Chapter 6 - The Eye in the Bear
We didn't go to Marcus’s office at two o’clock. We went to the offices of Vance & Sterling, Criminal Defense Attorneys, located across the street from the county courthouse.
Arthur Vance, Liam’s uncle and a former federal prosecutor who had spent thirty years tearing through white-collar predators, read the Greene County accident report with reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. As he read, his heavy gray eyebrows climbed higher and higher toward his hairline.
“Extortion under New York Penal Law 155.05,” Arthur said, tossing the document onto his mahogany desk with a dull thud. “Coercion in the first degree. Fraudulent filing of commercial instruments. Marcus hasn't just committed a civil tort, Liam. He has committed three separate Class D felonies. If we can prove he fabricated the homicide threat to extort equity and professional engineering stamps, the boy is looking at five to seven years in Upstate maximum security.”
“The problem,” Liam said bitterly, leaning his elbows on the desk, “is that it’s my word against his. All the transfers of firm equity were drafted as ‘consulting agreements.’ The meetings were always in person, behind closed doors in his private office. There are no emails where Marcus says, *‘Give me forty percent or I’ll frame you for vehicular manslaughter.’* He was always too smart to write it down.”
I leaned forward. “What about yesterday? What about the office on Sunday morning?”
Liam shook his head. “It was just me, him, and Chloe in the waiting area. The glass was soundproofed from the inside. There’s no record of what was said.”
“Yes, there is,” I said quietly.
Both men turned to look at me.
“What do you mean, Elena?” Liam asked.
I pulled my phone out of my purse. “Two months ago, Chloe lost her favorite stuffed rabbit at the park. Do you remember how hysterical she was? She couldn't sleep for three days until we found an identical replacement on Amazon.”
“Yeah,” Liam murmured, bewildered. “Barnaby the Bear.”
“Barnaby isn't just a stuffed animal,” I said, opening an app on my phone with trembling fingers. “I bought the Guardian Edition. It’s designed for working parents with new nannies. It has an LTE cellular transmitter, an audio-triggered microphone, and an encrypted cloud storage backup hidden inside the left ear. Chloe takes Barnaby everywhere. She had him sitting on the low coffee table in the waiting room yesterday morning while you were inside Marcus’s office.”
Arthur Vance pushed his glasses up his nose, his eyes widening. “The interior glass—was the door fully latched?”
“Chloe told us,” I whispered, tears of validation stinging my eyelids. “She told us she watched Daddy through the door. If she could see him, the door wasn't sealed.”
I tapped the screen. The cloud application loaded the Sunday morning timeline. I located the 7:45 AM timestamp and pressed play.
The speakers of my phone hissed with ambient room noise, and then Marcus’s voice emerged with crystal-clear fidelity:
*“...I don’t give a shit about the silt stability, Liam. Stamp the foundation. If the ground shifts in ten years, we’ll blame the concrete subcontractor. You belong to me, Liam. Bear Mountain belongs to me. Get on your knees. Put your head down right there. Look at the silver skull on this boot, Liam. That’s your master. Now beg me not to call the DA, or I swear to God your daughter won't see you until she’s twenty.”*
Followed by the harrowing, wet, ragged sound of Liam sobbing against the leather.
Arthur Vance leaned back in his leather chair. A slow, chilling smile spread across the old prosecutor’s face.
May you like
“That,” Arthur whispered, “is what we in the trade call a smoking gun.”
***
