Chapter 7 — Chapter 07

The ledger was in a safety deposit box at the Bank of California. Arthur Ashworth had been thorough.

I spent three days with those documents — contracts, payoffs, surveyor reports. The picture they painted was ugly. Before the 1906 earthquake, a consortium of developers had been buying up cheap land in the South of Market district. The problem: the land was already occupied. By people. Hundreds of them, crammed into boarding houses and tenements.

The solution wasn't relocation. The solution was a fire that started at 5:12 in the morning and somehow spread faster than any fire should. A fire that consumed those boarding houses first, that trapped the residents inside, that left nothing but ash and silence.

The earthquake was an act of God. The fire that followed was an act of men.

And Reginald Voight's father had signed the orders.

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I confronted Voight at his club. Men like him always have clubs — places where they can be comfortable among their own kind.

"I have a ledger," I said, settling into the chair across from his. "Your father's signature is on every page. Bribery, arson, murder. The San Francisco district attorney is going to find it very interesting reading."

His smile didn't falter. He was good at that.

"You're bluffing, Mr. Coe. And even if you weren't, those documents would be inadmissible. Circumstantial. Decades old."

"Maybe. But they'd make a hell of a newspaper story. The Ashworth murder, the cover-up, the bodies still buried beneath Pacific Heights." I leaned forward. "Your father's dead, Voight. You can't hurt him. But you — you're still here. And everyone who remembers will know what you come from."

For the first time, I saw fear in his eyes.

"What do you want?"

"The truth. Did you kill Arthur Ashworth?"

"He found the documents. He was going to expose everything — the consortium, the fire, all of it." Voight's voice was barely a whisper. "I went to his house to reason with him. To offer him money, silence, anything. But he wouldn't listen. He said the dead had spoken to him. Said they were demanding justice."

"And?"

"And I lost my temper." He looked away. "I hit him. Once. He fell wrong. Hit his head on the fireplace." A long pause. "I didn't mean to kill him. But he was already dead when the fire started, and everyone assumed..."

"Everyone assumed it was smoke inhalation."

"Yes."

I stood up. "You're going to confess. To the police, to Mrs. Ashworth, to everyone. And you're going to return every cent of the money you inherited from your father's crimes."

"You can't make me—"

"I don't have to." I placed the ledger on the table between us. "The dead beneath Pacific Heights have been waiting fourteen years for justice, Voight. They've already waited too long. But they can wait a little longer for you to do the right thing."

I left him there with the ledger and his fear.

The next morning, Reginald Voight walked into the police station and confessed to manslaughter.