Chương 14
“You found her?”
“I found a Rachel Anne Mercer with the same birth date, same Social Security history through twenty-twelve, then a legal name change.”
“To what?”
“Rachel Anne Cole.”
“Where?”
“Pennsylvania for several years, then Connecticut.”
Daniel stood.
“Connecticut where?”
Ruiz held his gaze.
“Litchfield County.”
The cabin.
No one said it.
We did not need to.
Ruiz continued.
“She changed her name fourteen years ago.”
“The same year Margaret told me she died.”
“Yes.”
“Any criminal history?”
“Nothing significant.”
“Employment?”
Ruiz glanced at her notes.
“Medical records administration, contract compliance, later an independent document-retrieval service.”
I said, “She retrieves records for lawyers.”
“Among others.”
Daniel looked sick.
“Beckett.”
“Possibly.”
“Could he have hired her?”
“We’re checking.”
I stood.
“Or she could be working against him.”
Ruiz nodded.
“The planted phones complicate that.”
“Unless those weren’t hers.”
Daniel looked at me.
“She attacked Keene.”
“Keene saw a woman matching her description.”
“That sounds fairly hers.”
“Unless somebody wanted him to see her.”
Ruiz gave me a tired glance.
“You’re enjoying being difficult.”
“No.”
“Little bit.”
“Maybe.”
Daniel paced once across the office.
“If Rachel knows about the notebooks, she may already be going to the cabin.”
“We don’t know that she heard us.”
“The phone responded immediately.”
“We also don’t know who was receiving that feed.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
He stopped.
Ruiz pointed toward him.
“It matters because if Rachel and Beckett are not working together, sending officers blindly to the cabin could put evidence directly into one of their hands.”
Daniel frowned.
“How?”
“If there’s a leak.”
That silenced him.
My phone buzzed again.
This time it was a text from an unknown number.
Ruiz saw my face.
“Don’t open it.”
“It already previewed.”
“What does it say?”
I read the screen.
YOUR HUSBAND IS STILL LYING.
Daniel closed his eyes.
I almost laughed.
“That message is becoming less useful by the hour.”
Ruiz held out her hand.
I gave her the phone.
Another message arrived.
ASK HIM WHO OWNED THE CAR RACHEL SUPPOSEDLY DIED IN.
I looked at Daniel.
He looked genuinely confused.
“I don’t know.”
“Before today, that would have meant something.”
“I swear.”
Ruiz said, “Let me check.”
She stepped away and called someone.
Daniel looked at me.
“I really don’t know.”
“I heard you.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I don’t know what I believe.”
He nodded.
That hurt him.
I let it.
Some injuries were information.
Ruiz came back two minutes later.
“There was a fatal accident reported under Rachel Mercer’s name.”
Daniel frowned.
“You said she never died.”
“She didn’t.”
“The body?”
“Another woman.”
I felt a chill.
“Who?”
“Angela Pierce, twenty-seven.”
“Why was she identified as Rachel?”
“The vehicle registration was in Rachel’s name.”
Daniel stared.
“And the body?”
“Burn injuries.”
The same trick used on me.
A damaged body.
An assumed identity.
A convenient conclusion.
I looked at Daniel.
He saw it too.
“Someone did to Rachel what we just did to me.”
Ruiz nodded.
“Except we don’t yet know who staged hers.”
I asked, “Who owned the car before Rachel?”
Ruiz’s expression hardened.
“Vale Biotech.”
Daniel’s face emptied.
“What?”
“It was a company fleet vehicle assigned to Rachel.”
“Who managed fleet records then?”
“I’m waiting on that.”
I already knew the likely answer.
“Beckett?”
Daniel shook his head.
“Legal wouldn’t manage cars.”
“No, but legal could influence disposal records.”
Ruiz said, “The vehicle had been marked transferred to Rachel six weeks before the crash.”
“Signed by?”
She looked at Daniel.
“Frank Vale.”
Daniel sat down hard.
“My father.”
“Yes.”
He stared at nothing.
I watched the meaning arrive slowly.
If Frank signed the transfer, then either he gave Rachel the car or someone used his authority to create the paper trail.
Neither possibility was clean.
Daniel whispered, “He helped her disappear.”
“Maybe,” Ruiz said.
“Or somebody used his name.”
I said, “Where did the crash happen?”
“Outside Albany.”
“Who notified Margaret?”
Ruiz checked her notes.
“Beckett.”
There it was again.
Always Beckett between event and explanation.
Daniel looked toward the door.
“Then my mother may have believed Rachel was dead.”
I stared at him.
“You’re defending her.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“I’m separating what she did from what Beckett may have told her.”
“That distinction suddenly matters?”
“It has to.”
His voice sharpened.
“If we decide every bad thing belongs to Margaret, we become exactly as easy to manipulate as she expected.”
I hated that he was right.
Ruiz said, “That’s the first intelligent sentence you’ve said since climbing out of a coffin.”
Daniel looked at her.
“Low benchmark.”
She ignored him.
“We need to identify who staged Rachel’s death and why.”
I said, “Start with Angela Pierce.”
Ruiz nodded.
“Already requested.”
“Who was she?”
“Home-health aide.”
Daniel went still.
“For who?”
Ruiz looked at him.
“Frank.”
I felt my stomach turn.
“Angela cared for your father.”
Daniel’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Ruiz continued.
“She worked for the hospice provider during his final month.”
“Did Margaret know her?”
“She would have.”
“Beckett?”
“Likely.”
“Rachel?”
“Almost certainly.”
The structure changed again.
This was no longer a stranger’s body used to erase Rachel.
Angela had been inside the Vale household.
She had known Frank.
Possibly Rachel.
Possibly Margaret.
Maybe Beckett.
Daniel leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“I remember her.”
“Angela?”
“Yes.”
“What do you remember?”
“She was kind.”
His voice dropped.
“She brought my father orange popsicles because he couldn’t keep much down.”
The detail landed harder than any financial record.
A woman carrying popsicles into a dying man’s room had ended up burned beyond recognition in another woman’s car.
“What else?”
I asked.
Daniel pressed his fingertips together.
“She argued with Beckett once.”
Ruiz leaned closer.
“About what?”
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
“Three or four days before my father died.”
“Where?”
“At the house.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“Only the end.”
“What?”
Daniel shut his eyes.
“Angela said, ‘You don’t get to decide what happens after he’s gone.’”
Ruiz wrote it down.
May you like
“And Beckett?”
“He told her to mind her own business.”
