Chapter 4 - The Safety Deposit Box
We drove thirty miles west along the back county roads, avoiding the interstate tolls and highway surveillance cameras. Rain began to drum against the windshield in heavy, rhythmic sheets.
Ilaria sat quietly in the passenger seat, her small fingers tracing the condensation on the glass. "Where are we going, Daddy?"
"To see an old friend of Mommy's," I told her, keeping one eye on the rear mirrors. "Someone who can help us tell the truth."
We pulled into the rear parking lot of a brick strip mall in Oakridge. Above the storefront, a faded blue neon sign read: Carter Forensic Accounting & Legal Records.
Leo Carter had gone to law school with Claire before she shifted into museum curating. When Claire vanished, Leo had called me three times warning me not to trust the Croft family, but my grief-numbed brain had written him off as an overprotective, paranoid ex-colleague.
I carried Ilaria through the back entrance. The bell above the door jingled.
Leo looked up from behind a desk cluttered with paper files and dual monitors. He was a skinny, sharp-eyed man with graying temples and thick acetate glasses. The moment he saw Ilaria's pale face and my soaked work clothes, he stood up and locked the deadbolt behind us.
"You took your damn time, Mark," Leo said, clearing a stack of folders off a leather armchair so I could set Ilaria down. "I heard the scanner twenty minutes ago. Vance put out an active BOLO on your truck. They’re claiming you abducted your own daughter during a custody dispute."
"Look at this," I said, slamming the thumb drive onto his desk. "October 14th. The basement stairs."
Leo plugged the drive into his air-gapped terminal. For three minutes, the only sound in the cramped office was the hum of the hard drive and the rain lashing against the rear alley window.
Leo watched the footage twice. His face went entirely pale.
"Christ almighty," Leo breathed, taking off his glasses with shaking hands. "I knew Vanessa was dirty, but I didn't think she had the stomach for murder."
"What was the folder Claire was holding?" I demanded. "What did she find out?"
Leo unlocked a fireproof floor safe behind his desk and pulled out a manila envelope sealed with red tamper tape. "Claire came to me three days before she disappeared. She found out that Judge Croft and Vanessa were running a shell corporation through the Croft Family Trust. They were buying up foreclosed commercial properties along the new state transit corridor, using embezzled funds from the county pension reserve."
"And Claire figured it out?"
"Claire was the lead appraiser for the historic district," Leo said grimly. "She refused to sign off on the land transfers. If she blew the whistle, Harlan Croft would have lost his federal bench appointment, and Vanessa would have faced twenty years in federal prison. But that’s not all, Mark."
"What else?"
Leo opened the envelope and slid a certified medical examiner's manifest across the desk.
May you like
"Three weeks ago, an unidentified female body was pulled from the drainage basin near Lake Moraine. Crushed cervical vertebrae. Blunt force trauma consistent with a long fall down stairs. The county coroner ruled it an accidental drowning of a transient and scheduled the body for immediate cremation tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM."
Leo met my eyes. "Judge Croft personally signed the cremation order."
