Chapter 3 The Woman in the Green Dress
The men outside Rachel’s apartment kept knocking.
“Mr. Mercer,” one of them called. “We know you are inside.”
Rachel moved silently toward the side window and lifted the blind less than an inch. Her apartment was on the second floor, facing the alley behind the building.
A dark sedan sat below with its headlights off.
No police cruiser.
No flashing lights.
No uniformed officers.
Just two men in gray jackets standing outside her door.
Rachel mouthed, Back exit.
I kept Elena on the phone.
“Where are you?” I whispered.
“At our house.”
“Leave.”
“I cannot.”
“Why?”
“Someone is parked across the street.”
One of the men outside struck the door harder.
“Mr. Mercer, open the door now.”
Rachel grabbed the isolated laptop, removed the flash drive, and shoved both into a canvas bag. Then she led me toward her bedroom.
The fire escape descended from the window to the alley.
I climbed out first. My chest tightened halfway down. For one terrible second, the metal steps tilted beneath me and the alley seemed to rise toward my face.
I gripped the railing until my vision cleared.
Rachel climbed down behind me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good. Honesty saves time.”
We slipped through a rear gate and reached her car two blocks away. As she drove, I told Elena to take only her phone, identification, and any medication she trusted.
“Go out through the backyard,” I said. “Rachel will pick you up.”
“Daniel, you cannot come home.”
“I was not planning to.”
“I need you to know something before you see me.”
I stared through the windshield at the passing lights.
“Did you sleep with him?”
Rachel glanced at me but said nothing.
Elena’s silence lasted too long.
“Yes,” she finally whispered.
The word cut cleanly.
I closed my eyes.
“Once,” she said. “Only once.”
“That is supposed to help?”
“No.”
“Was it at the Lakeshore?”
“Yes.”
“Were you investigating him then?”
“Yes.”
I laughed, but there was nothing human in the sound.
“What kind of investigation requires you to sleep with my cardiologist?”
“The kind I should never have agreed to.”
“Who asked you?”
“I will explain everything when I see you.”
“I have heard that sentence from two people today. One of them is dead.”
Elena began crying quietly.
“I am sorry.”
I wanted to hang up.
Instead, I asked, “Who knew about my father’s death before the autopsy report?”
Her breathing stopped.
“What did Julian tell you?”
“Answer me.”
“Your mother knew.”
“My mother was at the hospital.”
“She knew the official cause before the report was completed.”
“My father died of cardiac arrest.”
“No, Daniel. That is what the report eventually said.”
Cold moved through me.
“What are you saying?”
“I am saying your father may have been the first.”
The line went dead.
Rachel drove faster.
We found Elena three blocks from our house, crouched behind a row of hedges in a neighbor’s backyard. She wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and no coat. Her dark hair was loose around her face, and she was holding a kitchen knife.
When she saw me get out of the car, relief flashed across her face.
I did not go to her.
Rachel did.
She took the knife gently, wrapped Elena in a blanket from the trunk, and put her in the back seat.
We drove to an extended-stay hotel near O’Hare and paid in cash.
Inside the room, Elena stood near the window while I remained by the door.
Rachel placed the isolated laptop on the table.
“No one leaves until I understand why fake police officers came to my home,” she said.
Elena looked at me.
“The affair was real,” I said. “Start there.”
Her face crumpled.
“Daniel—”
“Start there.”
She sat on the edge of the bed.
“Eleven months ago, I received a letter at the legal clinic where I volunteer. It contained copies of your prescription history and your father’s hospital chart.”
“You never volunteered at a legal clinic.”
“I did. That part was true.”
“To investigate my doctor?”
“To investigate the hospital group he worked for.”
She explained that the clinic represented low-income patients in medical-negligence cases. Several clients had suffered unexplained cardiac episodes after receiving treatment through the Crosswell Health Network, where Julian held a senior position.
Three had died.
All had the same insurer.
All had medication records changed shortly before their deaths.
“My father?” I asked.
Elena nodded. “His name appeared in one of the files.”
I sat down slowly.
“Why did you not tell me?”
“Because the letter also contained photographs of you. At work. At the gym. Sitting in your car outside Rachel’s building.”
