Chapter 4 - Twenty Men and One Missing QuestionPolice interviewed each dinner guest separately.
Nearly every man claimed ignorance.
They had not seen Laura enter.
They did not know the basement existed.
They believed Caldwell’s housing investments were legitimate.
Vincent listened as men who controlled billions described themselves as powerless observers.
Then one guest, retired judge Samuel Pierce, admitted that he had heard a child crying beneath the floor shortly before dinner.
“I assumed it came from the street,” he said.
“The dining room is thirty floors above the street,” Vincent replied.
Pierce lowered his eyes.
Another guest remembered Caldwell leaving the table twice. A banker recalled being asked to delay a suspicious transaction until the following morning. A developer admitted that Halcyon had pressured him to falsify repair estimates.
The truth emerged slowly because each man possessed only one fragment—and had chosen not to ask what it meant.
Vincent ordered an independent preservation of all Hale Metropolitan records before returning to the table.
Caldwell remained under police supervision but continued denying the allegations.
“You built your empire with the same people I did,” he told Vincent. “If I fall, your name appears in every file.”
Vincent looked toward Sophie, now asleep beneath her mother’s coat.
“My name appearing in a file is not the worst thing that can happen tonight.”
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For years, Vincent had treated reputation as something worth protecting at almost any cost.
A frightened child had shown him the cost was usually paid by someone else.
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