Chapter 9 - The Man Who Stole Evidence Before He CrashedFor several seconds, nobody spoke.
The footage continued playing on Detective Alvarez's phone. Greg closed the locker, placed the red folder beneath his coat, and walked out of view.
The timestamp read 3:12 a.m.
That was more than five hours after the collision.
“That's impossible,” I said.
Alvarez looked at me.
“Why?”
“Greg was already in surgery.”
“According to the hospital admission records, he arrived shortly before three.”
“He was unconscious.”
“Yes.”
“Then who is that man?”
She froze the image and enlarged it.
The figure had Greg's build and wore a jacket identical to the one the paramedics had removed from him.
But the face was partially obscured.
It could have been Greg.
It could have been someone who wanted us to believe it was Greg.
“Could the timestamp be wrong?” I asked.
“Not by five hours.”
“Could someone have altered the footage?”
“Possibly. We need to examine the original recording.”
Nina stood abruptly.
“That's not Greg.”
Both of us turned toward her.
“How can you be sure?” Alvarez asked.
“Because Greg had a scar on his left hand. He cut it opening a wine bottle last Christmas. Look at the man in the footage.”
The detective enlarged the image further.
The man's left hand was visible.
No scar.
Nina shook her head.
“That's not my husband.”
I leaned closer to the screen.
She was right.
The man looked like Greg from a distance, but the resemblance dissolved under scrutiny. His shoulders were broader. His walk was different. And when he turned toward the camera, he held his head at an angle Greg never did.
Someone had been impersonating him.
Someone had stolen evidence under his name.
And if the footage was genuine, that someone had entered the police station while Greg lay unconscious in surgery.
“Who had access to the footage?” I asked.
“Investigators, station staff, and authorized personnel,” Alvarez replied.
“Could Daniel Pike have arranged it?”
“He could have arranged access. That doesn't prove he was the person on the recording.”
I thought about the photographs from the service station.
The black sedan following Greg.
The blood on the passenger door.
The woman who had disappeared.
“Detective, we need to find Rebecca before that man does.”
“I agree.”
She put the phone away.
“I'm issuing an alert to nearby departments. We're also reviewing the original surveillance footage from the station. But I need you both to stay somewhere secure.”
Nina looked at me.
“Daddy's house.”
“Perhaps,” Alvarez said. “But if somebody has been watching your family for this long, we can't assume any location is safe.”
She left to make a call.
I sat down beside Nina.
“What aren't you telling me?”
She looked exhausted.
“I've told you everything.”
“No. You've told me what happened after Greg began investigating. I'm asking about before.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your mother died eleven years ago. Greg married you eight years ago. He found her documents, apparently discovered a criminal operation, and started investigating people who may have been involved in her old case.”
I leaned forward.
“Why would he do that? Why would he risk his life over something that happened before he even knew you?”
Nina looked down.
“I think he felt responsible.”
“Responsible for what?”
She took a long breath.
“Two months ago, Greg showed me a photograph of a little girl.”
I waited.
“He said her name was Emily Vale. She was Rebecca's daughter.”
“Why would he show you her photograph?”
“He said she disappeared with her mother years ago. Nobody knew where they were. Then he found a record suggesting Emily had been moved through a private care agency that no longer existed.”
“An adoption agency?”
“He didn't know. But he thought the agency had been used to change identities for people connected to the claims operation.”
I stared at her.
“You're telling me this investigation involves missing children?”
“I don't know how many. Greg didn't tell me everything.”
She began twisting her wedding ring.
“But he told me something else. He said that one of the people who disappeared had been registered under a false identity. He found the paperwork while reviewing an insurance case.”
“Who was it?”
Nina looked up.
“Rebecca Vale.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“But the woman at the service station was Rebecca.”
“Yes.”
“Then she's alive.”
“That's what Greg believed.”
I rubbed my face.
This was no longer simply about insurance fraud. Someone had apparently manipulated the identities of missing people, altered official records, and used fraudulent accidents to conceal whatever happened to them.
And Greg had been following a trail that began thirty-two years earlier.
“Where does Emily fit into this?” I asked.
“I don't know.”
Nina's phone rang.
She glanced at the screen.
Unknown number.
This time, she answered on speaker.
A man's voice filled the room.
“You've made a mistake, Nina.”
She went rigid.
“Who is this?”
“Someone who offered you a way out.”
“Daniel?”
The man chuckled.
“Names don't matter anymore. What matters is that your father has the file.”
I took the phone from her hand.
“Who are you?”
A pause.
Then the voice said, “John Ashby. You should have stayed out of this.”
“You came into my house.”
“And you let me leave.”
“I should have broken your jaw.”
The man laughed again.
“Perhaps. But then you'd be sitting in a police station explaining why an old man attacked an innocent visitor.”
“What do you want?”
“The file.”
“You'll have to come get it.”
“I intend to.”
The call ended.
Nina stared at the phone.
I placed it on the table and looked at her.
“Does that voice sound familiar?”
She nodded.
“It sounds like Daniel.”
Before I could respond, Detective Alvarez returned.
“We found something in Greg's car,” she said.
“What?”
“An access card belonging to a private storage facility in Brookhaven. The facility has seventeen units registered under shell companies.”
I remembered the key tag.
BLUE DOOR.
Alvarez placed a photograph on the table.
It showed a weathered industrial building with faded blue doors.
The same building from Martha's photograph.
“Unit seventeen,” she said. “The lease is under the name of a woman who disappeared in 1994.”
I looked at the photograph.
Rebecca Vale's mother?
Emily's birth mother?
I didn't know.
Then Alvarez pointed to a small handwritten note in the bottom corner.
ACCESS REVOKED: TWO DAYS AGO.
Someone had known Greg was coming.
May you like
Someone had changed the locks before he arrived.
And someone had prepared a trap.
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