Rachel’s expression sharpened.
“There was a warning,” Elena continued. “If I contacted the police or told you, the sender would trigger an audit of your company and leak documents showing that you had stolen client money.”
“I never stole anything.”
“I know. The documents were forged, but they looked real enough to destroy you before anyone proved otherwise.”
“So you followed instructions.”
“At first.”
The sender told Elena to get close to Julian Cross. She was ordered to attend a medical foundation fundraiser at the Lakeshore Hotel wearing the green dress. She was told what to say, where to sit, and how to convince Julian that she was unhappy in her marriage.
“Julian already knew who I was,” she said. “He had treated you for years. But he believed I had discovered his role in the altered prescriptions. He thought I was trying to blackmail him.”
“And instead, you seduced him.”
Her eyes filled.
“I let him believe I wanted him.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“No. The first few meetings were only conversations. He was arrogant and suspicious, but he was also terrified. He kept asking who had sent me.”
She stared at her hands.
“After two months, the person controlling me demanded proof that Julian trusted me. They told me to stay the night.”
My throat tightened.
“And you did.”
“Yes.”
Rachel sat across from her. “Why not disappear? Go to the FBI?”
“I tried. Two days later, Daniel collapsed in the bathroom.”
I remembered that night. The black tile against my cheek. Elena kneeling beside me. Her hands shaking as she called an ambulance.
“They sent me a photograph of Daniel unconscious,” she said. “It had been taken through our bathroom window.”
The room fell silent.
“I believed they could kill him whenever they wanted.”
I looked away.
“They told me to continue,” Elena said. “But after that night, I stopped following only their instructions. I started recording Julian. Searching his office. Copying files.”
“The photograph on his desk?”
“He demanded something personal. I gave him the anniversary picture because the location matched the hotel. I thought it might convince him.”
“You thought correctly.”
Pain passed over her face.
“I hated myself every time he touched the frame.”
“Did he fall in love with you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly, but it did not heal anything.
Rachel opened the recording we had heard.
“You told someone the records led back to Cross. Who was the man?”
Elena’s eyes moved to the laptop.
“His name is Thomas Vale. He said he was a federal investigator assigned to a healthcare-fraud task force.”
“Did you verify him?” Rachel asked.
“He showed credentials. He knew details that were never public.”
Rachel searched an offline copy of a government directory.
“No Thomas Vale in the healthcare-fraud division.”
“He may have used another name.”
“Or he controlled you.”
Elena stared at her.
The possibility seemed to strike her for the first time.
My phone buzzed.
A message from my mother appeared.
Daniel, I just heard about Dr. Cross. Please call me immediately.
I showed it to Elena.
She went pale.
“What?” I asked.
“She never called him Dr. Cross.”
“What do you mean?”
“She always called him Julian.”
“My mother knew my cardiologist.”
“She knew him before he became your cardiologist.”
I felt the room shrink.
“How?”
Elena reached into her sweatshirt pocket and removed a folded photograph.
It showed my father standing at a hospital gala twenty years earlier.
Beside him was a younger Julian Cross.
On Julian’s other side stood my mother.
And next to her was the man Elena knew as Thomas Vale.
Someone had written four words across the back.
THE ORIGINAL HEART TEAM.
I looked at Elena.
“Where did you get this?”
“Julian’s safe.”
Rachel took the photograph and held it under the lamp.
“There is someone else in the background.”
A woman stood partly hidden behind my father’s shoulder. She wore a hospital badge and stared directly at the camera.
Rachel enlarged the image with her phone.
The woman was younger, but I recognized her.
Her name was Margaret Sloan.
She had been my father’s private nurse during the final six months of his life.
She had also been my mother’s closest friend for thirty years.
At that exact moment, the hotel room phone rang.
None of us moved.
It rang a second time.
Then a third.
Rachel answered without speaking.
A woman’s voice came through the receiver.
“Daniel,” she said, “your mother is not safe with Elena.”
I knew the voice.
May you like
Margaret Sloan.
“She has lied to you from the beginning,” Margaret continued. “Bring me the flash drive, and I will show you who killed your father.”
