Chapter 6 - The Last Week of David Bennett
Sarah had spent three years believing she knew how her first husband died.
David Bennett left home on a rainy Thursday evening for a business meeting in Rochester.
At 11:42 p.m., his SUV went through a highway barrier.
Police concluded he lost control on wet pavement.
No witnesses.
No evidence of another vehicle.
No reason to suspect anything except tragedy.
Until now.
Officer Collins reopened the original file.
The first inconsistency appeared almost immediately.
David had told Sarah he was traveling to Rochester.
His cell phone records showed he drove east.
Not west.
At 8:03 p.m., his phone connected to a tower near Blackwater Road.
BWR.
Sarah stared at the map.
Blackwater Road ran through an industrial district fifteen miles outside town.
“What was there?”
Collins searched property records.
Warehouses.
A closed furniture factory.
Two freight companies.
And an office building owned by Shaw Capital Holdings.
Sarah looked at her.
“Martin.”
“Possibly.”
Shaw Capital Holdings had been dissolved eighteen months after David’s death.
Before disappearing, Martin Shaw had worked not only as David’s estate attorney but as legal counsel for several companies David audited.
David had been a forensic accountant.
He investigated suspicious financial activity for corporations, insurers and private clients.
Sarah had always believed his work was boring.
David encouraged that belief.
He rarely discussed cases at home.
“He was protecting us,” Sarah whispered.
Collins nodded.
“Maybe.”
They reconstructed David’s final week.
Monday, he called Martin Shaw four times.
Tuesday, he withdrew twenty thousand dollars from an account Sarah had never known existed.
Wednesday, he rented a storage unit under the name Daniel Brooks.
Thursday, he went to Blackwater Road.
Friday morning, Sarah became a widow.
“What storage unit?” she asked.
Police records showed the account remained paid automatically for eighteen months after David’s death.
Then payments stopped.
The contents had been auctioned.
Sarah nearly cried with frustration.
“Who bought them?”
Officer Collins smiled slightly.
“That’s the interesting part.”
The storage facility had been purchased by a new company before the auction.
All abandoned units were moved to a private warehouse.
That warehouse still existed.
Sarah, Collins and Pierce arrived there before sunset.
The manager searched old records.
Unit 214.
Daniel Brooks.
Contents transferred to warehouse section C.
After forty minutes, they located three boxes.
Most contained ordinary accounting files.
Receipts.
Old laptops.
Printed spreadsheets.
Then Pierce found an envelope taped underneath the lid of the final box.
On it were two words.
FOR SARAH.
Her knees weakened.
Officer Collins asked,
“Do you want to open it?”
Sarah nodded.
Inside was a key.
A handwritten note.
If this box is found without me, the red case matters more.
Trust no one who asks about Noah’s inheritance.
Not even someone I introduced you to.
Sarah read the final sentence again.
“Someone he introduced me to?”
She looked at Collins.
“David introduced me to Martin.”
The envelope contained another page.
Numbers.
Account codes.
Initials.
C.D.
M.R.
J.H.
Sarah dropped the paper.
Richard’s notebook contained the same initials.
But David had written them years earlier.
Before Richard ever entered Sarah’s life.
“He knew about them.”
Collins photographed the page.
Sarah felt the room spinning.
“David knew about the women.”
“Possibly.”
“No. Those are the same initials.”
She looked at the date on the page.
Six days before David died.
David had been investigating Richard’s network.
That was why Richard had targeted Sarah.
Not only because she was a widow.
Not only because Noah had money.
They had chosen David Bennett’s family because David had discovered them.
Sarah stared at the key.
“What does this open?”
Nobody knew.
But beneath the papers was one more object.
A photograph.
David standing beside another man outside a restaurant.
The other man’s face had been scratched away with black ink.
On the back David had written:
If I’m wrong, burn this.
If I’m right, he’s the reason they found us.
Sarah’s hand began trembling.
She recognized the man despite the damaged face.
The jacket.
The gold watch.
The distinctive scar beside the ear.
Martin Shaw.
But the photograph contained something else.
In the reflection of the restaurant window stood a younger man.
Watching them.
Sarah brought the photograph closer.
The man was several years younger.
Clean-shaven.
Different haircut.
But unmistakable.
Richard.
May you like
David had encountered Richard before his death.
Three years before Sarah supposedly met Richard for the first time.
