Chapter 4 - THE SECOND COPY
Richard refused to answer questions.
Victor Hale arrived at the police station wearing a dark suit and the expression of a man attending an inconvenient business meeting.
He was sixty-one, silver-haired, respected, and famous in the county.
He had represented judges.
He had represented developers.
He had served on hospital boards.
And according to Claire, his name appeared inside Richard’s secret financial records.
Detective Ramirez knew arresting Richard would not be enough.
They needed the missing flash drive.
Or another copy.
Claire spent the night under guard.
Ethan slept badly in a chair beside her bed.
At three in the morning, Claire woke him.
“Ethan.”
He lifted his head.
“What?”
“There might be another copy.”
He sat upright.
“You made two?”
“No.”
Claire frowned.
“But I sent something.”
“To who?”
She tried to reconstruct the night before her disappearance.
Two days earlier, she had gone to a shipping store.
She remembered printing account pages.
She remembered buying a padded envelope.
Then the sedative Richard had given her began to affect her memory.
“I mailed documents.”
“Where?”
“I can’t remember.”
Ethan thought carefully.
“What were you doing before you left?”
Claire closed her eyes.
“I was talking to someone.”
“Who?”
“A reporter.”
Ramirez, who had been standing near the doorway, stepped closer.
“What reporter?”
Claire remembered the name.
“Nora Bennett.”
Nora Bennett worked for the Philadelphia Chronicle.
She had spent years investigating financial fraud.
Claire found her articles while researching Bellweather Capital.
Three weeks earlier, Claire had anonymously emailed her.
Nora responded.
They began exchanging information.
Then Claire stopped replying.
By morning, Ramirez had contacted the Chronicle.
Nora had not shown up for work.
She had also missed two phone calls with her editor.
Her apartment was empty.
Her car remained in the garage.
Ethan felt the same cold sensation he had felt beside the coffin.
Another person connected to Richard had disappeared.
Police searched Nora’s apartment.
They found no obvious signs of violence.
But her laptop was missing.
So was her phone.
The only unusual item was a torn shipping receipt inside the trash.
Ramirez brought the receipt to Claire.
The address portion had been ripped away.
But a tracking number remained.
Investigators contacted the shipping company.
The package had been delivered the previous afternoon.
The destination was a private mailbox in Harrisburg.
Registered to someone named Daniel Parker.
Ethan stared at the name.
“That’s my dad.”
Claire covered her mouth.
Daniel had been dead for six years.
Ramirez looked at her.
“Why would you send evidence to a mailbox under your deceased husband’s name?”
Claire slowly remembered.
“Because I opened it years ago.”
After Daniel died, Claire kept the mailbox for sentimental reasons.
Important letters from old friends still occasionally arrived there.
Richard did not know it existed.
Claire had renewed it quietly every year.
Ramirez immediately sent officers to the shipping center.
The envelope was gone.
Someone had collected it at 8:17 that morning.
Security cameras had captured the person.
The footage arrived on Ramirez’s phone.
Claire leaned closer.
The video showed a woman in a baseball cap approaching the counter.
She signed for the envelope.
Then she looked directly toward the security camera.
Claire gasped.
“Nora.”
The missing reporter was alive.
And she had Claire’s evidence.
But the video contained something else.
As Nora left the building, a black SUV pulled into the parking lot.
A man stepped out.
Victor Hale.
Nora saw him.
She ran.
Hale chased her toward the street.
The camera lost them behind a row of delivery trucks.
Ramirez immediately issued an alert for Nora Bennett.
Before she could finish, Ethan pointed toward the frozen image.
“Wait.”
“What?”
He enlarged the corner of the video.
Nora had dropped something beside a trash can as she ran.
It was small.
Dark.
Rectangular.
A phone.
Ramirez sent officers back to the location.
Forty minutes later, they found it beneath a parked delivery van.
The screen was cracked.
The battery was nearly dead.
But the phone still contained one unsent text.
It had been addressed to Detective Ramirez.
May you like
Three words were typed into the message box.
CHECK THE CEMETERY.
