Chapter 7 - GRAYBRIDGE
I forwarded the threat to Detective Carla Ruiz before I did anything else.
Ruiz had worked Emma’s crash six months earlier.
She remembered me.
More importantly, she remembered what had bothered her.
“The brake line was damaged,” she said when we met at the mansion that afternoon. “The first report called it road debris. I never liked that conclusion.”
“Why didn’t you reopen it?”
“No evidence of intent. No witness. No motive.”
I placed the Graybridge transfers on the desk.
“Now you have motive.”
She read them slowly.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Money moving around a family company is suspicious. It is not proof of murder.”
The word hit hard.
Murder.
Ruiz looked at the garage video.
“That gets my attention.”
Then she asked for Leonard’s full name, Margaret’s financial records, and access to the estate security system.
The system had been wiped for the night Emma died.
Not corrupted.
Deleted.
By an administrator account assigned to Margaret.
At six that evening, Dr. Mercer called again.
“We found Graybridge,” he said. “It isn’t really a consulting company. It’s a payment pass-through. It paid the paternity lab, a private investigator, and a medical records firm.”
“What medical records firm?”
“Hollis Data Services.”
I knew the name.
They had processed my father’s hospice records.
“What did Graybridge pay them for?”
“File destruction.”
I felt a chill.
“Whose file?”
“There’s no patient name on the invoice. Just a reference number.”
He read it to me.
I went to my father’s old desk and opened the drawer where he kept insurance documents.
His hospice policy was still there.
So was a copy of his medical intake form.
At the top was the same reference number.
Graybridge hadn’t only touched Noah’s DNA test and Emma’s records.
It had touched my father’s final medical file.
May you like
And suddenly I had to ask a question I had never allowed myself to ask before.
Had my father died naturally?
