Chapter 32 - A Box Without RecordsThe following morning, investigators returned to Archive B-1.
Every cabinet had already been cataloged except one.
It carried no inventory label.
Only a faded warehouse sticker remained.
Margaret requested that the entire opening process be photographed.
When the lock finally released, everyone leaned closer.
Inside were dozens of employee photographs.
Old identification badges.
Training manuals.
Conference nameplates.
Most dated back twenty years.
An investigator carefully removed one stack at a time.
Nothing unusual.
Then another analyst discovered a personnel index.
"There are missing numbers."
Margaret looked up.
"What do you mean?"
"The employee identification sequence skips several entries."
She compared the list against digital records.
Five personnel files had disappeared entirely.
No resignation records.
No retirement documents.
No transfer history.
It was as if those employees had never existed.
Arthur watched quietly.
"Can electronic backups recover them?"
The IT forensic specialist shook his head.
"The deletion happened before digitization."
Margaret turned another page.
One employee number had been crossed out by hand.
Beside it were two letters.
E. K.
No full name.
No department.
Only the initials.
Samuel stared at the page.
"I haven't seen that handwriting in almost twenty years."
Margaret noticed something else.
The ink matched several annotations found in Harold Bennett's warning documents.
Different papers.
May you like
Same handwriting.
Someone had been editing internal records long before anyone suspected the company's culture was changing.
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