CHAPTER 8 The Employee
"I think Richard Hale was your mother's employee."
The words echoed in the conference room long after Detective Brooks stopped speaking.
An employee.
Not a friend.
Not a volunteer.
Not a loyal member of the same church.
Someone who had been paid.
For fifteen years.
I looked at the stack of bank statements spread across the table.
Every payment had the same memo line.
Consulting Services.
I almost laughed.
Consulting.
As if terrorizing a child could be disguised with an accounting label.
The assistant district attorney leaned over the documents.
"The amounts aren't large."
"Five hundred dollars."
"Sometimes seven hundred."
"Enough to avoid attracting attention."
Brooks nodded.
"Small, regular payments are harder to notice than one large transfer."
She tapped the first statement.
"They begin shortly after Caitlyn's psychiatric diagnosis."
My chest tightened.
"So..."
"My mother started paying him the same year she convinced everyone I was unstable."
No one answered.
They didn't need to.
The timeline spoke for itself.
Forensic accountants dug deeper.
Richard had never reported the money on his taxes.
It flowed into a separate account he'd opened under a small handyman business.
Nothing illegal on the surface.
Until they compared the deposits to his work schedule.
Whenever Deborah transferred money...
Richard appeared in my hometown within forty-eight hours.
Church events.
School fundraisers.
Neighborhood barbecues.
Always nearby.
Always available.
Always invisible.
"What exactly was he doing?" I asked.
Brooks folded her arms.
"That's the question."
"If he was filming."
"If he was following you."
"If he later took a university job..."
She paused.
"Then his role evolved."
He hadn't simply watched me grow up.
He had stayed close enough to keep watching after I escaped.
Three days later, the first real breakthrough arrived.
A patrol officer in a neighboring county found Richard's car.
It had been abandoned in a supermarket parking lot nearly sixty miles away.
Locked.
Undamaged.
Inside were his wallet...
His keys...
And a disposable cellphone.
Detective Brooks called me immediately.
"We're bringing the phone to digital forensics."
"Can they recover anything?"
"If we're lucky."
Luck hadn't visited this case very often.
But maybe it was finally getting curious.
The phone contained almost nothing.
No contacts.
No messages.
No photographs.
Whoever had used it had wiped it clean.
Almost.
Digital forensics recovered one deleted voicemail.
The audio was distorted.
Only twelve seconds long.
A man's voice.
Richard.
"I did everything you asked."
A pause.
Then, more quietly:
"I'm done."
The message ended before anyone replied.
It had never been sent.
It had been saved as a draft.
"I'm done."
The words lingered in my mind.
Done with what?
Filming?
Following me?
Helping my mother?
Or...
Trying to protect me?
The thought unsettled me.
Could Richard have changed sides?
That afternoon, Maya and I sat outside the student union with two untouched cups of coffee.
"I keep thinking about something," she said.
"What?"
"If Richard wanted to hurt you..."
"He had countless chances."
I frowned.
"He installed cameras."
"I know."
"But think about it."
"He followed you for months."
"He knew where you lived."
"If murder was the goal..."
Her sentence drifted away.
She didn't need to finish it.
She was right.
There had been opportunities.
Too many.
"So why keep watching?" she whispered.
I didn't have an answer.
Detective Brooks did.
Sort of.
She arrived that evening carrying another folder.
"We searched Richard's bank safe-deposit box."
"You found more tapes?"
"No."
She slid a single photograph across the table.
It showed Richard standing outside a courthouse.
Next to him...
Was a little girl.
Maybe eight years old.
Smiling.
Holding his hand.
"Who's she?"
"His daughter."
I studied the picture.
She looked happy.
Safe.
Loved.
Brooks spoke carefully.
"She died."
"When?"
"Twenty-two years ago."
My heart sank.
"How?"
"House fire."
Fire.
The word hit me like a punch.
I remembered the opening line of my own nightmare.
Let her burn.
Smoke.
Locked doors.
Laughter.
My breathing became shallow.
Brooks noticed immediately.
"Caitlyn?"
"I'm okay."
It was a lie.
Richard's daughter had died in a bedroom fire.
Official cause:
Faulty electrical wiring.
No criminal charges.
Case closed.
Except...
Brooks pointed to a newspaper clipping.
"The fire started in her bedroom."
My stomach twisted.
The same room.
The same kind of trap.
The same horror.
"There can't be that many coincidences," Daniel said quietly.
"No," Brooks agreed.
"There usually aren't."
The investigators reopened the old case.
Most records had been archived.
Some evidence no longer existed.
But one firefighter from the original response was still alive.
Retired.
Living two counties away.
Brooks interviewed him the next morning.
His memory surprised everyone.
"I remember that house," the old firefighter said.
"Why?"
He stared into the distance.
"Because the father..."
"Richard..."
"He kept screaming the same thing."
"I couldn't get the door open."
The retired firefighter frowned.
"It bothered me for years."
"What did?"
"The bedroom lock."
"It wasn't damaged by fire."
"It had been locked."
"From the outside."
Brooks leaned forward.
"You're certain?"
"I've never forgotten it."
"But the investigation said..."
"They blamed heat damage."
The old man shook his head.
"I disagreed."
"No one listened."
My pulse hammered in my ears.
Locked from the outside.
Just like my bedroom.
Just like the night my mother tried to burn me alive.
That evening, Detective Brooks gathered the team.
"If someone locked Richard's daughter's bedroom..."
"And nobody was charged..."
She looked directly at me.
"We have to consider another possibility."
"What?"
"Richard may not have joined Deborah willingly."
Silence.
"He may have been blackmailed."
The room went still.
Brooks continued.
"Imagine this."
"Your daughter dies."
"Police close the case."
"Then someone claims they know what really happened."
"Or worse..."
"They threaten to blame you."
Daniel finished the thought.
"They own him forever."
For the first time...
Richard looked less like a monster.
And more like another prisoner.
A man trapped by guilt.
Fear.
Or secrets.
Just before midnight, Brooks received an urgent call from digital forensics.
They had finally decrypted the memory card hidden inside the camera that had been found in my apartment.
Most of the files contained ordinary surveillance footage.
Me sleeping.
Reading.
Studying.
Nothing unexpected.
Then they found one video that had never been transmitted.
It had been recorded...
But not uploaded.
Brooks opened it.
The image showed my bedroom.
Empty.
A timestamp from three weeks earlier.
The door opened.
Richard stepped inside.
He looked directly into the hidden camera.
Then, instead of checking it...
He walked to my desk.
Picked up a yellow sticky note.
And wrote three words.
RUN. DON'T WAIT.
He folded the note...
Slipped it beneath my sketchbook...
And hurried out of the room.
I stared at the frozen frame in disbelief.
"I never found that note."
Brooks slowly nodded.
"Because when officers searched your apartment..."
"The sketchbook wasn't there."
We checked the evidence inventory.
It had vanished.
Somewhere between the search...
And the evidence locker.
Which meant only one thing.
Someone involved in the investigation...
May you like
Had removed it before anyone else could read Richard's warning.
End of Chapter 8.
