Chapter 16 - Another Name on a Headstone
Daniel Pike had a grave outside Briar Glen. Marcus obtained the death filing and compared it with mine. Same retired medical examiner. Same unusual typing error in the address line. Two people declared dead by the same impossible signature.
"If they're faking deaths to move property," Ruth said, "maybe they didn't stop with you."
She remembered a man at Ravenwood who never spoke and wore a leather glove on his left hand. His chart called him David Pryce. The staff kept him away from other patients and changed his room whenever outside inspectors visited.
Marcus brought a search team to the clinic before dawn. Dr. Soren tried to turn them away with a lawyer's letter, but the warrants were signed. They found deleted intake logs on an office computer and a man with one damaged hand sitting behind a locked rehabilitation-room door.
Pike was alive. His face had grown narrow, and his speech came slowly. When Marcus showed him the video from Mrs. Alvarez's camera, he began to shake.
"I changed the lock," Pike said. "Bernard told me the house was empty. Then I heard pounding. I tried to go back."
"What stopped you?" Marcus asked.
"Juliette. She said if I opened the door, she'd tell the police I started it."
I stood at the end of his bed and showed him my burned hands. He couldn't look at them.
"You heard me," I said.
He nodded. "Every night. Four years. I hear it every night."
Ruth found the original administration log in a backup system. It recorded payments for both of us, separate room numbers, and instructions from Kessler not to permit contact with relatives. A technician preserved the files and handed the drives to Marcus.
May you like
Pike gripped the detective's sleeve. "She had another plan," he whispered. "If Caroline ever came back, she'd make it look like the cottages caught fire because of her."
Marcus called the fire marshal. At Willow Lane, a demolition crew had just reported a strong smell of gasoline beneath the blue cottage.
