Chapter 4 - THE SECOND CLARA
There are moments when fear becomes anger because the mind cannot tolerate both.
Seeing Clara's name on that registration did it to me.
I asked Daniel Mercer to explain how a dead woman's identity could control an active corporate vehicle.
He said that an old registration could be a clerical error.
I said a clerical error did not drive through a prison gate.
A week later, the court reinstated Harrison on my defense team after the judge found the evidence against him unreliable.
He entered our conference room with dark circles beneath his eyes and a bruised wrist.
“I was questioned for thirty-six hours,” he said.
“What did they want?”
“A confession that I planted the metal box.”
“Did they tell you who ordered the accusation?”
“No, but I know who paid the witness.”
He spread bank records over the table.
The payment originated in an offshore account bearing the internal reference CB-02.
A second payment went to a company called Bell Consulting.
Mara Bell's supposed retirement had been financed through the same network.
Harrison had traced the money to a warehouse outside Albany.
The building belonged to a dissolved security contractor, yet power bills showed continuous operations.
“We need federal agents who aren't reporting through Nolan Price,” I said.
“I've contacted Special Agent Tessa Ward.”
“Can we trust her?”
“She helped your father seven years ago.”
That gave me little comfort.
Someone who knew the old accounts had guided Silas directly to them.
The betrayal could have begun long before my father's death.
Ward arranged a secure interview.
She was blunt, impatient, and visibly furious that state officials had attempted to restrict my attorney calls.
“We believe your husband is laundering money through identities tied to missing persons,” she said.
“Plural?”
She nodded.
“Clara's identity was not the only one revived after a disappearance.”
Ward laid down three photographs.
Each showed a woman who had vanished after reporting irregularities at companies connected to Silas.
At the bottom of the last photograph was a name I recognized from my father's Christmas card list.
Mara Bell.
“She's not retired,” Ward said.
“We have reason to believe she's being kept alive because she knows the code to a protected archive.”
Then she turned the photograph over.
Written on its back was a message apparently intended for me.
May you like
‘Evelyn, your father never died at home.’
