Chapter 9 - The Abandoned Pool Where My Sister Left the One Thing Victor Could Not Erase
Our father taught us to swim at a public pool in Queens.
It had closed after a roof collapse. I remembered the smell of chlorine and the way Maya would count my strokes from the edge.
I went with Naomi and a police detective from the independent prosecutor's office. Lorenzo waited outside with the driver.
The empty pool was filled with fallen plaster and rainwater. Near the deep end, someone had scratched a small arrow into the tile.
Behind a loose access panel, we found a waterproof pouch. Inside was Maya's notebook and a photograph of Victor meeting a senior city official.
The notebook recorded dates, license plates, and payments. Maya had not simply witnessed a murder. She had been investigating a network that bought false medical records and used patients' identities to move money.
The detective photographed everything before touching it.
"This changes the case," she said.
I asked whether it would bring Maya home.
"It gives us somewhere to look."
I was beginning to understand how different those promises were.
At the bottom of the notebook, Maya had drawn a map of a freight depot. A red star marked a storage building beside the river.
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I knew the address.
It was the same distribution yard the prosecutor was preparing to search.
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