Chapter 10 - The Wrong Brother
I had imagined the Whitmore brothers as a single wall of wealth and cruelty.
The interviews began breaking that wall apart.
Brandon had been present when Emily was assaulted.
So had three of his younger brothers.
The other four arrived later, after she had been injured, and helped conceal what had happened.
That distinction didn't erase their responsibility.
It showed different levels of knowledge and different reasons for fear.
One brother, Colin, finally admitted that Keene had threatened to cut off the family trusts if anyone contacted the police.
He claimed he had tried to call an ambulance.
Brandon took his phone away.
Another brother, Evan, said Richard hadn't been at the warehouse when Emily first arrived.
He came after hearing she refused to sign.
These accounts were unproven, and Ortiz treated them accordingly.
She wanted independent records.
Then investigators recovered surveillance footage from a neighboring delivery depot.
The film showed Emily entering the warehouse under her own power.
It showed Brandon's car blocking the exit.
It showed several people carrying her out later.
It didn't show what happened inside.
But it contradicted the story of a staircase fall.
The prosecutor began preparing charges connected to the assault and obstruction.
Meanwhile, Ortiz located Daniel Mercer at a motel outside Richmond.
He was alive and hiding under yet another name.
I didn't meet him there.
I watched his recorded interview afterward, with permission from the investigators.
He looked tired and frightened rather than dangerous.
He said he had been placed with a foster family after a woman left him at a clinic as an infant.
At nineteen, a stranger offered to pay for his schooling if he never pursued his original birth records.
The stranger was Samuel Keene.
Daniel took the money.
For years, he told himself the arrangement was an act of strange charity.
Then Aaron Mercer, a distant relative he'd met through genealogical research, died in the demonstration crash.
Daniel began asking questions.
That was when Keene offered him a new job at the Whitmore estate.
He was told to watch Richard.
Not Emily.
“Who hired you?” Ortiz asked in the recording.
Daniel stared at the camera.
“A woman named Margaret Ellis.”
“Did you know she was your mother?”
He shook his head.
“Not until last month.”
He described meeting her in a private dining room.
She wore a silver bracelet and told him Richard had stolen his life.
She promised evidence.
Instead, she demanded he retrieve an encrypted drive from Emily.
“Did you help attack Emily?” Ortiz asked.
“No.”
“Did you know she would be hurt?”
His eyes filled.
“I knew they were going to pressure her. I didn't know what that meant.”
He told them he'd overheard Brandon shouting from the warehouse office.
He fled when he saw men surround Emily.
I wanted to despise him for leaving.
Part of me did.
But hatred wasn't testimony.
Ortiz turned off the recording.
“We have one missing piece.”
“Which one?”
“The person who brought Emily to the hospital.”
Daniel said he'd tried to return after the assault but found the warehouse empty.
That account left a gap of nearly an hour.
Security cameras at a highway service station filled part of it.
The vehicle that dropped Emily at St. Matthew's stopped for gasoline first.
The driver stepped into view.
It was Daniel Vale, the missing auditor.
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And he was carrying Emily's blue recipe binder.
