Chapter 12 - THE OFFICE BEHIND HIS NAME
The hospital administrator didn’t want to let us into Dad’s office.
Detective Harris changed her mind.
The Richard Whitman Center for Cardiac Research occupied six floors.
Dad’s private office had been locked since his death.
Elaine still had access privileges.
Or she had until Harris froze them.
The office looked untouched.
Leather chair.
Books.
Awards.
A photograph of Dad shaking hands with a governor.
A photograph of Lucas graduating college.
No photograph of me.
Of course.
Harris searched the desk.
Nothing.
I looked at Dad’s wall.
Something felt wrong.
One framed photograph hung crooked.
Dad hated crooked frames.
I straightened it.
A keypad sat behind it.
Harris looked at me.
“Code?”
I tried Dad’s birthday.
Wrong.
Mom’s birthday.
Wrong.
Lucas’s.
Wrong.
Then I tried mine.
The light turned green.
For a moment, nobody moved.
The wall panel clicked open.
Behind it was a narrow compartment.
Inside were medical records.
A phone.
And an envelope.
The second envelope.
My hands went numb.
Elaine hadn’t destroyed it.
She had hidden it.
Maybe she planned to retrieve it later.
Harris photographed everything before allowing me to open it.
Dad’s letter was longer than the first.
Claire,
There is no version of this letter that makes me a good father.
I stopped.
My eyes blurred.
I kept reading.
I failed your mother first. Then I failed you. I told myself silence protected people. What it actually protected was my cowardice.
I sat in Dad’s chair.
Margaret discovered my affair with Elaine and learned about Lucas shortly before her death. She planned to leave me. On the night she died, Elaine followed her.
My breath caught.
Elaine has always denied causing the crash. I believed her because believing anything else would have meant admitting what I brought into our home.
I looked at Harris.
He nodded for me to continue.
Years later, I discovered a payment Elaine authorized through one of my companies to Officer Daniel Reeves, the man who handled Margaret’s accident.
My hands shook.
I confronted Elaine. She said the payment concerned an unrelated zoning matter. I accepted the lie because I wanted to.
Then Dad described what changed.
Six months before his death, he discovered Lucas’s gambling debts.
While tracing money Lucas had taken, Dad found old accounting records.
The officer payment.
Another payment.
Forty thousand dollars.
Made one day before Mom’s death.
To a man named Victor Shaw.
Harris immediately searched the name.
Former auto mechanic.
Criminal record.
Deceased three years earlier.
Dad had hired a private investigator.
The investigator found a recorded interview with Shaw from the final year of his life.
Harris turned on the phone from the compartment.
One video file.
We played it.
An older man appeared.
Gaunt.
Oxygen tube under his nose.
“I was paid to damage a brake line.”
My heart stopped.
“Who paid you?” an off-screen interviewer asked.
Shaw coughed.
“A woman.”
“Name?”
He looked straight toward the camera.
“Elaine Mercer.”
Nobody moved.
Shaw continued.
“She said nobody was supposed to die. Said the brakes were only supposed to scare her.”
I closed my eyes.
That distinction meant nothing.
The interviewer asked whether Richard knew.
“No. Not then.”
“When did he learn?”
“Years later.”
My eyes opened.
“How do you know?”
Shaw coughed again.
“Because he paid me to keep quiet.”
The room disappeared around me.
Dad knew.
Not immediately.
But eventually.
And he paid for silence.
I kept reading the letter.
I cannot undo what I did. I can only stop protecting it. I am turning over the recording, restoring Margaret’s assets, revising my estate, and meeting with federal investigators.
Date?
Fourteen days before Dad died.
Harris muttered something under his breath.
Then I reached the final paragraph.
If I die before I finish this, do not assume my heart killed me.
I looked up.
Nobody spoke.
Dad continued:
May you like
Elaine knows my medication. She knows my condition. And yesterday, I caught her photographing the combination to my medication safe.
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