Chapter 13 - The Flood-Control Panel
The river storage property was fenced and abandoned, at least on paper. Mara obtained a search warrant based on the recording, the threats, and the evidence connecting Voss to the site. State investigators joined her before dawn.
I wanted to go inside. Mara refused.
“Your father doesn't get to decide who risks their life today,” she told me.
I waited in the command van, listening to clipped voices on the radio. The team cleared a loading dock, a row of empty offices, and a room lined with rusted pipes.
“No woman,” an officer reported. “But we've got fresh food wrappers and two sets of restraints.”
They found a steel flood-control panel marked with red paint. Behind it sat a weatherproof metal case.
Inside were shipping logs, photographs of corroded chemical drums, and handwritten payment lists with my father's name across the top. The papers showed he'd paid to hide hazardous waste rather than remove it, then burned the mill when Samuel threatened to expose him.
“There's enough here to reopen the death investigation,” Mara said over the phone.
“Enough to find Mom?”
“Not yet.”
The team also recovered a laptop. Its last opened file was a video of Aunt Vivian's son, Evan, walking into a parking garage three nights earlier. Someone had followed him all the way to his door.
Elise called from the hospital. She had remembered a sound from her captivity: three steady taps against a metal pipe, followed by a young man's voice begging for water.
“Evan,” I said.
“Dad's holding him too.”
As Mara searched the laptop, its screen flashed an incoming message: YOU FOUND THE FIRST ROOM. THERE ARE TWO MORE.
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Attached was a floor plan of the mill ruins.
One basement room had a handwritten label: FAMILY.
