Chapter 5 - The Man in My Bedroom
Maya motioned me toward the kitchen.
I ignored her.
Some habits survive retirement.
I picked up the heavy brass fireplace poker beside the hearth and moved toward the stairs.
Maya whispered, “Daniel.”
“I know.”
“No, you clearly don’t.”
Another creak.
Then a drawer sliding shut.
Maya raised her weapon and went first.
“State police! Come out with your hands visible!”
Silence.
We reached the landing.
My bedroom door stood half open.
Maya pushed it with two fingers.
A man stepped out from behind the curtain.
He was in his sixties, thin, gray-bearded, wearing a soaked brown coat.
I knew him.
“Alan?”
Former prosecutor Alan Pike raised both hands.
“Don’t shoot.”
Maya’s expression went flat.
“You broke into his house?”
“No.”
“You’re standing in his bedroom.”
“I came through the back after I saw the front door open.”
“Convenient.”
Alan looked at me.
“You received the ledger?”
I said nothing.
His eyes moved downstairs toward the envelope.
“That means yes.”
Maya kept her weapon trained on him. “How do you know about it?”
Alan swallowed.
“Because Laura showed it to me seven years ago.”
The fireplace poker suddenly felt very heavy in my hand.
“You saw my wife before she died?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The morning she collapsed.”
I crossed the room so quickly Maya had to step between us.
“You were at her funeral.”
“I know.”
“You hugged me.”
“I know.”
“You looked me in the eye.”
“I know.”
“Then start talking before I forget we used to be friends.”
Alan’s face folded with shame.
“Laura came to my office with evidence that the Rourke prosecution had been manipulated. She believed someone inside our unit altered financial records.”
“The Blue Ledger?”
“She had a copy of part of it. Not enough to prove everything.”
“Who altered the records?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Did you tell anyone she came to you?”
Alan hesitated.
Maya said, “That hesitation just answered the question.”
He closed his eyes.
“I told Howard Price.”
Our former unit chief.
Howard had recruited me after I left the Army. He taught me how to follow money, how to question executives, how to survive political pressure.
He had been a pallbearer at Laura’s funeral.
Alan continued. “Price told me Laura was confused. Said she was grieving because you were obsessed with old cases. He ordered me to give him everything she brought.”
“And you did?”
“Yes.”
I grabbed his coat.
Maya pulled me back.
Alan did not resist.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cover seven years.”
“No.”
“Did Howard kill her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I don’t!”
His voice cracked.
“I spent seven years trying to find out. Three people who helped me are dead.”
Maya lowered her weapon slightly.
“Names.”
“City auditor Marcus Lane. Reporter Jenny Cole. Deputy comptroller Luis Navarro.”
I knew two of them. Both deaths had been ruled unrelated.
“What are you doing here?” Maya asked.
“I heard the Holloway house burned. Then I heard Nora Bell survived.”
“How?”
Alan looked at her.
“That’s the problem. Someone inside your office is leaking everything.”
Maya’s eyes hardened.
“Who told you?”
“A prepaid phone I’ve been using for years received one message: BELL LIVES. MERCER ACTIVE.”
My name on someone’s alert system.
I went downstairs and picked up the envelope.
Maya said, “Don’t open it here.”
“It may already be compromised.”
“Exactly.”
Alan pointed at the message on the wall.
“You were never the Mechanic.”
“So?”
“So that phrase is from Laura.”
I turned.
“What?”
“She said it to me.”
The room became very quiet.
Alan walked down slowly.
“She believed the code name Mechanic was designed to implicate you if the network was exposed. But she found payment records predating your transfer into the corruption unit. The Mechanic existed before you were there.”
“Then why use my nickname?”
“Because someone knew it would make investigators stop at you.”
“Who had my nickname before the unit?”
Alan’s gaze shifted toward the shattered photographs on the floor.
“Your Army command.”
I felt cold.
Maya said, “Daniel, who from the Army entered state government?”
One name surfaced immediately.
Colonel Thomas Vale.
My former commanding officer.
After retirement, Vale became a security consultant and later chief of staff to Governor Brennan.
Governor Brennan had appointed Howard Price.
I sat down.
This had stopped being a family crime.
Maybe it never was one.
Maya took the envelope from me using gloves and placed it in an evidence sleeve.
“We take this to the secure lab.”
Alan shook his head.
“No state lab.”
“Why?”
“Because the last copy Laura gave the state disappeared.”
I looked at him.
“You said you gave it to Howard.”
“I made a duplicate first.”
“What happened?”
“I sent it to internal affairs. Two days later, they told me the package arrived empty.”
Maya cursed softly.
My phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
A photograph loaded.
Emily asleep in her hospital bed.
Taken from inside her room.
Under it were four words.
WE CAN REACH ANYONE.
I was already dialing the hospital when another image arrived.
This one showed Nora Bell being wheeled down a service corridor by a man in scrubs.
Time stamp: two minutes ago.
Maya called her team.
No answer.
We ran for the door.
Alan shouted after us, “Daniel!”
I turned.
He held up a small brass key.
“I found this taped under your dresser.”
I stared at it.
I had never seen it before.
A paper tag was tied to the ring.
In Laura’s handwriting were three words.
FOR EMILY’S FATHER.
Not Daniel.
Not my husband.
Emily’s father.
I looked at Alan.
He looked as shaken as I felt.
Maya whispered the question I could not.
“Why would your wife write it that way?”
For seven years I had believed Laura’s death was the greatest secret buried in our family.
Standing in the ruins of my office, with my daughter injured, a kidnapped witness disappearing from a hospital, and a key left by my dead wife addressed to “Emily’s father,” I realized I had been wrong.
May you like
Laura had taken something bigger than evidence to her grave.
And whatever it was, the Holloways were willing to burn houses and steal witnesses to keep me from finding it.
