Chapter 19 - THE WOMAN WHO WALKED OUT
Investigators secured the office complex and obtained the authority needed to search relevant rooms.
They found computers, storage drives, document scanners, and an archive of correspondence connecting Philip to Bell's property network.
Melissa was not there.
Neither was Brian.
The photograph Philip carried had been taken weeks earlier.
I felt the familiar temptation to imagine the worst, but Naomi reminded me that fear did not prove where anyone was.
By evening, Melissa contacted her own attorney.
She was alive and willing to surrender for questioning.
Her first request was that no one tell Bell where she was.
I expected relief.
What I felt was something more complicated.
Melissa had recorded my humiliation.
She had helped file false papers.
She had also become frightened of the machinery she had willingly entered.
Her fear did not erase what she had done.
At a formal interview, she acknowledged opening accounts in my name and routing fees through cards I financed.
She admitted editing the birthday video and helping prepare false evidence for the guardianship petition.
She maintained that Bell's agents had later threatened her when she tried to stop.
Investigators would have to test that claim independently.
I asked the question that mattered most to me.
“Where is Brian?”
Melissa stared at the table.
“He thought there was a way to take Bell down.”
“What way?”
“He said he knew where Bell kept the original transaction register.”
A register more complete than Helen's notebooks could establish what had happened to the land and to Daniel Vale.
Melissa slid a handwritten note to her attorney.
It described a remote lakeside lodge Bell had used for private meetings.
Brian had gone there that morning.
Before we left, Melissa looked at me with red eyes.
“Walter, I know you hate me.”
“I hate what you've done.”
“Is there a difference?”
“There has to be, or all of us become what Bell wants.”
Her lawyer thanked me, but I did not feel generous.
I felt sixty years older than I had on my birthday.
Naomi's phone rang in the hallway.
She returned with a look I had learned to dread.
Officers had found Brian's car near the lodge.
Its driver-side window was broken.
There was blood on the seat.
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And Brian was nowhere to be found.
