Chapter 13 - The First Prisoner
Vanessa asked for a lawyer before saying anything else.
But the sentence had already done its damage.
Police searched the hidden room again.
This time, forensic technicians removed part of the drywall.
Behind it, they found old scratches.
Names.
Dates.
One name appeared three times.
MARIA REED.
Lucas’s mother.
She had disappeared twelve years earlier.
Lucas had always said she left the state after his parents divorced.
When Ortiz confronted him at the hospital, Lucas broke.
He admitted Voss had controlled him since he was nineteen.
Maria Reed had worked as a bookkeeper for Voss. She discovered money from the old warehouse fire settlement being moved through fake accounts.
Voss ordered her held in the service room beneath the restaurant building, which he owned at the time.
But Vanessa had not owned the restaurant then.
“Who kept her?” I asked.
Lucas stared at the floor.
“Peter Sloan.”
“What happened to Maria?” Ortiz asked.
Lucas began crying.
“She escaped.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. Voss told me she died.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I was nineteen.”
Ortiz’s expression did not soften.
“You were thirty-one when you helped imprison Claire.”
Lucas flinched.
There are moments when sympathy and disgust can exist at the same time.
That was one of them.
Then Lucas gave us another name.
A retired bank compliance officer named Helen Price.
According to Lucas, she had helped Maria copy financial records before disappearing.
Ortiz found Helen living under her married name in Vermont.
When contacted, she refused to speak by phone.
But she sent one photograph.
It showed Maria Reed alive.
The photo had been taken three weeks earlier.
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On the back, Maria had written a message.
IF CLAIRE MERCER IS ALIVE, TELL HER I STILL HAVE THE ORIGINAL LEDGER.
