Chapter 9 - The Storage Unit No One Was Supposed to FindThe police arrived at the hotel before midnight.
Two investigators interviewed us separately. They photographed the threatening messages, took copies of the recording, and asked for every detail we could remember about the people who had approached us at the stadium.
One of them, Detective Sarah Mitchell, was a woman in her forties with tired eyes and a habit of listening without interrupting.
She examined the photograph taken through our hotel window.
"You said you saw a second figure reflected in the glass?"
"Yes."
"Can you identify the person?"
"No. The image is too unclear."
She enlarged the photograph on her tablet.
The second figure appeared to be wearing something pale, perhaps a white coat. Its face was hidden behind the man holding the camera.
"Could be a medical uniform," I said.
"Could be a raincoat. Could be a reflection from the building across the street." She lowered the tablet. "I'm not going to guess until we have something more reliable."
I appreciated that.
For fourteen years, people had treated the investigation into Hannah and Daniel's deaths as a problem that had already been solved. Detective Mitchell was the first person I had met who seemed determined not to decide what had happened before examining the evidence.
She turned to Malcolm.
"Mr. Whitmore, does Victor Sloane have access to the building where the old records are stored?"
"He has access to several company archives."
"Can he authorize the destruction of documents?"
"Technically, yes, within certain limits. But he cannot lawfully destroy evidence relevant to an investigation."
"Has he ever done so?"
Malcolm stared at the table.
"I don't know."
Detective Mitchell closed her notebook.
"That answer is going to become important."
Before she left, she informed us that the police would arrange protection while they investigated the threats. She also told Malcolm not to contact Victor directly.
"He's still running your organization," she said. "If you warn him that we suspect him, you could compromise the case."
Malcolm agreed.
I wasn't sure whether I trusted him to follow instructions. For most of his life, he had believed that the person with the most power should control the situation. He was learning, slowly and painfully, that sometimes the most useful thing a powerful person could do was step aside.
At eight the next morning, Detective Mitchell returned with two officers and a warrant authorizing a search of the storage unit linked to Hannah's music box.
Ethan stayed at the hotel with his medical attendant. He was disappointed, but he didn't argue.
"I want to be there when you find it," he said.
"I know."
"But I don't want to end up in the hospital because I tried to prove I was strong."
I brushed his hair away from his forehead.
"That is the wisest thing you've said all week."
He smiled weakly.
"Don't tell anybody. I have a reputation."
I laughed, then kissed him goodbye.
The storage facility stood behind a row of shuttered warehouses. The owner met us at the gate and produced the paperwork showing that the disputed unit had remained locked since the building changed hands.
Unit eighteen was at the far end of a narrow corridor.
Its door was different from the others.
The lock had been replaced recently.
Detective Mitchell photographed it before the officers cut it open.
Inside were rows of archive boxes, several metal filing cabinets, and a wooden crate bearing the old Chicago Forge medical department logo. Dust covered everything except a narrow strip near the doorway.
Someone had entered recently.
The officers searched the unit systematically. Elena cataloged the documents while Detective Mitchell examined the cabinets. Malcolm stood in silence, looking at the remains of his organization's forgotten history.
I stayed near the door.
I had begun to understand that the past was not buried merely because people stopped talking about it.
Sometimes it was stored in a locked room, waiting for someone to become brave enough to open the door.
The first useful document was a transfer log from the year Marcus Bell died. Several boxes of medical records had been moved to a private archive under Victor Sloane's authorization.
The second was a handwritten list of witnesses.
Claire Bennett's name appeared near the top.
The third belonged to Daniel.
It was a report documenting discrepancies between Marcus's original medical assessment and the version submitted to the league's independent review process.
The changes were extensive.
Symptoms had been removed. Warning signs had been reclassified. A medical recommendation against returning to play had been replaced with an approval.
At the bottom of the report were three signatures.
One belonged to Arthur Pike.
One belonged to a physician who had since retired.
The third was Victor Sloane's.
Detective Mitchell photographed the page.
"That gives us a direct reason to question Victor," she said. "It doesn't prove he ordered the alterations, but it proves he was involved in the approval process."
"Can we arrest him?" I asked.
"Not on this alone. We need to establish who changed the records, who knew they were false, and whether there was a criminal agreement to conceal the truth."
I hated her answer.
I also respected it.
Then one of the officers called us toward the back of the unit.
He had found a small metal box beneath the wooden crate. It was secured with a combination lock.
