Chapter 7 - THE HOUSE WITH NO WINDOWS
Daniel agreed to let investigators inspect the case, but by the time we reached his home the study had been stripped.
The safe door stood open, and the carpet bore the rectangular imprint of a missing metal box.
His wife, Rebecca, said a man wearing a contractor identification badge had visited before dawn.
He claimed Daniel had approved the pickup.
Daniel denied it immediately.
The front gate camera showed a van with covered plates and a driver in a gray jacket.
For one frame his wrist rose toward the camera.
A silver compass emblem flashed on his cuff.
Meridian.
Vega called for a forensic team, while Daniel leaned against his desk looking older than the house.
“Somebody knew I kept it,” he said.
“You told them,” I answered.
He admitted that after Iron Lantern he'd been ordered to safeguard the case for review but never received a collection order.
He'd hidden it to protect the evidence and then protected his own career by never disclosing that fact.
He couldn't defend either decision.
Rebecca entered carrying a small wooden box from the closet.
“If secrets are coming out, all of them should,” she said.
Inside lay letters Daniel had never sent to the families of those lost in the valley.
One was addressed to Walter Hayes.
Another was addressed to a woman named Miriam Shaw.
I remembered Miriam as a civilian interpreter who had guided our convoy around a mined bridge.
The official report listed her as unaccounted for after the attack.
Daniel's unsent letter said something different.
It claimed he had seen Miriam board the unmarked helicopter with Peter Hayes.
Walter gripped the chair arms so tightly his knuckles blanched.
“Peter was alive,” he said.
Daniel did not pretend uncertainty.
“He was alive when I last saw him.”
Walter rose and moved toward the door before anyone could stop him.
“Seventeen years,” he whispered.
I followed him slowly, my sling scraping against the doorframe.
He stood on the porch beneath a hard white sky.
“My wife died believing we failed our boy.”
I had no words adequate to that loss.
Then Rebecca's phone rang inside.
She answered and let out a strangled cry.
Someone had sent her a photograph taken through the house's front window minutes earlier.
May you like
Beneath it was a single instruction.
Tell Daniel to burn the letters, or the next photograph will be of your grandson.
