At one o’clock, I took the elevator to the third floor of the legislative office building to deliver the official county population charts to Ralph Hise. He sat behind his large desk, twirling a heavy brass pen between his knuckles. The room smelled of fresh paint and expensive carpet, a sharp contrast to my basement archive.
“I noticed a gap in our vault registration log from October eleventh, Senator,” I said, setting the charts on the corner of his desk.
Ralph gave a dry, gravelly chuckle and set the pen down. “We have a lot of people moving in and out of those rooms these days, Clara. It was probably just a clerical oversight.”
“It was the day before the new drafts were filed,” I said.
He leaned back, his eyes narrowing slightly as he picked up the brass pen again to polish it with his sleeve. “I was in a private meeting here in Raleigh on October twelve, and we had all the data we needed by then.”
“The log shows the physical maps were removed,” I said.
