Chapter 2 - A Dead Woman's Signature
Vance moved me into a secure interview room without windows.
I disliked rooms without windows because my stepfather had used them as instruments of punishment when I was young.
He called it discipline.
I called it learning not to show him fear.
“Tell me about your mother,” Vance said.
“Eleanor Bradley was a logistics auditor before she married Richard.”
“And after?”
“She left the service, according to the family.”
I could hear how uncertain that sounded.
In our house, facts came in two kinds.
There were those Richard approved and those we were expected to forget.
At sixteen, I had found my mother crying at the kitchen table over a document she folded away when I entered.
Three months later, she died in a highway collision that Richard described as an accident nobody could have prevented.
He would never discuss the investigation.
Vance connected his device to a wall display.
A set of shipping invoices appeared, each tied to a contractor named Halcyon Response Systems.
The company had collected emergency transport fees for supplies the receiving units had never requested.
“Halcyon?” I asked.
“Registered through three holding companies.”
He selected the final ownership record.
The name on the screen was Tyler Bradley.
My stepbrother had never completed military training.
Richard still told donors and dignitaries that Tyler was one of the Army's promising young minds.
“What does Tyler know about logistics?” I asked.
“Enough to bill for shipments that never arrived.”
The invoices were not proof of Richard's involvement.
I insisted on saying so.
Hatred could blind investigators as effectively as love.
Vance agreed.
Then he enlarged one signature on the oldest document.
E. BRADLEY.
“That's my mother's name,” I said.
“The document is dated six years after she died,” Vance replied.
The room became very quiet.
I studied the looping E and unusually angular B.
Whoever had written it knew my mother's handwriting.
Or had copied it from somewhere private.
Vance handed me a sealed evidence sleeve.
Inside was a faded photograph of my mother, Richard, and another officer standing in front of a warehouse.
Someone had scratched out the third officer's face.
On the back, in my mother's handwriting, was one sentence.
IF THEY EVER ASK CLAIRE TO SIGN, TELL HER ABOUT THE BLUE ROOM.
I had heard of a blue room exactly once.
Richard mentioned it during an argument the night my mother died.
When I asked about it, he told me never to repeat the phrase.
Now a missing captain, stolen shipments, and a dead woman's forged signature were pointing to the same place.
I looked at Vance.
“Find me everything connected to the blue room.”
The door opened before he could answer.
A security specialist entered, pale beneath the fluorescent lights.
“Ma'am, someone just accessed your mother's sealed crash report.”
“Who?”
The specialist swallowed.
May you like
“Lieutenant General Richard Bradley.”
