Chapter 12 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
The sniper escaped again.
This time, however, state police recovered a shell casing and a partial boot print near the garden wall.
Ortiz ordered Mercer House evacuated completely.
No staff remained.
No family remained.
Even the bodyguards were removed from duty pending investigation.
Price was transported in an armored vehicle to a state facility.
David demanded to see the photograph before it went to the lab.
Ortiz allowed him two minutes.
The young woman holding the newborn had light brown hair and a narrow face.
She looked frightened.
Samuel Warren stood beside her in a white coat.
The baby was wrapped in a blue blanket.
A date stamp showed March 18, 1988.
One day after David's birth date.
"Do you recognize her?"
Ortiz asked.
David shook his head.
Jane studied the photograph.
"She has a ring."
A small silver ring was visible on the woman's right hand.
The design looked like two wings meeting around a dark stone.
Ortiz photographed it.
"We will run image comparisons."
Price asked to give a full statement.
Ortiz made him wait until lawyers and internal affairs investigators arrived.
When he finally spoke, he did so in a windowless interview room with three cameras recording.
David and Jane watched from behind glass.
Price admitted he had known Arthur was investigating St. Catherine's.
Arthur came to him because Price was then a young detective.
Price wanted to open a formal case.
Arthur refused.
He feared publicity would destroy families whose children had no idea they were adopted or illegally reassigned.
"He wanted proof first."
Price said.
"He wanted a list no defense attorney could dismiss as a grieving father's obsession."
On the night Arthur died, Price met him secretly at the greenhouse.
Harry and Evelyn were already there.
Elise arrived later.
Arthur believed Elise had agreed to bring Samuel's master archive.
Instead, Elise brought a demand.
Sign over control of the medical foundation trusts or she would expose Claire's role in David's adoption.
Arthur refused.
Then a noise outside made Price believe armed men were approaching.
He told Arthur, "Do it now," meaning trigger the greenhouse panic alarm and run through the rear service tunnel.
Arthur pressed the switch.
Nothing happened.
The alarm had been disabled.
Seconds later, Arthur collapsed.
"What did Elise do?"
Ortiz asked.
Price shook his head.
"I never saw her touch him."
"Then why did you remove the capsule from evidence?"
Price looked down.
"Arthur gave it to me before he fell."
David leaned closer to the glass.
Price continued.
Arthur had found the unmarked capsule in his medication bottle that afternoon.
He suspected someone was trying to poison him.
He gave the capsule to Price and told him to test it privately.
When Arthur died anyway, Price panicked.
The medical examiner was Dr. Samuel Warren's former partner.
Price feared evidence would disappear.
So he signed the capsule out and hid it.
"Where?"
Ortiz asked.
Price hesitated.
"In my daughter's grave."
The room became silent.
Price's daughter, Emily, had died at age four from leukemia.
David remembered the funeral.
Price had never recovered.
"Why there?"
"Because I knew nobody connected to Samuel would touch a child's grave."
Price said.
Then his face twisted.
"I was wrong."
Two nights earlier, Samuel's people opened the grave and took the capsule.
They sent Price a photograph of the disturbed headstone.
Then they abducted him.
"Why let you go?"
Ortiz asked.
Price looked at the one-way glass as if he could see David behind it.
"They didn't."
"Then how are you here?"
"Harry cut me loose."
David stared.
Harry, who had escaped transport.
Harry, who had supposedly been taken by a woman wearing Jane's face.
Harry was now helping Price.
Price said Harry found him in the old St. Catherine's warehouse.
They escaped through a drainage tunnel.
Then Harry left to follow Samuel.
"Where?"
"I don't know."
Price added one more detail.
Harry had a fresh gunshot wound in his shoulder.
He had been hit during the escape but refused medical help.
Jane looked at David.
The man she hated had risked himself to rescue Price.
It did not erase what he had done to her.
But it complicated him again.
That evening, Ortiz received results from facial recognition on the photograph.
The young woman holding the newborn had appeared in a 1987 nursing-school yearbook.
Her name was Rebecca Hale.
She vanished in 1988.
No death certificate existed.
No marriage record.
No tax record after March 1988.
A second search found one surviving relative.
A younger sister named Rachel Hale Marsh.
Jane's biological mother was Rachel Marsh.
Jane stared at the screen.
"Rebecca was my aunt."
Ortiz nodded.
David looked from Jane to the photograph.
"If Rebecca was my mother, then Jane and I are related through her sister."
Jane went white.
Ortiz immediately held up a hand.
"Do not jump there."
She explained that the photograph proved only that Rebecca held the baby.
Arthur's note could have been wrong, intentionally misleading, or based on Samuel's claim.
The DNA issue was still unresolved.
"We test directly."
Ortiz said.
Samples were taken from David and Jane.
The results would be expedited.
That night, Sophie called from the secure residence where she was being watched by a trusted child specialist.
"Daddy, the lady in the picture was in my room."
David's heart stopped.
"What lady?"
"The one with the baby."
"Rebecca?"
Sophie nodded on the video call.
"Not now. Before."
"When?"
"The night Mom disappeared."
Jane leaned toward the screen.
"Sophie, are you sure?"
"She was old."
Sophie said.
"She had the wing ring."
David looked at Ortiz.
Rebecca Hale, presumed missing since 1988, had apparently entered Sophie's bedroom five days earlier.
Sophie continued.
"She told Uncle Harry not to hurt Mom."
Jane's eyes widened.
"What did Harry say?"
Sophie thought.
"He said, 'Then tell Samuel to stop.'"
David felt the puzzle shift again.
Rebecca was alive.
She was inside the house the night Jane was imprisoned.
And she was apparently trying to stop it.
Sophie whispered one final detail.
"Daddy, she called you Danny."
David frowned.
"Why would she call me Danny?"
May you like
Sophie shrugged.
"She said, 'Danny still has no idea.'"
