Part 14
Rusk saw it too.
They ended the interview and searched Mara’s apartment again.
Inside a hollowed cookbook, agents found a key to a storage unit.
The unit contained the black medical case.
Inside were AM-47 injectors, gloves, a dark raincoat, and a tablet used to access the estate security system.
The raincoat fit Mara.
The gloves contained Edwin’s blood and a partial print belonging to Owen.
The injector mechanism was designed for left-handed use.
Mara was right-handed.
Owen was left-handed.
The evidence seemed complete.
Too complete, Edwin said from his hospital room.
This time, Celeste listened.
“Explain,” she said.
“Owen would not leave his print inside the case.”
“He was fleeing.”
“He planned for months.”
“People make mistakes.”
“Yes. But Owen wore gloves even to repair a gate sensor.”
Adrian, reviewing the medical contents, found another inconsistency.
The injector used on Edwin had delivered a diluted compound. The injectors in the case contained full-strength AM-47, enough to kill a healthy adult.
“Someone wants the case to prove murder intent,” he said.
“Would Owen dilute the dose?” Rusk asked.
“If he wanted Edwin alive for information, yes.”
“Could Mara?”
“She lacked the medical skill.”
“Could Miriam Saye?”
Adrian did not answer.
Agents located Miriam two days later in a rented apartment near Providence.
She surrendered without resistance.
She was sixty-one, thin, and carried her damaged right hand close to her body. She smelled faintly of cloves.
During questioning, she admitted meeting Edwin and Beatrice. She admitted entering the Bellweather laboratory. She admitted supplying Edwin with information about Northlight.
She denied attacking him.
“My right hand cannot operate that injector,” she said.
“You could use your left,” Rusk replied.
“Not with enough control behind the ear.”
“Did Owen contact you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The night before the attack. He said Edwin had agreed to surrender the archive.”
“Did you believe him?”
“No.”
“Where were you at eleven forty-three?”
“In my apartment.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Convenient.”
“Most loneliness is.”
Celeste watched through the glass.
Miriam looked nothing like the hidden villain imagined by headlines. She looked tired, irritable, and unimpressed by authority.
“Why revive AM-47?” Rusk asked.
“I did not.”
“Your clinics bought precursor chemicals.”
“Shell clinics using names from my old network.”
“Who had those names?”
“Anyone with the settlement archive.”
“Edwin.”
“Beatrice. Adrian. Your prosecutors, if they had bothered to investigate fifteen years ago.”
“Did Celeste’s father?”
Miriam’s expression hardened. “He had everything.”
After the interview, Miriam asked to speak with Adrian.
He refused.
Then he changed his mind.
Celeste waited outside while they spoke for almost an hour. Through the narrow glass panel, she saw Miriam reach once toward him with her damaged hand and stop before touching his sleeve.
When Adrian emerged, his face was pale.
“What did she say?”
“That my mother’s dose was not an accident.”
Celeste followed him down the corridor.
“What does that mean?”
“The trial’s investors wanted proof the drug could stop prolonged seizures. My mother was selected because her condition was severe and her family had no influence.”
“Your mother was used.”
“Yes.”
“By Miriam?”
“She administered the dose.”
“Then why believe her?”
“I don’t know if I do.”
He stopped near a vending machine and stared at the rows of candy without seeing them.
“She says she tried to expose the trial after my mother’s heart failed. Your father threatened to revoke the settlement and bankrupt us with legal costs.”
Celeste looked at him.
“I’m sorry.”
He laughed quietly. “You apologize as if you inherited the action.”
“I inherited the protection around it.”
“That is not the same.”
“No. But it helped the truth survive this long.”
Adrian pressed both hands against the vending machine.
“She gave me a name,” he said.
“Whose?”
“The physician who designed the unauthorized dosing protocol.”
Celeste waited.
“Dr. Samuel Price.”
“Owen’s father?”
“Yes.”
Samuel Price had died nine years earlier.
Owen had joined the Marrow estate security team two years after his father’s death.
His personnel file contained no mention of Asterion.
Edwin had recruited him after a recommendation from a private risk firm.
The recommendation letter was forged.
Owen had not entered the house by accident. He had built his life around gaining access to the family that had financed his father’s ruin.
But revenge alone did not explain Northlight.
Miriam did.
“Samuel believed AM-47 could become the most valuable emergency restraint drug in the world,” she told investigators. “After the trial collapsed, he hid samples and continued refining it. Owen inherited the research.”
“Why use foundation money?” Celeste asked.
“Because he believed the Marrows owed him.”
“Did you help him?”
“Once.”
Adrian looked at her.
Miriam did not hide. “He came to me after his father died. He wanted to understand the formulation. I gave him notes because I thought he intended to expose what happened.”
“When did you learn otherwise?” Rusk asked.
“When precursor orders appeared under clinic names I had once used.”
“Why not report him?”
“I had no proof.”
“You had suspicion.”
“I had a history no regulator trusted and a settlement that made me look complicit.”
“You were complicit,” Adrian said.
Miriam accepted the blow without flinching. “Yes.”
The room went quiet.
She continued. “Edwin contacted me last year. We began gathering evidence. Owen discovered it. He needed the ledger because it connected Northlight payments to the laboratory.”
“Why not kill Edwin?” Celeste asked.
“Because Edwin hid the archive and the ledger separately. Owen needed him conscious enough to reveal where.”
“Then why inject him?”
“To frighten him. To incapacitate him. Perhaps to stage a medical collapse and remove him from the house.”
“Remove him how?”
“An ambulance.”
Adrian looked up.
A private ambulance service had been called to the estate at eleven thirty-six on the night of the attack, seven minutes before Lena found Edwin.
The caller canceled the dispatch four minutes later.
May you like
The number belonged to a burner phone linked to Owen.
His plan had been to sedate Edwin, let him be “discovered,” and intercept him during transport using a compromised ambulance crew.
