Chapter 5 - The Woman in the Photograph
Daniel finally understood that they were not investigating a financial crime.
They were pulling at the edge of something that had already cost at least one life.
Possibly two.
Maybe more.
Detective Brooks placed protective officers outside Natalie’s apartment.
Natalie refused to return there.
Instead, she stayed in a guest suite at a hotel under another name.
Daniel stayed in the room across the hall.
Neither mentioned how strange that arrangement felt.
Three years of silence separated them.
Yet danger had forced them into rooms only twenty feet apart.
The next morning, Brooks called.
They had identified Charles Wynn.
He was alive.
And willing to talk.
They flew to Vermont that afternoon.
Wynn was seventy-two.
Thin.
Nervous.
He opened the door only after Brooks showed her badge through the window.
When Daniel introduced himself, Wynn nearly shut it again.
“Your mother doesn’t know you’re here?”
“No.”
“That’s what Richard said.”
Daniel stared at him.
“What?”
“The last time I saw him.”
Wynn allowed them inside.
His cabin contained no family photographs.
No television.
No internet router.
A man hiding from the world.
Wynn explained that the foundation theft had begun almost fifteen years earlier.
Small amounts.
Then larger.
Money flowed through charities into development companies.
Those companies purchased real estate.
Hotels.
Land.
Political influence.
Margaret and Jonathan Vale controlled the system.
Richard discovered it accidentally.
“Why didn’t he call the FBI?” Daniel asked.
“Because your name was on the approvals.”
Daniel looked down.
Wynn continued.
“Richard thought Margaret was preparing to blame you if everything came apart.”
Natalie asked:
“Why frame me instead?”
Wynn looked at her for a long moment.
“Because you found the Lincoln account.”
“What Lincoln account?”
Wynn’s face changed.
“You don’t know?”
Natalie shook her head.
Wynn stood and removed a photograph from a drawer.
The same group picture from B-19.
Richard.
Margaret.
Jonathan.
Wynn.
But this copy was larger.
And there was another person standing at the edge of the frame.
A young woman.
Daniel stared at her.
She looked vaguely familiar.
“Who is she?”
Wynn answered:
“Your sister.”
Daniel laughed once.
Not because it was funny.
Because the statement was impossible.
“I don’t have a sister.”
Wynn said nothing.
Daniel turned toward Natalie.
She looked just as shocked.
Wynn placed the photograph on the table.
“Her name was Evelyn Mercer.”
“Was?”
“She died when she was twenty-three.”
Daniel tried to remember.
Family photographs.
Stories.
Documents.
Nothing.
“My mother never had a daughter.”
“Yes, she did.”
“When?”
“Seven years before you were born.”
Wynn sat again.
“Evelyn discovered the original accounts.”
Daniel stared at him.
“What happened to her?”
“Officially?”
Wynn’s voice dropped.
“Suicide.”
“And unofficially?”
Wynn looked toward the window.
“Richard never believed it.”
Before he could continue, glass shattered.
Brooks shouted.
Daniel pulled Natalie to the floor.
A bullet struck the wall behind them.
Another broke the lamp.
Brooks fired through the window.
A vehicle tore away through the trees.
Wynn was shaking.
“They found me.”
Daniel helped him up.
Wynn grabbed his sleeve.
“Listen to me.”
“What?”
“The Lincoln account wasn’t named after Abraham Lincoln.”
Daniel frowned.
“Then why call it Lincoln?”
“Because Evelyn used a phrase.”
“What phrase?”
Wynn whispered:
“Four score and seven.”
Daniel stared at him.
Eighty-seven.
Wynn continued.
“Locker eighty-seven.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Wynn looked at Natalie.
“But Richard did.”
Then Natalie remembered.
The Lincoln portrait.
The number 417.
Room 417 had led to the ledger.
Maybe another number was hidden there.
Daniel called Brooks’s team at Mercer House.
He ordered them to remove the portrait again.
Behind the backing paper, written in pencil, they found two characters.
G.C.
Daniel knew immediately.
Grand Central Terminal.
May you like
Locker 87.
And whatever Richard had hidden there had been waiting for four years.
