The back booth of the tavern is all dim brass and old smoke. Dallas lays the folder open beside his drink, the paper fans of route slips and negatives spread like evidence in a confession.

Murderbone settles at his boot, head heavy on the leather, eyes fixed on the door. The room hums low around them, but nothing presses in. For once, the city keeps its distance.

Dallas crosses names against harbor manifests, then checks them again. One clerk’s initial appears twice, then a shipping code repeats in a different column, like a stain that will not wash out.

The bartender pauses nearby, drying a glass, letting the silence sit without forcing it. The folder stays open. The amber drink catches one thin strip of light, and the whole mess feels less like a trap now, more like a map.

Dallas pinches the repeated clerk initial between finger and thumb, then slides the carbon copy under it. The same hand, same slant, same pressure marks the paper twice, but one version sits in a newer ink line than the other.

He flips to the shipping code column and finds the duplicate was not copied by accident. It was carried forward from an older manifest, then corrected over it, the kind of clean-up work someone does after a file has already been examined.

Dallas draws the negatives closer. One frame catches a ledger edge in the background, and the clerk’s initials sit beside a storage notation, not a dock entry. South Annex. Unit 4B. The same initial appears on both sides of the transfer trail.

Murderbone lifts his head, nostrils flaring at the doorway, while the bartender slows behind the bar and watches Dallas with new caution.

Dallas matches the clerk’s mark against the route slips one last time. The repeated initial ties the harbor paperwork to the South Annex storage chain, and the trail suddenly has a human hand on both ends.