Chapter 3 — The Room Behind the Library
The paramedics wanted Emily transported immediately.
She refused to leave until the officers secured Ruth’s evidence.
Sergeant Brooks did not pressure her.
Instead, she wrapped a blanket around Emily’s shoulders and assigned a trooper to remain beside her while another photographed the kennel, the broken whiskey glass, the bruises on Emily’s face, and the padlock.
Graham stood near a patrol car with his hands cuffed in front of him.
He had not been arrested yet.
Sergeant Brooks called it investigative detention.
Vivian remained free, though an officer had warned her not to enter the mansion or contact anyone inside.
She obeyed with the cold patience of a woman who had spent her life letting other people take risks for her.
Deputy Price stood apart from everyone.
He kept glancing toward the road.
Maybe he was waiting for a supervisor.
Maybe he was wondering how quickly friendship with the Whitmores could become evidence against him.
Ruth led Sergeant Brooks, Eli, and me through the mansion.
Titan walked beside me.
A trooper objected at first, but Ruth explained that Graham’s private security team sometimes released two additional dogs inside the house.
Brooks looked at me.
“Can you control this one?”
“Until someone gives him a reason not to trust me.”
“That isn’t the answer I wanted.”
“It’s the honest one.”
We entered through the kitchen.
The counters were white marble. Copper pans hung above an island large enough to serve a restaurant. Everything gleamed except the cast-iron furnace door built into the far wall.
Black ash dusted the floor beneath it.
Sergeant Brooks photographed the ash.
“Anything burned recently?”
Ruth nodded.
“Mr. Whitmore burned Emily’s laptop bag last night. I don’t know if the computer was inside.”
I felt my jaw tighten.
“Did he burn anything else?”
“Some papers. Not the blue folder.”
We continued through a dining room with twelve chairs, a gallery filled with family portraits, and a library that smelled of leather and furniture polish.
A portrait of Graham hung above the fireplace.
In it, he looked handsome, disciplined, and respectable.
Paint could lie as effectively as people.
Ruth approached a bookcase and pulled a brass lever hidden behind a row of old encyclopedias.
The center shelf moved inward.
Sergeant Brooks looked at her.
“Secret door?”
“Mr. Whitmore calls it a privacy feature.”
The room beyond was windowless.
A desk stood in the center beneath recessed lights. Three monitors lined the wall. Filing cabinets filled one side. A liquor cabinet occupied the other.
On the desk sat a silver laptop.
Beside it was Emily’s phone.
“That’s hers,” I said.
Brooks raised a hand.
“Don’t touch anything.”
Ruth moved toward a cabinet.
“I put the folder behind the bottom drawer.”
She knelt, removed the drawer, and reached into the dark space behind it.
Her hand came out empty.
Ruth stared.
“No.”
She reached deeper.
“It was here.”
Brooks examined the gap.
Fresh scratches marked the wood.
“Someone found it.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Titan turned.
His body stiffened.
“Someone’s outside,” I said.
Brooks motioned for silence and drew her sidearm.
The hidden door began closing.
I moved before it sealed.
My cane struck the edge, stopping it with six inches to spare.
A hand appeared through the gap, trying to force it shut.
Titan barked.
The hand vanished.
Brooks pushed through, followed by the trooper.
We heard footsteps running across the library.
A man in a dark suit disappeared through the far doorway.
“State police!” Brooks shouted. “Stop!”
He did not.
Titan looked at me.
I could feel the tension running through him.
He was waiting.
Not because he wanted to attack.
Because he wanted a job.
I pointed toward the doorway.
“Such.”
Search.
Titan ran.
We followed him through the gallery and into the main foyer.
The man in the suit reached the front doors.
Titan caught the sleeve of his jacket and pulled him off balance without biting flesh. The man struck the marble floor and slid against a table.
A small object flew from his hand.
A flash drive.
Sergeant Brooks kicked it away and ordered him onto his stomach.
The man obeyed.
Another trooper cuffed him.
Ruth stared at him.
“Mr. Kane?”
The man’s name was Oliver Kane.
He was the Whitmore family’s private attorney.
He claimed he had entered the mansion through a side door after receiving a call from Vivian. He claimed he was there to protect confidential legal records.
Sergeant Brooks asked why he ran.
Kane said the dog frightened him.
She asked why he was holding a flash drive.
He said it belonged to his firm.
She asked why he had removed it from a hidden office during a criminal investigation.
He stopped answering.
Brooks photographed the drive and placed it in an evidence bag.
Then her phone rang.
She stepped aside to answer it.
Through the open front doors, I could see the paramedics placing Emily on a stretcher.
She looked impossibly small beneath the blanket.
I went to her.
Graham shouted from beside the patrol car.
“Emily!”
She flinched.
He leaned forward against his restraints.
“You know what happens if you let them take those files.”
Brooks walked toward him.
“Do not address her again.”
Graham ignored her.
“Your father doesn’t know what you did.”
Emily stared at him.
“What I did?”
“You accessed private patient records. You copied financial information. You violated hospital law.”
Emily tried to sit up.
“I discovered fake children.”
One of the paramedics looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
Emily’s voice trembled, but the words came faster now.
“The Whitmore Children’s Foundation claims it pays for specialized treatments. I work at the pediatric hospital receiving some of those grants.”
She looked toward the evidence bag in Brooks’s hand.
“I started recognizing names.”
Graham’s face went pale.
“Stop talking.”
Emily continued.
“Some children existed, but their conditions were changed on the invoices. Some received a few hundred dollars in assistance while the foundation billed donors for tens of thousands.”
Brooks’s expression sharpened.
“And the others?”
Emily looked at her husband.
“The others never existed.”
Silence fell across the driveway.
Vivian stepped forward.
“My daughter-in-law is under medication.”
Emily’s hands clenched around the blanket.
“No, Vivian. You were medication.”
She looked at me.
“They crushed sedatives into my evening tea. I caught Graham doing it three weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Brooks asked.
“I tried. He took my phone. He told the hospital I was suffering from burnout. Then Dr. Bell signed a recommendation that I take medical leave.”
“Who is Dr. Bell?”
“The foundation’s medical adviser.”
Oliver Kane, still on the foyer floor, closed his eyes.
Brooks noticed.
“So the attorney knows him.”
Kane said nothing.
Emily pointed toward the flash drive.
“I copied donor ledgers, patient names, payments, and emails. That drive might be the copy.”
Graham laughed harshly.
“You think stealing incomplete files proves anything?”
Emily turned toward him.
“No.”
For the first time since I found her, something stronger than fear entered her voice.
“It proves where to look.”
The ambulance doors opened.
Before the paramedics lifted her inside, Emily caught my hand.
“Dad, my friend Natalie has the original copy.”
“Who is Natalie?”
“A nurse at the hospital. I mailed her a key.”
“A key to what?”
Emily looked toward the mansion.
“The safe deposit box where Graham keeps the records he thinks nobody knows about.”
Graham surged against the trooper holding him.
“Emily!”
The trooper forced him back against the car.
But Emily was no longer looking at him.
She was looking at me.
“Find Natalie before they do.”
The ambulance doors closed.
As it pulled away, Vivian slipped one hand beneath her shawl.
I saw the movement.
So did Titan.
He growled.
Vivian slowly withdrew a second phone.
Its screen was already lit.
A message had been sent.
May you like
Two words were visible before Sergeant Brooks took it from her.
FIND NATALIE.
