Chapter 14 - THE WOMAN WHO DIED TWICE
Marlene spoke only after an attorney and federal prosecutor entered the room.
She wanted protection.
Not forgiveness.
Not leniency.
Protection.
For herself.
And for Bernadette.
Rachel and I watched through a secured video feed.
Marlene looked older.
For the first time, the perfect posture was gone.
Her shoulders curved forward.
Her hands trembled.
“Bernadette was my cousin.”
she began.
“She worked nights at Bellweather.”
“The night Daniel Parker was brought in?”
“Yes.”
I felt my pulse rise.
“She saw Victor.”
“She saw Daniel alive.”
“She heard him arguing with Victor.”
“About what?”
“Records.”
“Money.”
“Thomas.”
Marlene looked toward the prosecutor.
“Bernadette told me Daniel kept saying that Thomas knew enough to stop it.”
“What happened next?”
“Victor ordered everyone out.”
“Bernadette stayed in the medication room.”
“She heard Daniel begging him not to involve his son.”
I looked away.
Rachel held my hand.
“What happened?”
“Victor injected something.”
“Bernadette didn’t know what.”
“Daniel stopped talking.”
“Then?”
“Victor told staff he had died from crash complications.”
“Did Bernadette report it?”
“She tried.”
“To whom?”
“Thomas.”
My head snapped up.
“Thomas knew immediately?”
Marlene nodded.
“Bernadette called him the next morning.”
“Then why didn’t he go to police?”
Marlene began crying.
“Because of me.”
Rachel whispered, “Of course.”
Marlene heard nothing through the one-way feed.
She continued.
“Victor had photographs of us.”
“Of the affair.”
“He had records showing money I’d moved.”
“He told Thomas that if he went to police, Derek would go to prison.”
“Then he said Rachel could be next.”
Rachel shut her eyes.
“And Thomas chose silence?”
“At first.”
“For twenty years?”
“No.”
“He began collecting evidence.”
“Why hide Bernadette?”
“Because Victor searched for her.”
“She disappeared.”
“We created a death certificate using a different county.”
The prosecutor stared.
“You falsified a death?”
“Yes.”
“Where has she been?”
“West Virginia.”
“Under what name?”
Marlene hesitated.
Her attorney whispered something.
Then she answered.
“Beth Randall.”
Federal agents moved immediately.
Beth Randall was found living outside Charleston.
Seventy-two years old.
Retired home-health nurse.
She had never married.
No children.
She agreed to speak.
But before agents could transport her, her house was attacked.
A vehicle drove through the front gate.
Shots shattered the windows.
Bernadette survived because federal agents were already inside.
Hale knew.
Again.
Somewhere, information was leaking.
The task force tightened access.
Only six people knew Bernadette’s location.
One was a federal agent.
One Morales.
One prosecutor.
Marlene’s attorney.
Marlene.
And Paul Mercer.
Suspicion fell everywhere.
Paul became furious.
“You think I told Hale where the woman who witnessed my father’s murder was hiding?”
“Your mother’s murder?”
I asked.
He froze.
“My mother didn’t die naturally.”
I stared.
“You never said that.”
“No one asked.”
“What happened?”
“Stroke.”
“That’s natural.”
“At forty-nine?”
“It can happen.”
“Not when toxicology later shows anticoagulants she never took.”
Another victim.
Another suspicious medical event.
Hale’s shadow stretched across decades.
Bernadette was flown under guard to Tennessee.
She identified Hale from photographs.
She identified my father from old pictures.
Then she told me the part no record could.
“Your father knew he was dying.”
I sat across from her.
Rachel beside me.
Bernadette’s hands were thin and folded tightly in her lap.
“He kept asking about you.”
“What did he say?”
“That you were seventeen.”
“That you hated math.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
“He said you were better than he deserved.”
I looked down.
Bernadette continued.
“He told Victor that if he hurt you, people would know.”
“Victor laughed.”
“What did my father do?”
“He spit in his face.”
I closed my eyes.
That sounded like Dad.
“What killed him?”
“I can’t be certain.”
“Victor injected him with something.”
“Then Daniel’s heart slowed.”
“He couldn’t breathe.”
I gripped Rachel’s hand.
“Did Thomas ever see him after the crash?”
“No.”
“Thomas left before Bellweather took Daniel.”
“Then he didn’t know Daniel survived.”
“Not until I told him the next morning.”
That mattered.
Thomas hadn’t knowingly left my father alive.
He had still stayed silent afterward.
But the distinction mattered.
Bernadette looked at Rachel.
“Your father hated himself.”
Rachel cried.
“He should have told the truth.”
“Yes.”
Bernadette didn’t defend him.
“He should have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Rachel asked.
Bernadette looked down.
“Because I was afraid too.”
There it was again.
Fear.
The inheritance nobody wrote in the will.
Fear moved from person to person.
Thomas.
Bernadette.
Marlene.
Derek.
Rachel.
Even me.
It protected Hale better than any lawyer.
Bernadette gave federal prosecutors enough for a murder case if Hale was found.
Then she revealed something else.
“Daniel hid the original ledger himself.”
I stared.
“What?”
“Evelyn thought she had it.”
“She had a copy.”
“Daniel switched them before the meeting.”
“Where did he put the original?”
Bernadette shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“But Thomas did.”
“How?”
“Daniel whispered something to him in the ambulance before Hale arrived.”
Rachel leaned forward.
“What?”
“Three words.”
“What words?”
Bernadette closed her eyes.
“Under Ethan’s summer.”
I stared.
Under Ethan’s summer.
It meant nothing.
Then a memory surfaced.
My father had built me a wooden treehouse when I was twelve.
We called it Ethan’s Summer House because I’d begged to sleep there every weekend.
It stood behind our old Nashville home.
The house had been sold after Dad died.
The treehouse?
I had no idea.
Morales found the current owners.
The backyard had been renovated.
The treehouse was gone.
But the concrete footings remained beneath a garden shed.
Police excavated around them.
Under the third footing was a sealed steel box.
Inside lay the original Bellweather ledger.
And a cassette.
The ledger matched the decoy but contained twenty additional pages.
Names.
Payments.
Bribes.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Judge Harold Keene.
The judge who had originally approved the emergency guardianship filing against Rachel.
My stomach dropped.
“He was involved?”
Morales looked grim.
“Apparently for decades.”
That explained how legal filings had moved so quickly.
Hale wasn’t only protected by doctors.
He had judges.
Attorneys.
Administrators.
Maybe police.
The conspiracy widened.
Then we listened to the cassette.
Daniel and Thomas.
Recorded before Route 17.
Daniel said, “If this goes wrong, Susan knows where the first copy is.”
Thomas replied, “And the original?”
Daniel laughed.
“Under Ethan’s summer.”
Then Thomas asked, “What about Hale’s hospital people?”
Daniel answered.
“I have one name that scares me more than Victor.”
The tape crackled.
Thomas asked, “Who?”
Daniel said the name.
I stopped breathing.
It was someone still working at St. Anne’s.
Someone who had been in Rachel’s emergency department the morning she was poisoned.
May you like
Dr. Martin Lang.
The doctor who told me Rachel had almost died.
