February's Files (Manny Rivera Mystery Series Book 2) by Rich Curtin

Author:Rich Curtin [Curtin, Rich]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Monticello Press
Published: 2012-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

20

AFTER A QUICK BREAKFAST at the Rim Rock Diner with Emmett Mitchell, Rivera drove directly to the Health Department. Linda Anderson had just arrived at the office. He skipped the preliminaries.

“Linda, could you check to see if there are death certificates on file for these eleven names?” He handed her a list. “It’s very important.”

She looked at him over her reading glasses. “Did the deaths take place in Grand County?”

“Yes. They all died on the same day. There was a bus accident on May 26th, 1968. They were children aged six to nine from the old Thompson Springs Orphanage.”

“Wouldn’t you know it. I gave Bart Winslow the day off. He’s our computer guru and knows the vital records system inside out. But I think I can remember how to operate it.”

She led him to Bart’s workstation behind the office partition and sat down at the terminal. She bowed her head and squinted her eyes for a long moment, as if trying to remember how to operate the system. Then she hit a few tentative keystrokes and waited. The system responded. She typed in the first name on the list, Harry L. Dixon, and the date of death. She waited another moment for the system to reply.

“There’s no record of his death. Are you sure he died in Grand County?”

“Born and died.”

“Let me check for a birth certificate. Do you have the date of birth?”

“He was born on May 6, 1960.”

She typed that into the terminal. “Yes. Here it is. We do have his birth record.” She looked up at Rivera. “But no death record.”

“I’m positive he died in Grand County.”

“I only checked our local database. Let me connect with the Office of Vital Records in Salt Lake City and see if they have it in their computer.” She turned back to the terminal and typed in the necessary information. In a few seconds, a message was returned to her monitor. She looked at Rivera with a puzzled expression. “No death record up there either.”

“Could you check the other ten names?”

“Sure, Manny.” She did. The results were the same. Ten birth records and no death records.

“Let me check one more thing, Manny. Our paper records. Maybe the death certificate copies were filed here but the information never found its way into the computer system. All the old paper certificates were supposedly entered into the new system years ago. After that, everything was automated and paperless. Could be these never got entered.” She got up from her chair and led Rivera to a locked door. She punched a code into a keypad on the wall. There was a click and she pushed open the door. “This room contains paper copies of the old birth and death certificates. Bart Winslow and I are the only people with the entry pass code to this room.” Rivera followed her through the door into a room containing dozens of old filing cabinets.

After some searching, she found the right drawer. She pulled it open, located the death certificate file for the month of May 1968, and paged through the contents.

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