“That I am too old to move eight-hundred-pound safes.”
Mae shook her head.
After supper, Eli wanted to begin cutting immediately.
Ellis refused.
“We don't know what's behind the steel.”
“That's why we cut it.”
“No. That's why we think first.”
He brought a flashlight, ruler, magnet, chalk, and a small machinist hammer.
For two hours, they examined the safe.
Ellis had repaired enough old machinery to understand that cutting into unknown structures could destroy more than it revealed.
A commercial fire safe might contain multiple walls.
Insulation.
Concrete-based fireproofing.
Metal reinforcement.
Hidden cavities.
If the interior held paper, photographs, legal documents, or anything vulnerable to heat, attacking the safe carelessly could ruin it.
Eli measured the outer damage.
Ellis studied the welds.
The factory seams were broad and uniform.
The later seam was not.
It ran around part of the reinforced interior like a scar.
Ellis held the flashlight at an angle.
“See that?”
Eli nodded.
Heat discoloration.
Faint beneath corrosion.
Not from the original manufacture.
Not from the attempted torch cut either.
Two separate events.
Someone had tried opening the safe.
Then, at some later point, somebody had reinforced part of it.
“Maybe the first person opened it,” Eli said.
“And then somebody sealed it again.”
“Why?”