By the time the lamp needed refilling, they had identified six separate entries where Mercer's claimed balance contradicted Henry's recorded payments. Six, not one, not two—six entries across fourteen months, totaling $112 that Henry had paid and Mercer had simply declined to credit.
She sat back from the table and looked at the list they'd made together on a fresh sheet of paper. "That's not a bookkeeping error," she said.
"No," Nathan agreed. "That's a pattern. Mercer knew Henry was sick by the end of '85. He knew Henry wasn't going to be checking these numbers himself anymore."
She folded her hands on the table. The anger was there, had been there for months, but seeing it laid out in black ink on a clean sheet of paper made it sharper and colder. "He started adjusting the records. He waited until Henry couldn't fight back, and then he started adjusting them."
"Which means he didn't start the fraud after Henry died," Nathan said. "He started it while Henry was dying."
The room was very quiet for a moment.
"I need you to say that again in front of a judge," she said.
"I'll say it wherever you need me to." He closed the ledger. "But we need that lawyer."
"I've tried."
"I know what you've tried. Now we try something different." He leaned back in his chair, and she could see him thinking—the particular way a man thinks when he's mapping terrain he hasn't crossed before. "The telegraph office in Red Hollow is compromised. What's the next closest working wire?"
"Stillwater Junction. Twelve miles east."
"Does Mercer have people there?"