s stomach sank, not from fear but from timing. “We’re close,” she said. “We finally have a thread that isn’t superstition or smugglers.”

Elias grabbed his bag. “I know. But if the malware spreads, we lose systems across multiple municipalities. Including records we need. I’ll push for a preservation order on the Marleaux data before I go.”

Yara’s voice went flat. “Convenient.”

Elias met her stare. “Not a conspiracy. Just bad luck.”

Back in Blackharbor, the absence was immediate. Elias was their technical spine, the one who turned rumor into timestamp. Without him, interviews felt like walking a fog bank with only a lantern.

Mira and Yara sat across from Superintendent Faure in his cramped office. The walls were hung with maritime charts and a framed blessing against drowning.

Mira placed a folder on his desk. “We need your full incident report. Unredacted. And any items recovered before we arrived. I also need your officers’ entry log for that room. Who went in, when, and why.”

Faure did not touch the folder. “You already took the room. You already humiliated my officers at the boathouse.”

“That was a separate matter,” Yara said. “And you know it.”

Faure’s eyes narrowed. “You want cooperation? Stop treating Blackharbor like a disease to be cured.”

Mira leaned forward. “Then stop withholding evidence.”

Faure’s chair scraped. “Evidence?” he snapped. “Your presence is collapsing cooperation across the coast. People stop talking when the SCU shows up. They close ranks. They tell me nothing because they think I brought you.”

Yara’s hand flexed on the table. “If they close ranks around a staged death, that’s not cooperation. That’s complicity.”

Faure’s face reddened. “You do not understand this place. The sea takes people. Drink takes people. Pills take people. We bury and we move on. That’s how we survive.”

Mira’s voice softened, and that seemed to anger him more. “Pell didn’t move on. He came back because something was wrong.”

Faure’s gaze flicked to her. “You were his student. That’s why you can’t let it go.”

Mira felt the hit land because it was partly true. “Give me the report,” she said. “Or I escalate to provincial oversight and you lose control anyway.”

Silence stretched. Outside, a gull screamed, then the wind swallowed it.

Faure stood and opened a locked drawer with a key that hung from his belt. He placed a small evidence envelope on the desk. “Found near the washstand,” he said. “Didn’t think it mattered. It was damp. Half-torn. No one could make sense of it.”

Yara opened it and revealed a torn strip of paper, damp-stained. A partial address, Marleaux. A committee name truncated by the tear. The paper fibers were rough, as if ripped in haste rather than cut.

Mira looked up sharply. “You didn’t think this mattered?”

Faure’s jaw worked. “I thought it would bring you back. And it did.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “You held it to control the pace.”

Faure’s expression hardened. “I held it because once you start pulling committee threads, you don’t just catch criminals. You catch towns.”

When Mira and Yara left, the harbor felt tighter, as if the town itself had moved closer to listen. Mira’s phone buzzed with a message from Elias: Preservation order filed. I’m sorry. Hold the line. Save everything.

Mira stared at the torn address. Competing fires, command had called it. But the smoke here had a different smell. Political. Human. Deliberate.

Chapter 8: The Anonymous Tip

The SCU comms line rang at 02:13. Mira was half-awake in the rented room the team used as a temporary office above a closed net shop. She snatched the receiver before it woke Yara.

“SCU,” she whispered.

A voice, altered or simply careful, spoke with clipped urgency. “You’re looking at the wrong fights. Check the lighthouse supply ledger. Look for the saltname used for deliveries to the Rookstairs. Don’t trust Faure’s copies. Use the book.”

“Who is this?” Mira asked.

A pause, just long enough to hear breathing. “If you say my name, I’m dead in everything but paperwork.”

The line clicked. Dead.

Mira sat still, listening to the wind scrape the building’s siding. She woke Yara with a hand on her shoulder.

“We got a tip,” Mira said. “Anonymous. Lighthouse supply ledger. Saltname for deliveries to the Rookstairs. They sounded terrified.”

