Chapter 2 - The Signature at the Bottom
The work order had been issued by a property management company that handled emergency repairs for several historic homes. Jo had obtained the assignment through a licensed plumbing service cooperating with investigators. The paperwork should have been routine: address, leak location, access permission, and a customer's signature.
She unfolded the carbon copy and found the authorized signature wasn't Marco's. It belonged to a woman named Evelyn Price, listed as the property manager. Jo had met Evelyn briefly during a preliminary inspection and remembered her asking whether the house had been renovated before Marco purchased it.
Captain Kim took the paper and asked where the message came from. Jo gave her the number without responding to the sender. The photograph of the badge was old enough that someone connected to Luis's disappearance could have copied it from internal records or obtained it another way. It didn't prove the anonymous caller had ever entered Marco's home.
Back at headquarters, the badge number matched Luis's issued shield. The chain was different from the one Jo remembered. The property would require forensic examination and a complete record of how it entered police custody. Kim assigned an independent team to handle it, excluding Jo from direct evidence decisions because of her personal relationship and the compromised confrontation.
Jo protested. "I can help. I know what he was working on."
"Then give a statement and your notes. You don't handle a case about your missing partner because you want him found more than anybody else."
"You were the one who approved the plumbing job."
"I approved observing the plumbing access. Not threatening the owner."
The words were fair. Jo sat down and wrote a report describing the badge, the rusted pipe, her accusation, and the anonymous photograph. It was humiliating to admit the exact moment she'd turned an evidence discovery into a personal confrontation. She wished she could cross out the sentence about taking out her shield. She left it in.
Luis's wife, Elena Navarro, came to the station that evening. She worked as an elementary school teacher and had endured two years of strangers asking whether her husband had run away. She saw Jo's face and understood before Jo said a word.
"They found something," Elena said.
Jo told her about the shield without describing unverified conclusions. Elena took a breath and asked, "Does this mean he died there?"
"We don't know."
"You told me that every month for two years."
"I know."
Elena stared at the floor. "Then don't bring me a new mystery and call it news. Tell me what you actually have."
Jo explained the wall, the badge, and the open questions about how it had been concealed. Elena listened carefully, then asked why Jo had approached Marco herself rather than letting another detective handle it. Jo confessed that she believed the house contained evidence and wanted to be the person who found Luis.
"You wanted to find him," Elena said. "I want to know what happened. Those aren't always the same thing."
At home Jo opened Luis's last notebook, a photocopy permitted for family review years earlier. He had been investigating alleged kickbacks in a series of city building permits, including retroactive inspections of unsafe renovation projects. The last entry named an engineer called Nathan Price. The surname matched the woman who signed the service order. Jo sent the connection to Kim and waited.
The response came the next morning. Nathan Price was Evelyn's brother and had died eighteen months earlier. Marco purchased the brownstone after Nathan's death, according to recorded property documents. Renovation work had occurred before and after the sale. The badge could have been hidden during either period.
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Then Kim called Jo into her office. The work-order request had not come through the normal property portal. Someone had paid an emergency surcharge to make certain Jo's specific plumbing company received the assignment. That someone had supplied Jo's private cell number as the technician contact.
The case wasn't merely being discovered. Somebody had arranged for her to find it.
