Chapter 8 - THE COAT
Dustin remembered more after Evelyn gave him warm soup and allowed him to rest.
He sat wrapped in a blanket inside the underground station while Clarissa listened.
During her hospital stay, Alana had taken Dustin for what she called a weekend trip.
Instead, Nathan Cole picked him up from a roadside motel.
Nathan told him they were playing a secret game.
He drove Dustin to the edge of the lake district, where they met another man wearing a cap pulled low over his face.
The man gave Dustin Mr. Rabbit and told him never to open it unless Clarissa was in danger.
Dustin could not remember the man’s face clearly.
He remembered his voice.
Soft.
Familiar.
The man wore a heavy brown coat despite the summer heat.
Later, Nathan buried the coat beneath a tree.
“Why?” Clarissa asked.
Dustin’s eyes filled with tears.
“Because there was blood on it.”
Clarissa exchanged a look with Evelyn.
“Whose blood?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did the man say his name?”
Dustin shook his head.
“He called you Little Star.”
Clarissa stopped breathing.
Only one person had called her that.
Her father.
Thomas Vale had used the nickname since she was five.
“That’s impossible,” she whispered.
Evelyn looked equally stunned.
Dustin continued.
“He hugged me. He cried. He said I was brave.”
Clarissa stood so quickly the chair fell backward.
“My father was alive three years ago?”
Evelyn approached her.
“We cannot assume that.”
“Who else knew that name?”
“Family friends. Employees.”
“No one used it.”
Dustin pointed toward a drawer.
“He also had a ring like that.”
Inside the open drawer lay an old photograph.
Thomas Vale stood beside Evelyn and several construction workers. On his hand was a silver ring engraved with a compass.
Clarissa’s father had been wearing the same ring when his body was identified.
Or so the police report claimed.
Clarissa took out her phone, then remembered Parker still had it.
Evelyn offered a secure device from the station.
Clarissa called the county medical examiner’s office.
After several transfers, a clerk confirmed that Thomas Vale’s identification had relied on dental records, personal effects, and Parker’s visual confirmation.
Clarissa’s voice shook.
“My husband identified the body?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Clarissa hung up.
Parker had told her the body was too damaged for family viewing.
He said the police had used dental records.
He never mentioned that he had personally confirmed the identity.
Evelyn sat beside her.
“Thomas may have survived.”
“Then why didn’t he come home?”
“Perhaps he believed you were safer if Hale thought he was dead.”
“For four years?”
“I don’t know.”
Clarissa looked at Dustin.
A memory surfaced.
Three years earlier, while recovering from surgery, she had awakened at night and seen a figure outside the hospital room.
A man stood behind the glass.
She thought he resembled her father, but medication blurred her vision.
Parker later convinced her it had been a nurse.
“Where was the coat buried?” Clarissa asked.
Dustin pointed to the coordinates.
“Near the red door.”
Evelyn studied the map.
“That location is not beneath the lake house. It is an old pumping station on the northern property.”
“Does it have a basement?”
“It has tunnels.”
Clarissa took the red cylinder.
“We go there tonight.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“Hale’s men will expect that.”
“Then we let them expect me somewhere else.”
Clarissa called Maya from the secure phone.
She told her enough to explain the danger but not enough to pull her deeper into it.
Maya listened silently.
Then she said, “I know a reporter.”
“No reporters yet.”
“Clarissa, you need protection.”
“I need evidence first.”
“You need both.”
Maya’s cousin, Jonah Bennett, was an investigative journalist who had written about corruption in property development.
Clarissa agreed to send him copies of the forged documents and the recording.
Evelyn transmitted them through an encrypted channel.
Within twenty minutes, Jonah called back.
“The recording is real,” he said. “At least the file structure suggests it hasn’t been edited.”
“Can you identify the voices?”
“I recognize Parker Mercer and Victor Hale from public interviews. The third man may be Nathan Cole.”
“And the woman?”
“I’m working on it.”
Clarissa thought of Alana.
The woman in the recording sounded younger, but the audio was poor.
Jonah continued.
“There is something else. Nathan Cole did not disappear. He was declared dead eighteen months ago.”
“How?”
“House fire.”
“Was the body identified?”
“A body was found, but the report was sealed.”
Clarissa almost laughed at the pattern.
Dead men who might not be dead.
Bodies identified by people with reasons to lie.
“Who sealed the report?”
Jonah was silent for a moment.
“Judge Raymond Mercer.”
Parker’s uncle.
The same man who had officiated Clarissa and Parker’s wedding.
Before Clarissa could respond, an alarm sounded inside the station.
Evelyn checked the security monitor.
The camera showed a police vehicle approaching the fire station.
May you like
A second camera showed Alana stepping out of the passenger side.
She was holding Dustin’s guardianship papers.