Yara was instantly awake, reaching for her coat. “We go now. And we document every step. Photos, keeper statement, ledger handling. No gaps.”

The Blackharbor lighthouse stood on a spit of rock where the sea threw itself at the shore in constant argument. The keeper, a lean man named Odran Quill, opened the door with a lantern in hand and suspicion in his eyes.

“You’re not supposed to be here at night,” he said.

Yara showed her badge. “We’re here anyway. We need your supply ledger. We’ll photograph it in place and log the handling. You’ll get a receipt for the access.”

Quill’s gaze slid to Mira. “The town says you’re digging up curses.”

Mira kept her voice steady. “We’re digging up invoices.”

Quill hesitated, then stepped aside. Inside, the lighthouse smelled of oil and old paper. He pulled a thick ledger from a shelf and set it on a table worn smooth by years of hands.

“You’ll find nothing but lamp wicks and salt pork,” he said.

Mira photographed the cover, the spine, the page numbers, the date range, then each page methodically, the camera shutter loud in the quiet room. Yara recorded Quill’s name, the time, and the ledger’s storage location in her notebook, making the mundane into armor.

“There,” Yara said. “Deliveries to the Rookstairs. Not from a wholesaler. From… ‘SALTNAME: Brinewell.’”

Quill frowned. “It’s just a name. Some suppliers use them. Superstition. You don’t put your true name on the sea’s books.”

Mira’s pulse quickened. The signature repeated, always the same looping hand. Next to it, a return address: a Marleaux political committee office. The same truncated committee name from Faure’s torn strip, now whole. And beside two entries, a courier notation that matched the municipal delivery receipts Elias had flagged in Marleaux.

Yara snapped photos from multiple angles. “This is not lamp wicks.”

Quill’s face went pale. “You didn’t get that from me.”

“We got it from your ledger,” Mira said quietly. “And from someone who wants us to find it without being seen wanting it.”

When they returned to the van, Mira sent the images through the secure channel to Celeste for independent verification. She did not want a single ledger to feel like a magic key. She wanted it to be one link in a chain.

Elias returned at dawn, looking exhausted, hair damp with travel. “I can’t give you a clean trace,” he said without preamble. “The call bounced through relays. But I got something usable. The handset was prepaid. Purchased in Saltmere, corner shop near the bus quay. And the SIM batch was bought in a block, not one at a time.”

Yara tossed him the camera. “Then you’re back in time. We have ledger photos. Saltname deliveries tied to a political committee address. And courier notations that match Marleaux receipts.”

Elias scrolled, eyes narrowing. “It’s a real connection. Not proof by itself, but it’s corroboration. Someone inside is scared enough to risk a call.”

Mira stared at the signature again. Brinewell. A saltname. A false name used like a charm.

“Whoever called,” Mira said, “doesn’t want to testify. They want us to do the speaking.”

Outside, the lighthouse beam swept across the sea, steady and indifferent. In Blackharbor, light did not mean welcome. It meant exposure.

Chapter 9: The False Identity Machine

Elias spread printouts across the van’s fold-down table, anchoring them with a mug to keep the wind from flipping corners when the door opened.

“Municipal PDFs,” he said, tapping one. “Printer microdots embedded in the output. Tiny yellow patterns. Most people never see them. They encode printer serial and timestamp.”

Grell leaned in. “So we can show which machine printed the identity packets.”

“Which machine and when,” Elias said. “And we can compare that to building access logs. The municipal office printer matches some, but not all. The rest match a commercial unit registered to a private print shop near Marleaux’s Seafront Promenade.”

Mira felt the case tighten into something graspable. “We go there.”

The print shop smelled of warm paper and solvent. Posters for coastal festivals lined the walls. The owner, a woman with ink-stained fingers named Vessa Noll, watched them approach the counter with a wary professionalism.

“We’re serving a warrant,” Yara said, placing it down. “Customer logs. Print jobs for personnel packets and identity cards over the last six months. We also need your invoice records and any retained job files.”

