The Vaults by Toby Ball

along with an empathic understanding of the specific psychology of the previousArchivists. One had to think as his predecessors had to determine what their decisions would have been.
    All this time and care and bother, and it had been invested for just such a moment as this.
    Before collecting the files, Puskis consulted the
Master Index,
an annually produced volume listing, by last name of the perpetrator, the numbers for all the files generated in a given year. As intended, by merely listing the classification numbers of the files, he would be collecting provided information. To begin with, they were all C4000 series, the
C
designating a violent crime and the 4 designating murder. Further, they were all designated in the 500 category of the C4000 series, meaning that they were offenses that had the additional factor of organized crime. From this commonality the files diverged, but this information alone served as a valuable beginning point. Organized-crime-related murders up until July of 1928. Puskis was too distracted by his investigative process to notice the significance of that date.
    In retrospect, Puskis determined that whoever was doctoring the files had started slowly, removing and replacing the file contents so that unless someone actually examined more than one of them, there would be no evidence that they had been tampered with. Then, according to Puskis’s guess, this person must have realized that time was running short or been put under some other type of pressure, because things became sloppier. And this person must have been working off much the same list and sequence as Puskis was, because the sloppiness increased as he progressed from file to file.
    The first indication of tampering was a file that had been pushed in too far, so that the label was no longer fully visible. He could conceivably have made this mistake, though it would have surprised him. But then more evidence: Files a slot or two out of place were most common. Another had been put in backward. Whoever had done this seemed to have feared the consequences related to the time pressure more than the discovery of his work.
    Puskis brought the files back to his desk, already knowing that the information in them would be useless. He opened them in the reverse order in which he had retrieved them. They were dummies—the papers they contained identical: a trial transcript from a recent, wholly unrelated case;a photograph of a rat-faced man with bruises under both eyes, who Puskis felt quite sure was of no relevance. The paper stock itself was new, produced within the last two years and possibly inserted into the files as recently as the days he was on vacation.
    Puskis sat back in his small leather chair and considered the different probabilities. How long ago could these files have been switched without his coming across them? The switch must have been recent, though he acknowledged this assessment could simply be clouded by vanity. Indeed, what were the chances that these switches were not related to the two DeGraffenreid files and Puskis’s subsequent discovery of his freshly murdered corpse? Extremely unlikely. Which meant that, in response to Puskis’s inquiries into DeGraffenreid, someone had not only murdered the man, but also removed a number of files that Puskis had to assume in some way related to him.
    For the second time in the past twenty-four hours, Puskis realized that the vaguely uncomfortable feeling he was experiencing was fear. His phone rang. An observer would have noticed Puskis’s subtle tensing in response to the sudden peal of noise as a minor response. Had they managed to peer into his closeset eyes, however, they would have registered the true depths of his terror.

CHAPTER TWENTY

    Poole was back in the Hollows. It was overcast, but the clouds were high. The wide streets were empty and he picked up the scent of garbage rotting somewhere nearby. He parked in front and walked up twelve steps to the front door of the