Chapter 12 - THE MAN IN THE CHURCH
Samuel Reed chose an abandoned church on Chicago’s South Side.
The stained-glass windows had been boarded.
Rainwater collected in buckets along the aisle.
I did not go completely alone.
Russell remained outside with federal agents.
But I entered without visible protection, as Samuel requested.
He sat in the front pew wearing an old police coat.
He was sixty-three, with tired eyes and a scar across his left hand.
“You look like your mother,” he said.
“You knew her?”
“I found her car after the accident.”
“You were on the case?”
“A patrol detective.”
“Why wasn’t the cut brake line included in the report?”
“My supervisor removed it.”
“Paid by Martin?”
“I believe so.”
Samuel had spent twenty years gathering evidence.
My mother contacted him shortly before her death.
She gave him a copy of Daniel Hayes’s warning and records connecting Martin to the vehicle maintenance company.
After her death, Samuel attempted to approach my father.
Russell intercepted him.
I looked toward the boarded doors.
“Russell knew?”
“He knew enough to be afraid.”
Samuel said Russell paid him to continue investigating privately.
The money came through the secret accounts Victor later called proof of Russell’s betrayal.
“Why did you investigate me before the wedding?” I asked.
“Victor hired me.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That Olivia Lane did not exist before age twenty-two.”
Victor knew my past contained more than blank spaces.
He simply preferred not to look too closely.
“Did you show him the photograph of Russell and me?”
“Yes.”
“What did he believe?”
“That you had been involved with a wealthy married man.”
The humiliation of that assumption struck unexpectedly.
Victor had not married me because he accepted mystery.
He married me believing my mystery made me shameful and therefore easier to control.
“Why are you hiding?” I asked.
“Adrian Pike tried to kill me.”
Samuel had scheduled a meeting with Adrian after Victor’s fraud investigation began.
He intended to reveal Martin’s connection to my mother’s death.
A truck struck his car on the way.
Samuel escaped with minor injuries and disappeared before Adrian’s people confirmed whether he survived.
He handed me a small recording device.
The audio captured a meeting between Martin and Adrian.
Martin’s voice was clear.
“Victor signs the takeover certification.”
“And after?” Adrian asked.
“He takes responsibility for the financial fraud.”
“He won’t agree.”
“He will if the alternative is Amelia Hartwell’s murder.”
“What does Victor have to do with that?”
“Nothing.”
Martin laughed.
“That is why it will work.”
They planned to fabricate evidence showing Victor discovered my identity years earlier and joined Martin to retaliate against Hartwell.
The forged vehicle-payment records would connect Victor to the company that serviced my mother’s brakes.
Victor would be offered a choice.
Confess to financial crimes and attempted corporate takeover.
Or face a murder charge.
“Martin is going to bury him,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Why should I save Victor?”
Samuel studied me.
“Because allowing an innocent man to be convicted of one crime because he is guilty of another is how institutions like your father’s become monsters.”
Victor was not innocent.
But he had not killed my mother.
Justice required distinctions even when revenge preferred simplicity.
Samuel handed me Daniel Hayes’s original report.
The paper was yellowed.
The warning was direct.
IMMEDIATE CABLE REPLACEMENT REQUIRED.
EQUIPMENT UNSAFE FOR OPERATION.
Daniel signed it two weeks before his death.
At the bottom, another signature confirmed receipt.
Martin Voss.
We had the document that could expose the first lie.
Samuel stood.
“You need to leave.”
“Why?”
“I told only one person I was meeting you.”
“Who?”
“Adrian.”
The boarded side door burst inward.
Two men entered.
Russell and federal agents came through the front.
Gunfire cracked across the church.
Samuel pushed me behind a stone column.
A bullet struck him in the chest.
Federal agents returned fire.
One attacker fell.
The second escaped through the basement.
I pressed my hands against Samuel’s wound.
“Stay with me.”
He looked at the report in my other hand.
“Do not let them call it an accident.”
Those were his last words.
Samuel Reed died before the ambulance arrived.
Outside the church, Russell stood in the rain.
“You knew he had the report,” I said.
“I suspected.”
“You paid him.”
“Yes.”
“You let me walk inside.”
“He refused to meet under surveillance.”
“Then we should have refused.”
“You would have entered anyway.”
He was right.
I hated him for it.
I hated myself more.
Russell looked at Samuel’s covered body.
“We keep making the same mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“Believing people become expendable when the evidence they carry is important enough.”
My phone rang.
Victor’s attorney had filed an emergency motion.
The motion included evidence connecting Victor to my mother’s death.
Martin had moved earlier than expected.
Federal agents arrived at Victor’s apartment to arrest him on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder.
Victor escaped through the service entrance.
Security footage showed him entering a car.
May you like
The driver was Eleanor.
Mother and son were now fugitives.