Vessa’s face stiffened. “We print menus and wedding programs.”

Elias’s tone was polite and relentless. “And you print PDFs with municipal formatting. We can see it in the microdots. Cooperation helps you. Obstruction makes you part of it.”

Vessa swallowed, then unlocked a drawer and slid out a bound logbook. “I don’t ask what people do with their paper.”

Mira flipped through entries. Most were harmless. Then a line: bulk print, laminated cards, envelope sets. Paid in cash. Customer name: “C. Varr.” Contact number: scribbled, half-smudged. Another entry referenced “committee packets” and a delivery drop that matched the courier notation from the lighthouse ledger.

Yara photographed the entry. “Who is C. Varr?”

Vessa hesitated. “Campaign man,” she said finally. “Fixer type. Always in a hurry. Always smiling like he’s late to a lie.”

“Full name,” Mira pressed.

“Caldren Varro,” Vessa said. “He works committees. Coastal administrator’s race, last I heard.”

Elias keyed the number into his phone. “It’s dead now,” he said. “Disposable.”

Mira’s eyes caught on a note in the margin: “Packet: Valtier.” Another: “Packet: Pell, alt.” Her skin prickled.

“They made one for Pell,” Mira said softly.

Yara’s voice went cold. “To make him look like the aide. To turn his death into a political tool.”

Vessa’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.”

Mira believed she hadn’t known the full shape, but she had known enough to keep quiet. That was how these machines worked. They did not need true believers, only people who liked cash and disliked questions.

Elias held up a printed sheet under the shop’s light. “We’ll take a sample print from your machine,” he said. “With your consent or under warrant. It will confirm the microdot serial. That’s not an accusation. It’s a verification step.”

Vessa nodded, small and shaken. “Do it.”

Outside, the sea wind off Marleaux carried less superstition than Blackharbor, but it carried the same avoidance. Mira looked at the warrant in Yara’s hand and at the logbook photos on Elias’s screen.

“Now we find Varro,” Mira said. “And we find who told him to print a dead man into someone else.”

Chapter 10: Staged Overdose, Real Agenda

Grell’s final confirmation arrived in a sealed report, the kind that made rumors collapse into facts. He laid it on the tavern table in the Rookstairs, using the same spot where locals had once played cards and now refused to sit.

“Residue consistent with crushed tablet slurry,” Grell said, voice low. “Sedative and opioid. The concentration in the mouth swab and the pattern of residue suggests it was introduced quickly, not taken over time. Not definitive of method by itself, but consistent with forced ingestion.”

Mira’s fingers tightened around her coffee cup. “And the restraint?”

Grell nodded. “Faint wrist abrasions. Not severe. Brief immobilization. There’s also a small abrasion at the corner of the mouth, like pressure from a hand or cloth. It fits a scenario where someone held him still, tilted his head, and got the slurry in fast.”

Yara exhaled through her nose. “So he didn’t choose it.”

“No,” Grell said. “Someone chose it for him. Then staged the room to look calm. Shoes on. Hands folded. The burn on the ID suggests a performance, not panic. If Pell tried to destroy it, he’d likely have finished the job.”

Mira looked toward the window. “How did they get in and out?”

Elias tapped the tavern layout sketch. “Front stairs are visible from the bar. Back stairs lead to the service corridor and the alley. The back entrance camera is weather-blurred, but it shows a gap in motion detection around 00:47 when the lens is occluded. Could be wind-driven debris. Could be deliberate. We can’t claim which without more.”

Yara nodded once. “So we don’t overstate it. We state what we can prove.”

They met Caldren Varro in a rented office above a fish export broker in Marleaux, a place that tried to smell like money and still smelled like brine. Varro stood when they entered, suit too sharp for the coast, smile too ready.

“Special Crimes Unit,” he said, as if tasting the title. “This is quite dramatic.”

Mira set the lighthouse ledger photos on his desk. “Recognize the address?”

