Chapter 4

The safe-deposit box was brought up from the bank vault by a courier who arrived in a black car that pulled into the circular drive and stopped exactly where Griffin directed it. The courier was a young man in a dark suit who looked like he had been told not to ask questions and had decided not to ask any. He carried the box—a flat steel rectangle, dull gray, with two keyholes on the front—and set it on the walnut table with the care of a man handling something he knew was heavier than it looked.

Elias did not sit. He stood at the head of the table, the cane planted beside him, and he watched the courier leave before he turned to the six men who had gathered in loose formation around the walnut wood.

"The box contains some things I have been keeping for a long time," he said. "Some of them are letters. Some of them are financial records. Some of them are things I found out about the people I trusted most."

He did not look at Preston. Preston was standing in the corner of the room, near the glass doors, his burgundy blazer dark with the rain-light shadow that seemed to follow him. His hands hung at his sides, empty now, the leather folder taken from him and placed face-up on the marble where the stamped page still accused him.

Rowena had moved closer, not because she wanted to but because she could not stand still. She had been standing at the linen cart for so long her legs ached, and when she shifted her weight, the folding of her dove-grey tunic rustled in the silence. Pippa was sitting in a chair at the side of the room, her legs dangling, her hands folded in her lap, watching the buckle on the strap of the brace as if it were a television.

Elias opened the box.

Inside were papers, neatly stacked, bound with flat rubber bands. He lifted the top bundle and set it on the table, then the next, then the next, until the box was empty and the table was covered with documents that had not seen the light in a long time.

"This," he said, picking up the first bundle, "is the deed to the property on Halsted Street. The one that was supposed to be sold to the city for the expansion project." He looked at Preston. "You remember the expansion project, Preston. The one where the city offered to buy the property for six million, and the board voted to sell, and the money was supposed to go into the capital fund."

Preston's face was pale. "I remember."

"Good." Elias set the deed down and picked up the next bundle. "This is the record of the sale. The one you negotiated, the one you told the board was final, the one where the city paid six million into an escrow account that you controlled."