Chương 7
His eyes closed again.
Maya entered at the sound of the alarm and checked his readings. “That’s enough stimulation.”
“He said someone named Mr. Green gave him the candy.”
Maya glanced toward the officer outside the door. “Tell the detective.”
Claire did.
Alvarez returned with a school directory on her phone. No teacher, aide, custodian, coach, volunteer, or parent regularly present at Ethan’s school was named Green. The school office checked substitute records. Nothing.
“It could be a first name, a nickname, or something he heard wrong,” Alvarez said.
“His class has a green table,” Claire said. “They name groups by color.”
“Who sits there?”
“I don’t know.”
Adrian had stepped into the hall but stayed near the doorway.
“Maybe he meant the man wore green,” he said.
Claire remembered the package label, Ethan’s name written in thick green marker.
Alvarez wrote that down too.
“Did Noah have a favorite color?” Claire asked.
Adrian looked at her.
“Why would that matter?”
“I don’t know. I’m asking.”
He considered it. “Green.”
Alvarez stopped writing.
Adrian’s eyes hardened. “That proves nothing.”
“No,” Claire said. “It doesn’t.”
But Gavin’s face had changed when he watched Adrian outside the trauma room. It had not looked like professional concern.
It had looked like grief.
The warrant was signed at 9:12 that night.
By 10:03, police had entered the Blackwood Protective Services data center with a forensic team. Gavin did not resist. He stood aside, called company counsel, and told every employee to cooperate within the limits of the warrant.
At 10:41, the technicians discovered that the hospital video copy was incomplete.
The footage showed Adrian entering the lobby. It showed Claire arriving by ambulance nearly an hour earlier. It showed hospital staff, visitors, police officers, and three members of Adrian’s security team.
It did not show Gavin.
The camera covering the service entrance had been disabled before Adrian received the anonymous message.
Alvarez brought the information to Claire shortly before midnight.
“He says he arrived through the main entrance with Blackwood,” she said.
“He didn’t?”
“We have footage of Mr. Blackwood stepping out of the first vehicle. Rusk is not visible. The second vehicle arrives forty seconds later, but the angle is blocked.”
“Could he have been inside it?”
“Yes.”
“Could he already have been in the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Can you arrest him now?”
“No.”
Claire made a sound of disbelief.
Alvarez looked tired enough to accept it. “The footage is suspicious. Suspicion is not the same as proof.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I believe people are rarely careless in only one direction.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means if Rusk planned this, he left enough signs to make us look at him. That could be a mistake. It could also be deliberate.”
Claire glanced at Ethan’s door. “Why would he want you looking?”
“Maybe he wants Mr. Blackwood looking.”
Adrian stood at the far end of the corridor with a paper cup of coffee. He had been told he could not remain in Ethan’s room overnight. He had not left the floor.
“He lost a son because of Adrian,” Claire said.
Alvarez followed her gaze. “That gives him a reason to hate Blackwood.”
“It gives him a reason to do exactly this.”
“It also gives someone else a reason to frame him.”
“Who?”
“That is what I’m trying to learn.”
Claire crossed her arms. “You don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone who has spent seven years hiding from a man under one name and once worked for his company under another.”
Claire felt the words land.
Alvarez continued, “Your employment file says you were an executive legal assistant at Blackwood Maritime. It also says you downloaded restricted documents the night you disappeared.”
Adrian looked toward them from down the hall.
Claire lowered her voice. “Those records were supposed to be gone.”
“Most things that are supposed to be gone are sitting on a server nobody remembered to unplug.”
“What documents?”
“You tell me.”
Claire stared at the detective.
Alvarez waited.
Seven years earlier, Claire had copied a directory from Adrian’s office after finding a list of payments marked as “port maintenance.” The payments did not go to maintenance contractors. They went to shell companies, city inspectors, a union officer, and a private detention service that officially did not operate in their state.
She had copied the files because she was frightened.
She had kept them because fear had become the only practical thing she owned.
“They were financial records,” Claire said.
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“That was not convincing.”
“I don’t have them with me.”
“Where are they?”
Claire looked at Adrian again.
He had not moved, but the coffee cup was crushed slightly beneath his fingers.
“I put them somewhere safe,” she said.
“Did anyone know?”
“No.”
“Did Mr. Blackwood know you took them?”
“He suspected.”
“Did Gavin Rusk?”
“I don’t know.”
Alvarez closed her notebook. “The poisoning may not be only about Ethan.”
Claire’s skin prickled.
“What was in those files?”
“Enough to hurt Adrian.”
“How badly?”
Claire watched the man at the end of the hall. He had finally noticed the crushed cup and was trying to smooth the rim back into shape.
“Badly enough that I never opened them again.”
Alvarez stepped closer. “Someone found your son, accessed his chart, arranged a donor alert, and sent his father to the hospital. That person may be trying to force every hidden part of this family into the same room.”
“He is not my family.”
The answer came automatically.
Alvarez glanced through the window at Ethan.
Claire wished she could take it back without admitting why.
At one in the morning, Adrian approached her beside the vending machines.
“What did you tell her?”
“That depends. What did you hear?”
“Enough to know you kept the files.”
“I kept myself alive.”
“By holding evidence against me.”
“By making sure you had a reason not to put me in the river.”
May you like
His eyes narrowed. “You believed I would kill you.”
“I believed you had people who might decide it was efficient.”
