Chapter 8 - A VOICE FROM EIGHT YEARS AGO
Elena Vale contacted us through a lawyer rather than directly.
Her attorney, Marcus Bell, arranged a confidential meeting with investigators at a secure location.
I was not permitted to attend the first interview.
That frustrated me until Rebecca reminded me that Elena's safety and the integrity of her account mattered more than my need for an immediate answer.
Two days later, Miller returned with information Elena had authorized her to share.
Elena had not died in 2018.
She had entered protective arrangements after providing information in a separate investigation concerning financial misconduct.
The memorial service had been arranged by people who believed that declaring her dead would sever her ties to her old life.
Her brother Graham had known she was alive.
He had also been pressured to keep quiet.
What Elena knew about my parents was far more complicated than I expected.
She said my mother had helped organize fictitious grant payments for years.
When Stephen Voss threatened to expose them, Elena tried to help him preserve documents.
Stephen later died from a fall that was initially treated as an accident.
Elena could not prove it was anything else.
But she had received threats after asking questions.
She fled and began cooperating with investigators about the financial scheme.
When her brother told her I had uncovered trust records, she returned to Minnesota under an assumed name.
“Why would she come back?” I asked.
“Because she thought you were in danger,” Miller said.
My throat tightened.
Elena had been following developments at Croft Capital, hoping to get evidence that could protect me.
On the night of my father's attack, she was near the garage when Graham called her in a panic.
He claimed I had been injured and needed medical care.
She entered the SUV intending to insist that they go to a hospital.
But my father controlled the route through a phone call to Graham.
At the fuel station, Elena stepped out to call for help.
An unidentified man threatened her and forced her to leave.
She escaped in a delivery van heading east and hid until she could safely contact her attorney.
Miller would not tell me all the details of her movements.
I was relieved Elena was alive, but her account raised another painful question.
If Graham had genuinely tried to help, why had he still driven me to the alley?
Rebecca said the answer might lie in the pressures operating on him.
Coercion could explain actions without erasing responsibility for them.
It was an important distinction.
I was learning that every person in my father's orbit had a story about why they had done what they did.
Not one of those stories had made me safe.
Elena had also supplied a recording made years earlier at my parents' lake house.
On it, my mother discussed a ledger with a man Elena identified as retired Judge Lionel Harker.
Harker complained that he had been promised insulation from exposure.
My mother responded coldly.
“The money isn't the only thing keeping you with us, Lionel.”
Then she said a name I recognized.
“Ask Douglas what happens when people try to become Stephen Voss.”
The recording ended with the sound of a chair scraping across a floor.
I looked at Rebecca.
“Did my mother have something to do with Stephen's death?”
“We do not know,” she answered.
“And we cannot accuse anyone of that without reliable evidence.”
I hated the uncertainty.
I hated that it was necessary.
A separate discovery gave us a more immediate concern.
The Red Book had apparently been copied onto an encrypted drive, which Graham had placed in a bank safe-deposit box.
The box was held under a corporate name.
The scheduled access records showed someone had tried to enter it three times in the previous week.
The person presented authorization documents bearing my name.
The bank had refused the request because the signature didn't match its specimen record.
For once, a forgery had failed.
But Rebecca's relief vanished when she read the applicant's photograph.
It wasn't my father.
It wasn't my mother.
May you like
It was Detective Rachel Miller.
