Chapter 3 - The Records That Disappeared
The next morning, Joanna sat in a secure interview room at Mercy Creek Medical Center.
The baby was with Logan.
Evelyn sat across from her.
Agent Rebecca Sloan placed a thick file on the table.
“We need to show you something.”
Joanna opened it.
The first document was a birth certificate.
A boy.
Thirty-one years old.
The record had been marked as deceased shortly after birth.
But the hospital had no matching death certificate.
The second record was a girl.
Twenty-eight years old.
Same pattern.
Then a third.
A boy.
Different year.
Different mother.
Same physician.
Robert Wright.
Joanna stared at the stack.
“How many?”
Rebecca answered carefully.
“We found seventeen potentially altered files.”
Evelyn covered her mouth.
Seventeen.
Seventeen families.
Seventeen children.
Maybe seventeen lives built on lies.
Joanna looked at the dates.
They spanned nearly fifteen years.
Robert hadn't made one terrible decision.
He had built a system.
A system designed to move children between identities.
Some were placed with wealthy families.
Some with people connected to the hospital.
Some simply vanished.
“Why?”
Rebecca looked at her.
“That is what we're trying to determine.”
The hospital's legal team attempted to limit access to the records.
Then the board president resigned.
A former administrator disappeared.
An employee attempted to destroy electronic files.
The investigation expanded rapidly.
Joanna refused to go home.
She spent hours reading records.
Every file contained the same fingerprints.
A handwritten notation.
A transfer time.
A missing identification bracelet.
Sometimes a false death certificate.
Other times an adoption record appeared months later.
Joanna realized something.
Robert had not been simply stealing babies.
He had been manufacturing identities.
A child could disappear from one family and appear in another.
The biological parents would be told their baby had died.
The adoptive family would receive paperwork.
Money changed hands.
Records disappeared.
Everybody involved had something to gain.
The only people who lost were the children and their families.
Evelyn looked at one file.
A woman named Margaret Stone.
Her child had allegedly died twenty-seven years earlier.
Evelyn shook her head.
“I remember her.”
“You do?”
“She cried for hours.”
“Who was the baby?”
Evelyn looked at the photograph.
A little girl.
Dark hair.
A crescent-shaped mark.
Joanna's stomach tightened.
“The same mark.”
Rebecca nodded.
“We believe it may be a genetic marker.”
“But Robert said it belonged to the Wright family.”
“He lied.”
Joanna looked at Logan.
“You weren't born with it because you were a Wright.”
He shook his head.
“I was born with it.”
“But why?”
Rebecca answered.
“Your biological families may share ancestry.”
Joanna stared at the files.
“What about Noah?”
“Too early to know.”
“Then we test.”
Logan immediately agreed.
The test confirmed that Noah inherited a genetic variation found in several maternal lines.
Not exclusively the Wright family.
The mark meant something else.
It was a trait shared by a group of families.
Families potentially affected by Robert's scheme.
The discovery sent chills through the investigation.
Someone had deliberately used the mark as a fake symbol of family identity.
Robert had told Logan it proved he belonged to the Wrights.
It was a lie.
Joanna asked:
“Did Robert know?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Rebecca placed another document before her.
A private genealogy report.
The report had been prepared twenty-nine years earlier.
The name of the person who ordered it was:
Victor Lang.
Joanna didn't recognize the name.
Logan did.
“Where have I heard that?”
Rebecca answered.
“He was one of the hospital's outside legal consultants.”
Evelyn looked pale.
“He came into the nursery.”
“When?”
“Frequently.”
Joanna stared.
“Did he know Robert?”
“Yes.”
“Is he still alive?”
“No.”
“When did he die?”
Three years earlier.
A sudden heart attack.
Convenient.
Again.
Every important person seemed to die before the truth could reach them.
But this time there was a difference.
Victor Lang had left records.
His widow gave investigators access.
Inside his files, they discovered something enormous.
A series of financial transactions.
Payments from private families.
Payments to hospital administrators.
Payments to adoption agencies.
Payments to police officers.
And one name appeared repeatedly.
Mercer Holdings.
Joanna froze.
“Mercer.”
Agent Sloan nodded.
“Daniel Mercer.”
The man appeared everywhere.
Hospital records.
Adoption documents.
Financial transfers.
And one personal connection.
He had been dating a woman who worked with Joanna's sister.
Joanna's head snapped up.
“My sister?”
Rebecca looked surprised.
“You know Daniel?”
“No.”
“But my sister may have.”
The investigation was changing direction.
May you like
Joanna had thought Robert Wright was the monster at the center.
Now she realized he might have been only one piece of something much larger.
