Chapter 8 - The Deal Richard Refused
Richard was offered a deal.
Tell investigators where Martin and Olivia were hiding.
Reveal what happened to David’s red box.
Identify everyone involved in targeting the widows.
In return, prosecutors would consider his cooperation when charging recommendations were made.
Richard listened.
Then laughed.
Officer Collins sat across from him.
“What’s funny?”
“You think Martin is the top.”
“Isn’t he?”
Richard leaned back.
“You have no idea what you found.”
“Explain.”
“No.”
“You’re facing domestic assault, child endangerment, attempted fraud, conspiracy and witness intimidation.”
Richard smiled.
“You forgot bad husband.”
Collins did not react.
“You’re protecting people who abandoned you.”
“They didn’t abandon me.”
“Martin disappeared.”
Richard’s smile faded.
“Martin panicked.”
“And Olivia?”
Nothing.
“Where is your sister?”
Richard stared at the table.
Collins placed a photograph between them.
Olivia outside Noah’s school.
Richard looked away.
“You involved your sister in threatening a ten-year-old.”
Richard’s jaw tightened.
“She wasn’t going to hurt him.”
“Your recording says otherwise.”
“That was pressure.”
“Explain the difference to Noah.”
Richard looked toward the mirrored glass.
He knew Sarah might be watching.
She was.
“I never meant for the kid to hit the table.”
Sarah gripped the chair.
Collins answered,
“But you meant to shove him.”
Richard said nothing.
Sarah left the observation room.
She had heard enough.
That evening, Sarah told Noah they were not returning to the house yet.
“Because Richard could get out again?”
“No.”
Sarah crouched in front of him.
“Because I want us to go back when we’re ready, not because someone tells us we should.”
Noah considered that.
“Can we change the locks?”
“All of them.”
“And the kitchen?”
“What’s wrong with the kitchen?”
“I hate the yellow walls.”
Sarah almost laughed.
“Then we’ll paint them.”
“Blue?”
“Absolutely not.”
Noah smiled for the first time in days.
A small victory.
Later that night, Rebecca Sloan contacted Sarah from a number she had never seen.
Meet me at St. Anne’s parking lot.
Come alone.
Sarah showed the message to Officer Collins.
Collins insisted on following at a distance.
Rebecca waited inside an old sedan.
Sarah entered the passenger seat.
“You said David hid his investigation.”
Rebecca handed her a sealed envelope.
“He gave me this four days before he died.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“He told me not to unless someone came after you.”
“Someone married me.”
Rebecca closed her eyes.
“I didn’t know.”
“You could have checked.”
“You’re right.”
Sarah’s anger surprised even herself.
“You knew my husband was afraid. You knew he was investigating dangerous people, and you let me spend three years believing he died in a random accident.”
“I believed he did.”
“Did?”
Rebecca looked out the windshield.
“David told me something before he died.”
“What?”
“That if he disappeared, I should assume the investigation was compromised.”
“Disappeared?”
Sarah felt the word settle in her mind.
“Not died?”
Rebecca looked at her.
“He used the word disappeared.”
Sarah opened the envelope.
Inside was a hotel receipt.
Blackwater Inn.
Room 317.
Dated the night David died.
And a bank deposit slip.
Twenty thousand dollars.
Received by someone identified only as R.S.
“Who is R.S.?”
“I don’t know.”
Rebecca gave her another item.
A tiny brass key tag marked 317.
“The hotel?”
“It closed two years ago.”
“Then what good is this?”
“The building still exists.”
Police searched the abandoned Blackwater Inn the next morning.
Room 317 had been stripped.
No furniture.
No carpet.
No electricity.
But beneath a loose section of baseboard, Officer Pierce found a thin metal compartment.
Inside was an old flash drive.
Encrypted.
Technicians spent nine hours breaking through the password protection.
At 11:06 p.m., the first file opened.
It was a spreadsheet.
Dozens of names.
Mostly widows.
Some widowers.
Estimated assets.
Insurance values.
Children.
Properties.
Next to several names was a single word.
ACTIVE.
Next to others:
CLOSED.
Sarah found Claire Dawson.
CLOSED.
Monica Reed.
CLOSED.
Jennifer Hayes.
CLOSED.
Then Sarah Bennett.
ACTIVE.
But the line above hers made Sarah grip the desk.
DAVID BENNETT.
STATUS: INTERFERENCE.
ACTION: BLACKWATER.
She looked at Collins.
“What does action Blackwater mean?”
Nobody answered.
Then the technician opened a second file.
A video.
David Bennett appeared on screen.
Alive.
The date stamp was seven hours before his death.
He looked directly into the camera.
“If Sarah ever sees this, then I failed to stop them.”
Sarah covered her mouth.
David continued.
“And if Noah is old enough to understand what I’m saying, tell him one thing first.”
Sarah began to cry.
“None of this happened because of him.”
David looked exhausted.
Afraid.
But determined.
“There are people using grief to find families with money. They place someone close to the surviving spouse. They gain trust. They isolate. They obtain signatures. Sometimes they steal.”
David paused.
“And sometimes the spouse who discovers them does not survive long enough to report it.”
Sarah’s tears stopped.
David leaned toward the camera.
“I found eleven suspicious deaths.”
The room became silent.
“And I believe Martin Shaw helped hide at least four of them.”
May you like
The video ended.
There were still seventeen files on the drive.