Varro’s smile faltered, then returned with effort. “Lots of committees have addresses. You’ll have to be more specific.”

Yara placed the print shop log entry beside it. “Recognize your print job?”

Varro’s eyes flicked, then steadied. “You can’t prove that’s me. ‘C. Varr’ could be anyone. And printing is not a crime.”

Elias leaned forward. “Printing isn’t. But the microdot patterns link the forged packets to that shop, and the job notes match the packet names. We also have municipal delivery receipts to the same committee address. We’re building a chain, Mr. Varro, not a story.”

Varro’s jaw tightened. “This is political harassment. You’re trying to smear a coastal race because you don’t like who runs the shoreline.”

Mira slid Grell’s tox report across. “Joryn Pell was forced to ingest a slurry. He died in Blackharbor with an identity packet designed to make him appear to be Senn Valtier. That is not politics. That is homicide and false identity.”

Varro’s gaze dropped to the report, then to Mira’s face. “He came sniffing around,” Varro said, voice thinning. “He threatened to expose fake hires. Ghost staff on payroll. He said he’d go public and ruin the coastal administrator’s race.”

Yara’s eyes narrowed. “What do the ghost hires accomplish?”

Varro swallowed. “Numbers,” he said, and the word came out like a confession despite his resistance. “They inflate staffing claims, justify funding, place loyal people in coastal enforcement posts. They control who gets permits, who gets inspected, who gets waved through. And during elections, they become canvassers on paper, volunteers on paper, endorsements on paper. It’s legitimacy you can print.”

Mira kept her voice controlled. “So Pell threatened a concrete outcome.”

Varro’s shoulders sagged. “He said he’d force an audit before the vote. He said he had names and issuance numbers. If he’d gone public, the committee would have collapsed. The race would have swung. The coast would have been handed to people Finch calls mainland-minded.”

Yara’s tone sharpened. “So you killed him.”

Varro shook his head quickly. “No. Listen. Pell was pressuring us. He wanted money and he wanted names. He said he’d burn us either way.”

Mira did not let the claim stand unchallenged. “We have his call logs,” she said. “We have no outgoing calls to you. We have no deposits, no transfers, no sudden cash. If you’re going to paint him as a blackmailer, you need more than a convenient story.”

Varro’s mouth opened, then closed. His eyes darted to the door as if the room itself might betray him.

Elias’s voice stayed level. “We also have evidence the packet labeled ‘Pell, alt’ was ordered before his death. That suggests planning, not a reaction to a demand.”

Varro’s face went grey. “A senior organizer,” he said finally. “Rowan Finch. Elder Rowan to the cove people. He said scandal would swing the race. He said we needed Pell gone without noise. No stabbing, no shooting. Something the harbor could accept.”

Mira felt the hollow ache deepen. “And the false ID?”

Varro nodded, eyes wet now, anger and fear mixing. “Finch wanted it to look like Pell tried to hide who he was. Like he was the liar. Like he was one of the paper men.”

Yara stood. “You’re coming with us.”

Varro’s voice cracked. “You don’t understand. Finch has people. The coast listens to him.”

Mira looked at Varro, then at the grey light through the window. “The coast listened to Pell once,” she said. “And someone decided silence was easier.”

As they cuffed Varro, Mira felt no triumph. Only the sense of walking deeper into a place where truth was treated like a contaminant.

Chapter 11: The Organizer in Driftwood Cove

Driftwood Cove sat tucked behind a curve of cliffs, houses clustered like they were huddling against the sea’s judgment. The road in was narrow and wet, and the locals watched the SCU car pass as if it were a funeral procession they hadn’t approved.

Elder Rowan Finch met them in a community hall that smelled of kelp and old hymnals. He was silver-haired, broad in the shoulders, wearing a fisherman’s sweater that made him look like everyone’s kindly uncle. His eyes were too alert.

“You bring city law to cove water,” Finch said, voice warm. “It does not mix well.”

Yara kept her badge at chest height. “We bring warrants.”

