Chapter 5
Detective Brooks reacted faster than anyone else.
She called in the plate number Andre had managed to glimpse, ordered a patrol unit to circle the block, and told Rachel’s sister to keep every curtain closed.
Marcus stood in the living room beside Noah, trying not to frighten him.
Andre watched through the darkened window.
The sedan was gone.
Dr. Harold Vance was gone.
But the message remained on Andre’s phone.
STOP DIGGING UP THE DEAD OR YOU’LL LOSE THE LIVING.
Brooks took screenshots and had the phone photographed.
“Do not respond,” she said.
Andre looked at her.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.”
Marcus came in.
“Noah wants to know why the police are here.”
Rachel followed.
“I told him someone drove too fast outside.”
Andre looked at her.
“He believed that?”
“No.”
Noah had already learned not to believe simple explanations.
That realization made Andre angrier than the threat.
Detective Shaw returned from outside.
“Plate comes back to a medical consulting company.”
Andre already knew.
“Vance?”
Shaw nodded.
“Registered to Vance Clinical Services.”
Marcus stared.
“Then arrest him.”
“We need more than a photograph and a vehicle.”
“He threatened my son.”
“We need to establish who sent the message.”
“I saw him.”
“And we’re documenting that.”
Marcus walked away.
Andre understood the frustration.
He also understood something else.
Vance had revealed himself.
People who felt safe did not sit outside houses photographing children.
Unless that was the point.
Maybe he wanted them frightened.
Maybe he wanted them to stop.
Andre looked at Brooks.
“What happens now?”
“We want you somewhere secure.”
“Like where?”
“A hotel under another name is one option.”
Rachel shook her head.
“Noah is not spending the night in a hotel because of these people.”
Andre looked at her.
“What do you suggest?”
She hesitated.
“My father’s cabin.”
Marcus frowned.
“Where?”
“Two hours north. Almost nobody knows about it.”
Brooks considered.
“We can arrange a patrol check and keep the address restricted.”
Marcus nodded immediately.
Andre did not.
“What about Lorraine?”
Brooks’s expression became careful.
“She is no longer at her house.”
Marcus went still.
“What?”
“Officers arrived to ask follow-up questions. She had left.”
“Again?”
“She left through the back before they arrived.”
Andre stared.
“Who warned her?”
Nobody answered.
Brooks’s jaw tightened.
“We’re working on that.”
Andre thought of Vance.
Of Lorraine.
Of twenty years of notes and payments.
They were not improvising.
They had done this before.
By eight that morning, Noah was asleep again in the back seat of Rachel’s SUV.
Rachel drove.
Marcus sat beside her.
Andre followed in his car with Detective Shaw behind him for the first forty miles.
The cabin was smaller than Andre expected.
Two bedrooms.
A stone fireplace.
Pine trees so thick they seemed to swallow sound.
Rachel’s father had built it before she was born.
No cell service except near one window.
No neighbors in sight.
Noah loved it instantly.
“Can I make a fort?”
Rachel smiled.
“Yes.”
“Can Uncle Andre help?”
Andre looked at Marcus.
Marcus nodded.
“Go.”
For the next hour, they built a fort out of couch cushions.
Noah insisted on using a flashlight even though daylight filled the room.
Andre crawled inside with him.
The boy arranged three stuffed animals he had brought in a row.
“Daddy is sad.”
Andre leaned against a cushion.
“Yeah.”
“Because Grandma is bad?”
Andre chose his words carefully.
“Because some things happened that he wishes he had stopped.”
Noah considered that.
“Is Daddy bad?”
“No.”
The answer came too fast.
Andre corrected himself.
“Your dad made mistakes.”
“Bad mistakes?”
“Yes.”
Noah looked at the flashlight.
“Do mistakes make you bad?”
Andre swallowed.
“No. What you do after them matters.”
“Grandma says sorry doesn’t count if you do it again.”
Andre nearly laughed at the irony.
“She’s right about that part.”
Noah looked up.
“Will Daddy do it again?”
Andre had no answer.
So he told the truth.
“I don’t know.”
The boy seemed satisfied by honesty.
That hurt too.
Adults had lied to him enough that uncertainty felt safer than comfort.
After lunch, Rachel found an old printer in the closet and began making copies of Elena’s letter.
Marcus sat on the porch.
Andre joined him.
For several minutes, they listened to wind moving through trees.
Then Marcus said, “I called the hospital.”
Andre looked over.
“Which hospital?”
“The one where Elena died.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to know if Vance was there.”
Andre’s stomach tightened.
“And?”
“He visited her twice that week.”
“What?”
“He wasn’t treating her.”
“Apparently he signed in as family physician.”
Andre stared at the woods.
“What did he do?”
“No one can tell me without records.”
“Police can get them.”
“I told Brooks.”
Marcus rubbed his palms together.
“I remember him now.”
“From the hospital?”
“No. From our house.”
Andre turned.
“When Dad died.”
Marcus stared ahead.
“Vance came over the next morning. Mom sent us upstairs.”
“You were nineteen.”
“I know.”
“You went?”
Marcus gave him a tired look.
“I was trained.”
The word hung between them.
Andre understood.
Lorraine did not need to order.
She could make requests feel like moral duties.
Marcus continued.
“I heard them arguing.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. I heard Vance say, ‘This was not the arrangement.’”
Andre felt cold.
