Chapter 9 - THE SHERIFF'S SECRET
Detective Ortiz did not allow David to call Price.
She did not allow Jane to tell anyone what they had heard.
She took the recording and left with two state officers before midnight.
David watched through the window as their unmarked car disappeared down the dark road.
Jane stood beside him.
"You trusted Price."
"My father trusted him too."
"That may be the problem."
David remembered Price at family barbecues.
Price teaching Harry to fish.
Price standing at Arthur's funeral with one hand on David's shoulder.
The betrayal felt personal because it was.
At 1:12 a.m., the secure residence alarm chirped once.
Then stopped.
David sat upright on the sofa.
A state officer entered from the hall.
"False sensor."
David did not believe in false sensors anymore.
He walked to Sophie's bedroom.
Jane was already there.
Sophie slept beneath a yellow quilt.
Jane whispered.
"I want to leave the state."
"Ortiz says moving us is more dangerous."
"Ortiz also just left to arrest a sheriff who has known every hiding place in this county for thirty years."
David could not argue.
A car pulled into the driveway.
Everyone tensed.
Ortiz entered three minutes later.
She looked furious.
"Price is gone."
David laughed bitterly.
"Of course he is."
Ortiz tossed a folder onto the table.
"He cleared out his office, left his badge, and took his service weapon."
"Did he know about the tape?"
"He should not have."
"Then someone told him."
Ortiz did not deny it.
The conspiracy had reached law enforcement.
Maybe beyond it.
She opened the folder.
Inside were photographs from Arthur's death investigation nine years earlier.
Arthur's body on the greenhouse floor.
A tipped glass.
A prescription bottle.
A clock stopped at 11:52.
The official cause was cardiac arrest caused by an undiagnosed arrhythmia.
Ortiz tapped the prescription bottle.
"This was logged as Arthur's heart medication."
David nodded.
"He took it for blood pressure."
"Lab inventory from the time says the bottle contained thirty tablets."
"So?"
"The evidence photograph shows thirty-one."
Jane frowned.
"Someone added a pill."
Ortiz nodded.
"A capsule with no manufacturer stamp."
The capsule disappeared from evidence three days later.
The officer who signed it out was Deputy Daniel Price.
"Why did no one notice?"
David asked.
"Because the log was changed."
Ortiz said.
"The original paper ledger still shows it."
David's hands clenched.
"Price helped cover up my father's murder."
"Possibly."
"You heard his voice."
"I heard a voice that sounds like him."
Ortiz corrected.
"I need proof that survives a courtroom."
David hated her caution.
He also knew she was right.
At dawn, a state lab technician called Ortiz.
The cassette contained no digital edits.
The voice was authentic analog audio.
Voice comparison showed a high probability match to Price.
Ortiz issued a statewide alert.
Then another result came in.
DNA from the dead man found inside Mercer House did not match any person under the name Mason Reed.
But it matched a sealed genealogy sample in an old medical archive.
The sample belonged to a baby born in 1988 at St. Catherine's Private Hospital.
The same hospital where David had been born.
David stared at Ortiz.
"Who was the baby?"
Ortiz hesitated.
"The record lists no name."
"Male or female?"
"Male."
"Parents?"
"Sealed."
Jane whispered.
"The identity program."
Ortiz nodded.
Someone from Arthur's illegal medical network had grown up and ended up dead inside David's house.
The story was no longer only about money.
It was about children whose identities had been changed before they could speak.
One of them might have been David.
Another might have been the man pretending to be Mason.
Sophie entered the kitchen carrying the pale pink ribbon from her hair.
"Mom, I remember something."
Jane crouched.
"What?"
"The old garden man."
David's attention sharpened.
"The man who gave you the blue book?"
Sophie nodded.
"He had this."
She pointed to Ortiz's photograph of Arthur's evidence bottle.
"A medicine bottle?"
Sophie shook her head.
"The little picture on it."
On the faded label was the logo of St. Catherine's.
"He had that picture on his coat."
Ortiz immediately asked Sophie to describe the man again.
Gray beard.
Bent shoulders.
Blue cap.
Green gardening jacket.
A small hospital emblem sewn inside the collar.
Ortiz pulled archived employee photos from St. Catherine's.
They went through them slowly.
Sophie stopped at the twelfth photograph.
"Him."
The man was thirty years younger in the image.
Dr. Samuel Warren.
Elise Warren's father.
Ortiz stared at the file.
Samuel Warren had been chief obstetrician at St. Catherine's in 1988.
He was also officially dead.
He had supposedly died in 2004.
Sophie had seen him six months ago.
David felt a familiar chill.
"Another dead person who is alive."
Ortiz read further.
Samuel had signed David's birth certificate.
He had also signed the sealed record for the unnamed male baby whose DNA matched the dead impostor at the mansion.
Jane whispered.
"He knows who David is."
David looked at Sophie.
"And he came here to give you Arthur's book."
A state officer entered the kitchen.
"Detective, there is a package outside."
Ortiz's hand moved toward her weapon.
"Who delivered it?"
"No one saw."
Ortiz ordered another sweep of the property.
No footprints appeared in the wet soil outside the rear fence.
No unfamiliar vehicles crossed the nearest traffic camera.
The delivery had come through the one place everyone had stopped watching carefully.
The trash collection entrance.
A sanitation truck serviced the neighboring government buildings every morning.
Its route had been considered routine and therefore harmless.
David stared at the gate recording.
A worker in reflective clothing stepped down, placed the box near the guard station, and walked away.
His face remained hidden beneath a cap.
"Samuel hides inside normal things."
Jane said.
Ortiz nodded.
"That is why he lasts."
Not secret tunnels.
Not exotic technology.
Routine.
Authority.
Uniforms.
Assumptions.
David suddenly understood why Arthur had failed for so long.
Arthur had looked for a criminal network as if it would announce itself.
Samuel built his network from people who looked exactly like they belonged where they stood.
A doctor beside a crib.
A deputy beside evidence.
A bodyguard near a staircase.
A worker beside a gate.
Jane squeezed Sophie's ribbon in her fist.
"Open it."
Ortiz cut the tape.
The package was a plain cardboard box.
Inside was Sheriff Price's badge.
Beneath it lay a photograph taken only minutes earlier.
Price sat tied to a chair.
Behind him stood an elderly man in a blue cap.
Dr. Samuel Warren.
On the back, someone had written one sentence.
ASK JANE WHY SAMUEL KNOWS HER NAME.
May you like
David slowly turned toward his wife.
Jane looked as frightened as he had ever seen her.
