Chapter 18 - Claire Morrison
Emily stopped breathing. The room became so quiet that the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway sounded like hammer blows.
“Claire Morrison?” Emily whispered. “He told me... he told me his first fiancé died in a car accident before they could get married.”
Frank shook his head slowly. “Claire Morrison died seven years ago at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle. Four days after giving birth to a baby boy.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. A cold, suffocating horror gripped my throat.
“The cause of death?” I asked, my voice barely audible.
“Unexplained postpartum hemorrhage,” Frank replied, opening the folder. “The hospital ruled it an idiopathic coagulopathy. Ryan collected a one-point-eight-million-dollar private life insurance settlement six months later.”
“And the baby?” Emily cried, her voice cracking with pure agony. “Where is the baby?!”
“The child died thirty-six hours after birth,” Frank said, his eyes welling with tears. “Ryan claimed the boy had congenital respiratory failure. The body was cremated before a full pediatric toxicology screen could be completed.”
Emily collapsed back into the rocking chair, pulling Chloe against her neck, sobbing with a grief so profound it seemed to tear the very air apart.
“He did it before,” she wailed. “He already did this to another family! He murdered a mother and her baby, and nobody stopped him!”
I walked over to the table and snatched the file from Frank’s hands.
My eyes tore through the Seattle police reports from seven years ago.
The signatures. The coroner’s notes.
The attending physician who certified Claire Morrison’s death certificate was an intern named Dr. Laura Sims.
They hadn't started this scheme six months ago.
They had perfected it seven years ago in Washington State. Emily wasn't their first victim; she was their second run. And Chloe was meant to be the child Ryan finally kept to play the grieving, heroic single father in South America while living off seven million dollars of laundered blood money.
“Frank,” I said, my teeth clenched so tight my jaw ached. “Does the Seattle DA know?”
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“They’re reopening the Morrison inquest as of this morning,” Frank said. “The feds are adding two counts of first-degree capital murder to Ryan’s indictment. He’s not going to ADX Florence, Carol. He’s facing the death penalty.”
***
