Chapter 11: The Fired Analyst
Angela set the envelope on her office table and studied it like a locked door.
"You kept everything," she said.
"You told me to," Nora said. "Maya kept something too."
"The courier receipt," Angela said. "She photographed the copy left with the building log. North Loop Courier, Friday, nine oh seven, paid in cash."
"The sender gave no name," Nora said.
"No name, but a phone number for confirmation. The clerk remembers him: mid twenties, dark hair, cap low, anxious about a signature."
Nora held the envelope to the window. "Look at the paper. Cream stock, with a watermark."
Angela leaned in. "Wexford Private Bank. Internal review stationery."
"He used bank paper," Nora said.
"The courier company helped there too," Angela said. "That number was used for an earlier job under a name. Tomás Rivera."
Nora wrote the name in her green notebook. "Address?"
"From that job. It may be old. We do not ambush a frightened source."
"I will knock, introduce myself, and let him close the door," Nora said.
"Then I am coming," Angela said. "If he says leave, we leave."
"Agreed," Nora said.
The building in Logan Square was brick and modest, bicycles chained in the hall. Nora pressed the bell for three B.
"Who is it?" a man asked through the intercom.
"Nora Wexford," she said. "I am here about an envelope that reached my office on Friday."
Silence held for a long count. "I know nothing about an envelope."
"You may not," Nora said. "If you are Tomás Rivera, I want to thank whoever sent it, and ask if he is safe."
The intercom clicked off.
"Give him a minute," Nora said.
"He is deciding whether we are a trap," Angela said.
"Then we look patient," Nora said. "Traps are usually in a hurry."
The door buzzed. On the second floor, three B opened on a chain, one wary eye behind it.
"Show me something with your name," he said.
Nora held her identification close. "This is Angela Torres, my attorney. She can wait in the hall."
"You brought a lawyer to thank me," he said.
"I brought a witness who will hear you accurately," Nora said.
He glanced at Angela. "Are you recording?"
"No," Angela said. "Phone in my pocket, hands empty. Say leave once, and we are gone."
The chain slid free. "Two minutes. Inside, before the neighbors get a show."
The apartment was small and painfully tidy, textbooks stacked by size. Tomás Rivera was twenty six, thin and sleepless, and he did not sit.
"You sent the review," Nora said.
"I sent a summary," he said. "Do not make it bigger than it is."
"Why send it at all?"
"Because nobody else would." His laugh was short and unhappy. "I was a junior risk analyst at Wexford. I found the trust fees in a routine sample. Lease administration, quarter after quarter, no contracts beneath them. I asked my supervisor. He said regional accounts were not my lane."
"Did you ask anyone else?" Angela said.
"I asked Pierce, in writing, like a fool who believed the handbook. Three weeks later they fired me for timekeeping fraud, three late arrivals invented from a broken badge reader. A month ago I walked out with a box and a warning about confidentiality."
"And then you sent the summary," Nora said.
"Then I stopped sleeping, so I sent it. Everyone in risk knew your father fought that sale. I thought his daughter might read numbers."
"I read them," Nora said. "On Monday I walked into that bank with a deposit and my own name. They are stalling it, and smiling while they do it."
His eyes widened. "You went in already? Then Pierce knows. Ms. Wexford, be careful. He does not shout. He files things. He turns people into paperwork."
"So do I," Nora said. "That is why I keep notes."
He almost smiled, then fear returned. "If he learns I kept copies, I am finished. Not just fired. Finished. He had my supervisor call me unstable. That word follows you."
"You kept copies of what, exactly?" Angela asked.
He looked at the floor. "Three ledgers. The trust fee ledger, the authorization ledger, and the lease suspense ledger. Copies, not originals. I made them the week before they fired me, because entries were already vanishing from the shared drive."
"Where are they?" Angela asked.
"Somewhere not here," he said. "Do not ask me to hand them over today. I need to know the audit is real. I need to know I am not stepping out alone again."
Nora opened her notebook but did not write. "You will not be alone. I will take nothing today except your permission to come back."
"You have it," he said. "Just do not bring the bank with you."