Chapter 60
The Black Screen
The screens stayed black for eleven seconds.
Then the courthouse lights returned, and every file had disappeared.
The reporters still held their phones, but each screen showed the same message: NO RECORD AVAILABLE.
Everett Bell looked relieved.
Claire took the burning edge of her death certificate and dropped it onto the courthouse steps.
“The files were copied,” Tess said.
“Copies can be discredited,” Everett replied.
Daniel turned toward him. “Then discredit twelve witnesses in public.”
“They are not witnesses. They are patients.”
Ada stepped beside Claire. “You keep changing the noun when the evidence changes.”
The county attorney ordered the police to clear the steps.
The families refused to move.
A man held up two passports with the same photograph. A woman held a hospital bracelet dated ten years after her son's official death. A retired nurse carried a box of handwritten logs.
“The system is gone,” Lucy said. “The people are not.”
Claire looked at the nurse. “What is your name?”
The woman answered, “Nora Pike.”
She had left the care home without telling anyone.
“I kept the paper records,” Nora said. “Bell never learned that paper has no password.”
Everett's face changed.
Nora lifted the box.
“The first clinic room was not under the resort,” she said. “It was beneath the old church on Maple Street.”
Claire heard Mara's voice in memory: the first room, the first transfer, the first witness.
“Who was there?”
Nora looked at Ada.
“Her.”
The courthouse doors opened behind Everett.
Inside, a fire alarm began to ring.