“You never told anyone?”
“I thought they were talking about paperwork.”
“Of course you did.”
Marcus did not defend himself.
Andre regretted the cruelty a little.
Not enough to apologize.
“Did Mom ever date him?”
“No.”
“Dad suspect something?”
“I don’t know.”
Andre thought of church money.
Forty thousand dollars.
Payments after Raymond’s death.
Payments during Elena’s illness.
“What was the arrangement?”
Marcus shook his head.
Rachel opened the door.
“You need to see this.”
She carried Elena’s letter.
Andre frowned.
“What?”
“Look at the bottom.”
She pointed to a faint indentation beneath the signature.
Andre had seen it but assumed it was pressure from handwriting on another sheet.
Rachel held it under a lamp sideways.
Letters appeared in the paper.
Marcus leaned closer.
“What is that?”
“She wrote on top of another page.”
Andre read the indentation slowly.
H… V… dosage…
Rachel took a pencil and lightly shaded a separate sheet laid over the back.
More letters appeared.
Marcus whispered, “Harold Vance.”
Andre’s heart pounded.
The hidden impression was incomplete, but several phrases could be made out.
Harold Vance changed dosage.
Lorraine said necessary.
Made me sleep.
Tell Andre drawer.
Marcus stood.
“Jesus.”
Andre took a picture.
They called Brooks.
She arrived at the cabin two hours later with news.
The police had searched Lorraine’s study.
The locked drawer was empty.
But ultraviolet examination showed that papers had been stored there recently.
They also found medication logs.
Not originals.
Photocopies.
Elena’s name appeared repeatedly.
So did Raymond’s.
Brooks placed a folder on the kitchen table.
“Your father was prescribed a sedative six weeks before his accident.”
Andre frowned.
“He had trouble sleeping.”
“That’s what the record says.”
Marcus looked at the medication name.
“Temazepam.”
Brooks nodded.
“His toxicology after the crash showed a sedative in his system.”
“That was known?”
“Yes. It was considered consistent with prescription use.”
Andre remembered the accident report.
Raymond had driven off a rural road late at night.
No skid marks.
No other vehicle.
“Could it have caused the crash?”
“At normal dosage, it can impair driving.”
Marcus’s voice was tight.
“Normal dosage?”
Brooks met his eyes.
“The blood level was elevated.”
Andre felt the room close in.
“How elevated?”
“Enough that a toxicologist reviewing the file now considers it significant.”
Marcus sat.
“Why wasn’t it investigated?”
“Because he had a prescription, there was no obvious evidence of foul play, and the death was ruled accidental.”
Andre looked at the photocopies.
“Who prescribed it?”
Brooks did not need to answer.
“Vance,” Andre said.
She nodded.
Rachel whispered, “And Elena?”
Brooks opened another page.
“Elena received several medications from her oncology team. Vance added an anti-anxiety prescription near the end.”
“What kind?”
“A benzodiazepine.”
Marcus covered his face.
“Did it kill her?”
“No. Elena died from complications of cancer.”
Andre exhaled.
The distinction mattered.
Brooks continued.
“But her chart contains two episodes where staff noted unusual sedation.”
Marcus looked up.
“When?”
“Both after Vance visits.”
Silence.
Andre said, “So he didn’t kill Elena.”
“We have no evidence that he did.”
“But he may have drugged her.”
“We’re investigating.”
Rachel sat slowly.
“Why?”
Andre answered.
“To keep her from talking.”
Marcus looked at him.
“About the drawer.”
Brooks nodded.
“That is one possibility.”
Andre stared at Elena’s letter.
“She knew something about Dad.”
Marcus looked sick.
Maybe that was what the drawer had contained.
Not only records about Elena.
Records about Raymond.
A secret she had found too late.
Brooks’s phone rang.
She stepped outside.
Andre watched through the window as her expression changed.
When she returned, she closed the door carefully.
“We found Dr. Vance’s car.”
“Where?” Marcus asked.
“Near the river.”
Andre’s stomach dropped.
“And Vance?”
“Not in it.”
“Did he run?”
“We don’t know.”
Brooks looked at Andre.
“Your photograph of the plate helped us locate it quickly.”
Rachel asked, “What was inside?”
Brooks hesitated.
“A phone.”
“The one that sent the threat?”
“We’re checking.”
“And?”
Brooks’s face hardened.
“An envelope.”
Andre knew before she said it.
His name.
“Addressed to you.”
Brooks placed a clear evidence sleeve on the table.
Inside was an envelope.
ANDRE BELL.
The handwriting was not Elena’s.
It was Vance’s.
Andre looked at Brooks.
“Can I read it?”
“It’s already been processed.”
She opened the sleeve and handed him a photocopy.
The letter contained only four lines.
Lorraine will blame me for everything.
She always planned to.
Raymond was awake when he left the house.
Elena knew why he was leaving.
Andre read it twice.
“What does that mean?”
Marcus whispered, “Dad was leaving Mom.”
Andre looked at Brooks.
“What else?”
She turned the page over.
On the back was one final sentence.
ASK MARCUS WHAT HE SAW IN THE GARAGE.
Andre looked at his brother.
Marcus had gone completely white.
“Andre,” he whispered.
“What did you see?”
Marcus shook his head.
“I forgot.”
“No.”
“I didn’t forget.”
May you like
His eyes filled.
“I made myself forget.”
