Chapter 16: Voss's Last Logbook Entry — The Astronomer's Confession

The ledger was what Blackwell had expected: meticulous, damning, organized by date and counterparty with the same fastidious precision Crowe brought to everything he touched on his employer's behalf. Twenty-two years of transactions. Blackwell photographed each page without reading them thoroughly — there would be time for reading — and Solano catalogued the physical document itself, noting paper stock, ink degradation, the slight pressure variation in Voss's handwriting that told her when he had been writing quickly and when he had been writing carefully and when he had been writing in the way a person writes when they are afraid of stopping.

The observatory logbooks were in a wooden rack beside the lens storage cabinet, seven of them, identical in format — dark green cloth boards, cream pages, Voss's handwriting across each one in the same disciplined hand. The rack held eight spaces. The eighth was empty.

Solano noticed the gap before she noticed anything else.