Chapter 17 - The Driver Who Wouldn't Disappear
Pike wasn't missing. He'd turned up at a lawyer's office in New Jersey with a bag of old company phones and a request for a deal. His attorney contacted prosecutors, not Arthur.
What he told them didn't absolve him. He admitted intimidating Dr. Bell, arranging my departure and falsifying internal security reports. He said Arthur had ordered him to stop Malcolm from releasing the audit. On the night Malcolm died, Pike claimed, an argument at the warehouse turned violent.
He refused to say more until the prosecutor laid out the evidence they already had.
I knew better than to mistake a man seeking a lighter sentence for a hero. Still, his records were useful. They included the bus ticket purchased in my name, messages about the laboratory archive and instructions to alter the three-minute surveillance segment.
I met Dr. Bell outside her office after she finished another interview with investigators. She looked exhausted but oddly lighter.
"I spent years wishing someone else would fix this," she said.
"Me too."
At home, a call came from Ethan. The legal paternity test we'd arranged through our lawyers had returned. The result confirmed he was Lily's biological father.
He didn't shout or celebrate. He took a long, unsteady breath.
"I've missed three birthdays," he said.
"Yes."
"I want to know her. I'll follow whatever plan keeps her comfortable."
That wasn't a promise to me. It was a promise he would have to keep to her, one ordinary day at a time.
May you like
After we hung up, Celia called with another development. Investigators had recovered the original memorandum Malcolm prepared for regulators. It included a list of executives who'd signed off on the altered shipments.
One signature on that list belonged to Ethan.
