Chapter 4 - Ten Years of Silence
The Mercer case was officially declared inactive eighteen months later.
No arrest was made.
No suspect was publicly named.
Tom refused to close his personal copy of the file.
Years passed.
Annie grew from a frightened child into a quiet, observant teenager. She learned sign language and communicated through written notes, gestures and drawings.
Doctors said there was no physical reason she could not speak. Her silence was connected to trauma and fear. They warned Tom never to pressure her.
He did not.
Tom and Annie developed their own way of communicating.
One tap on the table meant yes.
Two meant no.
A small circle drawn in the air meant she needed time.
When she was overwhelmed, she held the silver whistle Tom had given her. He had told her that if she ever felt unsafe, she could blow it and someone would come.
She never used it.
At seventeen, Annie was an exceptional artist with a talent for remembering tiny details. She could sketch a room after seeing it once and reproduce faces from brief encounters.
She rarely drew black boots anymore.
Tom hoped that meant she was healing.
He was wrong.
One evening, he returned home and found Annie sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by old drawings.
She had arranged them in chronological order.
Each picture contained the same boots.
Tom sat across from her.
“Why are you looking at these?”
Annie slid a new drawing toward him.
It showed the police department parking lot.
A man stood beside a dark sedan.
A silver star hung from his left boot.
Tom recognized the man.
Marcus Hale.
Annie had drawn him older, with gray at his temples, but the boots were the same.
Tom stared at her.
“Are you saying Marcus was in the house that night?”
Annie picked up her pencil.
She wrote slowly.
I heard his voice.
Tom’s heartbeat quickened.
“What did he say?”
Annie’s hand began to shake.
She wrote another sentence.
Tell me where your father hid it.
Tom felt the room tilt around him.
He had spent ten years searching for a stranger.
All that time, the answer might have been beside him at work.
Tom wanted to call Internal Affairs immediately, but Annie grabbed his wrist.
She wrote another message.
He was not alone.
“Who else was there?”
Annie drew a police badge.
Then she drew a second silver star.
Beneath it, she wrote one name.
Voss.
May you like
Deputy Chief Raymond Voss had become chief of police three years earlier.
And Marcus was now captain of detectives.
