Chapter 6 - The Photograph Was Designed to Lie
Michael wanted to believe the photograph immediately.
“She’s with Dana. That proves it.”
“No,” I said.
He stared at me. “We can see her.”
“We can see a reflection that resembles her.”
Naomi leaned closer to the image. “Lighting is wrong.”
Lucas nodded. “And the mirror angle.”
Michael swore. “You people can turn anything into doubt.”
“That’s our job,” I said. “Certainty is expensive. We buy it with evidence.”
The image showed Pike tied to a wooden chair inside what looked like a warehouse. Dana stood at his left shoulder. A mirrored panel behind them reflected a woman who resembled Diane Mercer.
But the woman’s shoes were dry.
Dana’s boots were muddy.
Pike’s shirt showed fresh blood.
The mirror reflected no chair legs.
Composite image, maybe.
Or an older image inserted.
Either way, it was bait.
“Trade the ledger,” Naomi said. “What ledger?”
“My father’s.”
“Do we have it?”
“No.”
Michael shook his head. “Maybe Mom does.”
“She would have told me.”
“Would she?”
I looked at him.
It was a fair question.
Mom had hidden the cookie tin from everyone, including me.
At 5:15 a.m., our credentials returned without explanation.
Ten seconds later, I received an official email from Deputy AG Mercer placing me and Naomi on administrative leave pending review of “potential conflicts arising from personal involvement in a local criminal matter.”
Lucas’s access remained active.
Naomi smiled grimly. “She didn’t suspend him.”
“She can’t. Different division.”
Lucas checked his tablet.
Then his face changed.
“What?”
“The Westbridge audit folder is gone.”
“Deleted?”
“Access revoked.”
“By whom?”
He turned the screen.
AUTHORIZED BY: OFFICE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL.
Not Mercer.
Vance.
Samuel Vance himself.
For the first time that night, I felt something close to fear.
Not because I thought I would lose my job.
Because if the Attorney General was involved, the corruption wasn’t above Captain Ross.
It was above me.
My personal phone rang.
Mom.
“Evie?”
“I’m here.”
“They’re moving me.”
“Who?”
“Hospital security says another facility has a safer room.”
I stood. “No one moves you.”
“They said it came from the state.”
“Mom, put the nurse on.”
A nurse took the phone.
I identified myself and told her explicitly that Mom was not to be transferred without physician authorization and independent state-police confirmation.
The nurse went quiet.
“There’s already a transport team here.”
“What agency?”
“Private ambulance.”
“What company?”
She read the name.
I had never heard of it.
“Lock the room. Call hospital police now.”
In the background, Mom said, “Evelyn?”
Then a man’s voice.
Then shouting.
The line cut.
We ran.
Westbridge Medical Center was eight minutes away at illegal speed.
When we arrived, a private ambulance sat crooked at the emergency loading bay, rear doors open.
Two men in paramedic uniforms were on the ground in handcuffs.
Hospital police had stopped them after a nurse questioned why they had no transfer paperwork.
Mom was safe.
Barely.
Inside one man’s bag was a loaded syringe.
Later toxicology would identify a powerful sedative.
At that moment, all I needed to know was that someone had tried to remove an injured sixty-eight-year-old witness from a hospital using fake medical transport.
Mom stared at me from her bed.
“They came for the ledger.”
I shut the door.
“What ledger?”
She looked exhausted.
“Your father’s black book.”
My heart hammered.
“You have it?”
“No.”
“Who does?”
She began to cry.
“Your father gave it to you.”
I stared at her.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The week before he died.”
“I would remember.”
“You were nineteen. You were leaving for college. He gave you an old copy of The Count of Monte Cristo.”
I remembered the book.
Heavy. Green cloth cover. Dad had written inside: For the daughter who notices everything.
“I still have it.”
“Where?”
“In my apartment in the capital.”
Mom nodded.
“He hollowed out the center.”
I almost laughed from shock.
“I never opened it?”
“You hated the book.”
“I did not hate it.”
“You said four hundred pages of revenge was excessive.”
Despite herself, she smiled faintly.
Then I remembered something else.
Two months earlier, someone had broken into my apartment.
Nothing obvious was stolen.
Police called it an attempted burglary.
I had believed them.
“Mom, did Dad tell you what was in the ledger?”
“Names. Payments. Dates.”
“Project Lantern?”
Her eyes changed.
“You know that name?”
“We found a burned page.”
She looked toward the door.
“Close it.”
I did.
“Lantern was never a development project,” she whispered. “Your father said it was a system.”
“What kind?”
“He said city inspectors, police, judges, and contractors were all feeding the same machine. People who cooperated got contracts. People who refused got investigated, ruined, or hurt.”
Naomi sat beside the bed.
“Why didn’t Thomas go public?”
“He tried.”
“What happened?”
Mom looked at me.
“Three days before he died, he met with someone from the Attorney General’s Office.”
My mouth went dry.
“Who?”
“I only remember the first name. Samuel.”
Attorney General Samuel Vance had been a young prosecutor twelve years ago.
I pulled out my phone and searched his public biography.
Twelve years earlier, he had served as deputy chief of the state public-corruption bureau.
Mom watched my face.
“That’s him, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer.
My phone buzzed.
Building security system alert.
Motion detected: my apartment.
Then another alert.
FRONT DOOR OPEN.
I opened the live camera.
A masked figure crossed my living room.
Walked straight to the bookshelf.
Pulled out the green copy of The Count of Monte Cristo.
And held it up to the camera.
The person removed the mask.
It was Samuel Pike.
He looked directly into the lens.
Then he mouthed three words.
I’m protecting you.
The fake ambulance crew gave us one useful thing: route planning. Their GPS unit, old enough to keep local logs, showed they had staged two blocks from the hospital nearly forty minutes before anyone officially requested a transfer.
“They aren’t reacting,” Naomi said.
“They’re scheduling.”
“Which means someone knew how we’d behave.”
I thought of my training, my habits, my reputation. A prosecutor is predictable when you know what she values. Injured witness? Hospital. Evidence destruction? Preservation order. Family in danger? Immediate response.
The enemy did not need to know my secrets.
May you like
They only needed to know my principles.
That realization was more unsettling than any stolen keycard.