Finch spread his hands. “Warrants are paper. Paper gets soggy here. Sit. Hear the community first. We have meeting. We have grief. We have traditions.”

Mira glanced at the clock. Stall tactics. She felt it in the way he filled space with words, in the way people drifted into the hall as if summoned.

“We’re not here for folklore,” Mira said. “We’re here for a homicide and a false identity operation.”

Finch smiled, almost pitying. “Outsiders always call it operation. We call it survival.”

Elias whispered to Mira, “Bank transfers and fuel receipts put him here. Varro’s committee paid for cottage rent through a shell account. And the courier code from the lighthouse ledger matches deliveries to this cove address. We’re in the right place.”

Yara stepped aside and spoke into her radio, coordinating with the backup team positioned near the rented cottage. “Execute,” she said quietly.

Finch’s smile thinned. “You will make enemies.”

“We already have,” Yara replied.

Minutes later, an officer entered the hall and nodded to Yara. “Cottage secured. Evidence found. Sedatives consistent with the tox class, empty blister foils, and a kettle with residue. Also a torn ledger page fragment in the stove ash.”

Mira’s stomach tightened at the last part. A fragment meant there had been more.

Finch’s eyes flashed, the warmth gone for a heartbeat. Mira seized it.

“Rowan Finch,” Mira said, “we have a lighthouse ledger with a saltname linked to your committee address. We have courier receipts that match those ledger notations. We have forged identity packets commissioned by your fixer. We have tox confirmation that Pell was forced. And we have sedatives and preparation materials in your cottage.”

Finch’s jaw worked. “All paper. All interpretation.”

Mira lowered her voice. “Then explain the missing ledger page fragment. Explain why someone burned part of a record instead of keeping it clean.”

Finch’s gaze held hers, steady and practiced. “People burn rubbish,” he said. “People burn old paper to keep warm.”

Yara’s tone cut in. “Enough to kill a grown man?”

Finch’s shoulders lifted, then fell. “People here take sedatives,” he said. “Sea dreams. Storm nerves. You don’t know what it’s like to wake up to a house shaking and call it normal.”

Mira did not let him turn it into weather. “Pell wasn’t a storm,” she said. “He was a man. And he was going to expose your ghost staffing before the vote. Before you could lock in control of coastal enforcement posts and the funding that follows. That’s what this was protecting.”

Finch’s mouth tightened. “He was going to ruin everything,” he said, anger leaking through. “He wanted to make the coast look corrupt. He wanted to hand the race to outsiders who don’t know our waters.”

“You ordered it,” Mira said.

Finch looked at her, seeing the personal connection in her eyes. “He trained you,” he said softly. “Did he train you to betray your own?”

Mira flinched, then steadied. “He trained me to stop people who hide behind community.”

She leaned closer. “Someone gave us an anonymous tip. Someone inside your municipality is scared of you. If you cooperate, I can seek protection for them. If you don’t, they stay in the dark and you take the full weight alone.”

Finch’s gaze dropped. The hall was quiet except for the wind pushing at the windows. The community members watched as if they were watching a tide line, waiting to see where it would settle.

Finch spoke again, and when he did, he chose his words like a man choosing a legal defense. “I never laid hands on Pell,” he said. “I never entered that room. You won’t put me at the tavern.”

Yara nodded once, as if acknowledging the attempt. “We don’t need you at the tavern to charge you,” she said. “Conspiracy, procurement, direction, and the false identity scheme. And we have your cottage supplies consistent with preparation.”

Finch’s eyes hardened. “Consistent,” he repeated, mocking the caution. “You people love that word.”

Mira kept her voice steady. “Because it’s honest.”

Finch’s shoulders slumped slightly, the performance cracking. “I didn’t want him to suffer,” he said, voice rough. “I wanted it quiet. I wanted it to look like… like his own weakness. Like he’d fallen off the edge the way old men do.”

Mira felt the confession land like silt settling. Not clean, not satisfying. Just final, and still incomplete.

Yara signaled the officers. “Take him.”