The numbers on the brass key from the stadium suddenly made sense.
Seven. Fourteen. Three.
Malcolm stared at the lock.
"Try them."
The officer entered the combination.
The box opened.
Inside lay a stack of photographs, a compact video cassette, and a sealed envelope bearing the name of the investigator who had supposedly disappeared two days earlier.
The photographs showed Victor meeting with Arthur Pike at different locations over several months. In one image, both men stood beside a black sedan parked near the Forge's former medical facility.
In another, Victor was handing Arthur a thick envelope.
The final photograph had been taken shortly before Arthur's supposed death.
Arthur was standing beside a vehicle on a remote road.
He was wearing a dark coat and holding the driver's door open.
Victor was standing several feet behind him.
Detective Mitchell examined the image carefully.
"Whoever took this was close enough to see their faces."
Malcolm turned the photograph over.
A date had been written on the back.
March 11.
The date Arthur Pike was supposed to have died.
I felt my pulse quicken.
"Can you tell whether this was taken before or after the alleged crash?"
"Not from the photograph alone," Detective Mitchell said. "But we'll have it examined."
The video cassette was older than the other materials. An officer found a compatible player in the facility's archive room, and the recording was transferred to a digital file under the detective's supervision.
The screen flickered.
A timestamp appeared.
Then Victor Sloane entered a room with a man whose face was partly obscured by shadow.
The man was Arthur Pike.
He looked alive, alert, and furious.
"You promised me the records would disappear," Arthur said.
"They have," Victor replied. "The only remaining copies are in Daniel's possession, and he won't cooperate."
"He has a wife and a child. He isn't going to risk them."
"He's already risking them."
Arthur slammed his hand against a table.
"I agreed to keep the medical report quiet. I did not agree to hurt his family."
Victor leaned forward.
"Then you should have thought of that before you started asking questions."
The recording ended abruptly.
For a long moment, nobody spoke.
Then Detective Mitchell rewound the final seconds.
She paused on Victor's face.
"There is enough here to justify a much closer examination of his role in this case," she said. "But I want to be careful about one thing."
"What?" Malcolm asked.
"The recording shows that Arthur was alive after his reported death only if we can establish the date accurately. It also suggests Victor was trying to control the evidence. We still don't know exactly what happened to Hannah and Daniel."
I looked at the screen.
"Then we'll keep looking."
Elena opened the envelope found inside the metal box.
The investigator's name was written on the front. Inside was a single page, along with a business card.
The message read:
If you are reading this, I was unable to deliver the original evidence. Arthur Pike is alive. He is being kept under another name in a private medical facility. Victor knows where he is, and he will do anything to keep that location secret.
Below the message was an address.
A private residential clinic in northern Illinois.
And beneath that was one final line.
Ask for the patient registered as Andrew Palmer. He was the last person to see Daniel Carter alive.
Malcolm stared at the paper.
"Andrew Palmer," he whispered.
"Is that a name you recognize?" Detective Mitchell asked.
"No."
"Then we investigate it independently."
She took the envelope and sealed it in an evidence bag.
I looked at the photographs again.
For fourteen years, we had been told Arthur Pike was dead. The official records had supported that claim, the funeral had been held, and the case had been closed.
Yet here was evidence that he had survived long enough to meet Victor after his supposed death.
And someone had hidden that fact for more than a decade.
As the officers began cataloging the remaining boxes, Malcolm moved beside me.
"Thomas, if Arthur is alive, he may be the only person who can tell us exactly what happened."
"Then we find him."
Malcolm hesitated.
"If Victor knows we've discovered the location, he may try to move him."
I thought of Ethan waiting at the hotel. I thought of Hannah's letter, the old whistle, and the little boy who had grown up wearing his father's jersey.
"Then we don't tell Victor what we've found."
Detective Mitchell heard me.
"That's the plan. We will secure the facility before anyone approaches the patient. And you will not go there yourselves."
I agreed.
But as we left the storage unit, I noticed something lying beneath the metal cabinet where the last box had been found.
A photograph.
It showed a young Daniel standing beside Ethan's mother, both of them smiling on a quiet street.
Written across the back were the words:
The night before we left.
I turned it over.
In the background of the photograph, parked across the street, was a black sedan.
May you like
The same car that appeared in the image of Victor and Arthur Pike.
And behind its windshield, barely visible through the glare, was a man watching my daughter.
Related Stories
