David Chen turned the sign in the door glass to CLOSED before Genna had both feet on the mat, and he did it without looking at her.
"I need you to look at something before you say a word."
He came around the register with a manila folder held flat against his chest. Chen's Hardware smelled of kerosene and cut pine, the way it had every morning since Genna came to Seneca Quay. By the register sat a bin of work gloves, two pairs for nine dollars, the price written in his square, unhurried hand.
"Bad news keeps banker's hours," she said.
"This isn't bad news." He laid the folder on the counter. "It's unidentified news. Male, found at the commercial docks, early October 1994."
Genevieve Martel turned the page around. Cause of death: blunt force trauma, consistent with a fall. Ruled accidental. No identification. Closed the next day on a coroner's signature she would have to look up.
Rain had been coming off Seneca Lake since dawn, and the front window ran with it.
"I need to ask you something." She kept her eyes on the page. "The first time I walked in here, you told me to be careful."
"I did."
"And now you're handing me a dead man."
"I'm handing you a record." He tipped his chin toward the back of the store. "Not out here."
The bell over the door rang before she could answer. Mabel Henderson came in with her canvas tote and a rain bonnet still tied under her chin.
"Genna. I saw a car in your driveway yesterday morning." Mabel let the door fall shut behind her. "Black and polished as a piano."
"That would be Beatrice Cole's."
"I thought so." Mabel's mouth flattened. "She came to my porch in August about a fence line that isn't hers."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"I only came in for a furnace filter." Mabel looked at the folder on the counter, then at David, then at Genna, and had the sense not to ask. "And a grape pie, if the farm stand still has them."
"Second aisle," David said. "Top shelf, same one as last fall."
"Same one as every fall." The bell rang her back out.
David walked to the rear of the store without another word. Genna followed him past the paint mixer and the bin of chain sold by the foot.
The back room held a desk, two chairs, a coffee maker with a burnt ring beneath it, and a shelf of deadbolts in their boxes. David shut the door and sat down.
"Where did this come from?"
"County clerk's office in Waterloo."
"You've been busy."
"I've been curious. There's a difference." He squared the pages with both hands. "This wasn't filed with the boat case. Different ledger, probably a different building."
"What does it say?"
"Dockworker found him at first light, at the foot of the south pier, below the ladder." David ran a finger down the page. "Wool cap. Work boots. A brass coat button loose in his pocket, the rest still sewn on his jacket."
"No wallet. No keys. Nothing with a name."
"That's the inventory line," David said. "It's the shortest line on the form."
Genna sat down across from him. Detail had been her language for thirty years. A poor man still carries a pay stub, a bus ticket, a folded church bulletin. A stranger still leaves a trace of where he came from.
"There's no photograph in here."
"There's a line where one should be." David turned to the last page. "Nothing under it."
"Who reported him missing?"
"Nobody did."
She put both hands flat on the desk. "A man has a landlord. A boss. Somebody who notices."
"Not this one." David closed the folder, then opened it again. "He was buried in the county plot, and nobody claimed him."
"Somebody should have."
"I know."
"How long has the file been sitting there?"
"Thirty years." He said it without any weight in his voice, which told her he had been carrying it. "It came in with the Tuesday mail, and I've read it eleven times since."
"Nineteen ninety-four was harvest. You told me the vineyards were full of strangers that month."
"That was my first thought too." He pulled a photocopied page free of the folder. "Cole Harvest and Crofts both kept picker lists on paper. Every name on them is accounted for — tax rolls, a marriage license, one obituary in Rochester."
"So he wasn't a picker."
"He wasn't a picker who came in through the front door."
Genna pulled the report back toward her. The timing would not hold still. "What about the bridge?"
"Which bridge?"
"The single lane, north of town. Elspeth stitched a car going through the rail on it. Headlamps and all."
David shook his head slowly. "I went through the county accident book for that whole year. There's nothing on the bridge. The only wreck in that book is Harlan Pruitt's, and that was 1971."
"Mabel told me about him."
"Then you know there's nothing in ninety-four to hang that block on."
Genna did not answer at once. She set the block aside the way she set aside a damaged seam — marked, not discarded.
Her phone buzzed against the desk. Arthur Vance.
"Miss Martel, I'm calling about the inventory," he said. "You promised me a decision by tomorrow."
"You'll have it in the morning."
"I should hope so."
"One question first." She kept her voice even. "When a county buries an unidentified man, does anyone keep the paper?"
"To that point, a county has to pay for the interment." There was a pause long enough for her to hear his chair creak. "So yes. A claim, a voucher, a plot number. Why do you ask?"
"I want to know who paid for this one."
"Be that as it may," Arthur said, "that record would live in Waterloo. Not in anything of Elspeth's."
"Then I'll ask in Waterloo."
She ended the call and set the phone face down. David had not moved from his chair. He turned the report around and put his thumb on the date line.
"The body was found on a Monday." He slid his thumb down the column. "The coroner signed off Tuesday afternoon."
"And?"
"By Wednesday, the story about Julian Croft being lost on the lake was all over town."
"The docks aren't the lake."
"No." He tapped the date twice. "Close enough that nobody had to connect them. This man wasn't just unidentified, Genna. He was conveniently forgotten."
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