As Finch was led out, the community members watched without speaking. Their silence was not ignorance. It was a choice, made over and over until it became tradition.

Chapter 12: Closed Water, Open Silence

The arrests were processed across jurisdictions like a net drawn tight: Finch in Driftwood Cove, Varro in Marleaux, the forged packet trail logged and sealed, the lighthouse ledger photographed and certified. The print shop’s microdot verification came back as expected. The courier receipts corroborated the committee address. Blackharbor’s regatta crew was formally cleared, their contraband case separated and handed back to local enforcement with a curt note about priorities.

The reconstruction went into the record with careful language. Pell likely met someone he recognized or someone who claimed official purpose. He was subdued briefly, wrists held or pinned, slurry administered fast enough to leave residue and mouth abrasion, then positioned to look peaceful. The false ID and packet were staged to suggest shame and misdirection. The entry and exit were consistent with the service corridor and back stairs, but the weather-blurred camera could not identify a face. The case did not pretend to know what it could not see.

In the Blackharbor constabulary office, Faure signed the closure documents with a pen that scratched like a small accusation. He did not look at Mira.

“You got your outsiders’ truth,” he said.

Mira kept her tone even. “We got the truth. It doesn’t belong to us.”

Faure’s mouth tightened. “The harbor will remember this.”

Yara stood by the door. “The harbor remembers everything. That’s the problem.”

Outside, the Rookstairs Tavern had returned to its usual posture, door open, laughter low and guarded. Mira could feel eyes on her back as she walked to the small cemetery above the cliffs where the wind kept the grass flattened.

Joryn Pell’s grave was new earth and a simple marker. No grand words. Just his name, finally the right one.

Elias hung back with Grell and Yara, giving Mira space without making it ceremonial. Mira crouched and set a small bundle of dried tea leaves on the soil. Pell had always carried them, a habit from long patrols.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “You saved me once. I didn’t save you.”

Footsteps approached. It was Odran Quill, the lighthouse keeper, hands shoved deep into his coat pockets. He stopped at a respectful distance.

“You won’t find your caller,” he said without preamble.

Mira stood slowly. “Do you know who it was?”

Quill’s gaze went to the sea. “Someone inside the municipality. Someone who sees the books. Someone who can’t speak without drowning in it.”

Yara came closer, voice firm but not unkind. “They could still testify.”

Quill shook his head. “Not here. Not against Elder Rowan. Not against committees. People vanish in quieter ways than murder.”

Mira felt the unease settle in her chest. The case was closed on paper. The machine had been exposed and halted, at least for now. But the silence that protected it remained intact, and so did a few stubborn facts that would not sit still.

“The ledger,” Mira said, turning the thought over like a stone. “You said it was a book. Whole. But we found a fragment burned in Finch’s cottage.”

Quill’s face tightened. “Pages go missing,” he said. “Storms. Rats. People who borrow and don’t return.”

Elias joined them, hands in pockets. “Or people who remove the page that names them,” he said softly. “We have a saltname, Brinewell, and a committee address. But we don’t have the person behind the hand. Not cleanly.”

Grell looked toward the harbor. “And we don’t have a definitive source for the sedative supply chain,” he added. “We have possession and preparation. We have consistency. But the procurement path is still fog.”

Mira stared out at the water. The anonymous tip had cost someone something, even if it was only sleep and safety. The missing ledger page suggested a larger ledger somewhere else, a truer one, with names that would not survive daylight.

“We can’t arrest a whole shoreline,” Elias said.

“No,” Mira replied. “But we can write the truth into the record. So it’s harder to erase next time.”

Grell looked toward the harbor. “Next time,” he repeated, as if tasting how inevitable it sounded.

They walked back down toward town. Conversations stopped as they passed. Doors did not slam, but they might as well have.

Blackharbor returned to its quiet, watchful hostility. The sea kept moving, indifferent. Mira carried Pell’s name with her like a weight that would not turn into closure, only into vigilance.