Chapter 10 - The Envelope Under the Door
I refused the invitation to come alone.
Naomi had already contacted the appropriate investigative authorities about the alleged forged document and the threats.
The email went to them unchanged.
Nevertheless, Tyler was waiting outside my hotel when I returned.
For once, he wasn't smiling.
He looked at Ethan, then at me, and took a step backward.
“I didn't send that message,” he said.
“Then why are you here?”
“Because Uncle Dean thinks you're going to ruin all of us.”
I wanted to tell him he had helped ruin us long before tonight.
Instead, I asked what Dean was afraid I might find.
Tyler stared at the pavement.
“There's a storage unit,” he said.
“He made me move boxes there after your father had his stroke.”
“What's in them?”
“Old reports, ledgers, photographs.”
“Why are you telling me?”
He rubbed his palms together.
“Because he said if I didn't keep quiet, he'd tell everyone what really happened at the academy.”
Tyler had always claimed he was expelled for fighting a superior officer over an unfair accusation.
Now he admitted he'd been dismissed after altering an evaluation form.
Dean had helped conceal the details from the family.
My cousin was not suddenly innocent.
He was frightened enough to stop lying.
Naomi met us in the hotel conference room and insisted Tyler make his statement voluntarily, with independent advice about his own exposure.
He agreed to provide the unit number and access history to investigators.
Then he asked me a question that sounded almost like a child's.
“Are you really the officer Ethan said you were?”
I looked at him for a long time.
“You heard him.”
“Mom says he was just being polite.”
“He wasn't.”
Tyler swallowed.
“I thought you were hiding behind the uniform.”
I did not owe him comfort.
“You thought what made you feel superior,” I said.
The next morning, investigators lawfully recovered boxes from the unit after obtaining the required authorization.
Naomi received confirmation that the material included multiple versions of the Sentinel routing files.
One detail was immediately alarming.
A payment ledger contained entries dated after my father's staged funeral.
Several were approved by a woman identified only as J.B.
May you like
Judith Bennett.
