Monday Morning — October 5, 1964

The office held onto its smells like a bad habit — stale cigarette smoke clinging to the walls, yesterday's coffee gone sour in the mug by your elbow. The ceiling fan ticked in slow, uneven circles, pushing the air around without improving it. Outside, Cinder Row was already awake — cars coughing, voices rising, the city clearing its throat for another long day.

Your name is Ray Voss. Ten years wearing the badge. Forty-one cases closed, if you believe the paperwork. In this city, that's enough to earn a reputation — one that walks in ahead of you. You never asked for it. Never bothered to correct it.

At 8:17 on a Monday morning in October, 1964, a knock lands on your door. Not loud. Not soft. Certain.

You tell them to come in.

The Woman at the Door

She steps inside. She's dressed like the morning matters — good clothes, carefully chosen — but her hands give her away. Held too still, like if they start shaking, everything else will follow.

She gives you a name after a moment — Cecile Mouton. Says it like it might not belong to her much longer. Magnolia Street, out in the Flats. You know the place — low rent, thin walls, neighbors who mind what they hear and forget what they see. She keeps books part-time for a freight outfit down on Cinder Row.

I found something, she says, voice low. Something I wasn't meant to see. Her fingers tighten together in her lap, knuckles paling.

A ledger, she says. Shipping records. Dates that didn't line up, locations that didn't make sense. Runs logged twice, but only one truck ever left the dock. She shakes her head like it still doesn't add up.

I went back the next day and it was different. Same book, same cover — but the page I saw was gone. Replaced clean. Like it had always been that way.

The Carbon Copy

You study her a second. The way she came in. The way she's still holding herself together by a thread.

You kept a copy.

That gets her. She looks up sharp, meets your eyes proper for the first time. There's a flicker there — surprise, maybe a little hope.

How'd you know that.

You shrug. Because you're sitting in my office instead of pretending you never saw it.

That pulls a breath out of her. Yes sir. I made a copy. Hid it soon as I could. Didn't take it home. Didn't think that was safe.

You tell her she needs to leave town. Tonight. Baton Rouge — she mentioned a sister, so that's where she's going. No packing more than she can carry quick. No goodbyes that linger. If she needs to call, it's from a payphone. Not her apartment, not the freight office, not anywhere with a line that can be traced back easy.

She listens close, nodding along, committing it all like it's instructions to stay alive — because it is.

Case Memo — P-001

Subject: Fontenot Transport, 318 Cinder Row. Books don't line up the way they should. Someone noticed, and now someone else knows they noticed.

Fontenot name carries weight in this city. Marcel Fontenot — owner — sits on the port authority advisory board, keeps a table at the Commerce Club. Men like that don't make mistakes in ink unless they expect nobody to read it twice.

Initial impression: something small on paper, something bigger behind it. Enough to change a page. Enough to make a witness nervous in her own building.

The carbon copy arrives Tuesday morning. At nine-forty, a dock worker named Aldous Prêt calls asking for the detective working the Fontenot case. You haven't told anyone you're working a Fontenot case.

This case stays with Voss until further notice. Keep it quiet. Keep it close.