Chapter 10 - LINDA WASN’T WORKING ALONE
The police searched my house the next morning.
Not casually.
Professionally.
Walls were scanned.
Floorboards examined.
Attic insulation disturbed.
Electrical outlets removed.
For six hours, strangers searched the home I had lived in for six years.
Nothing.
No green file.
No hidden compartment.
No secret safe.
By afternoon, I felt foolish.
Maybe Robert had lied.
Then Mrs. Dalton walked over.
She watched investigators leave and asked, “Did they check the fireplace?”
“Yes.”
“The old fireplace?”
I stared.
“I only have one.”
She frowned.
“Patricia’s house had two.”
The original property plans solved it.
A renovation completed thirteen years earlier had removed a small fireplace from what was now my dining room.
The Wilsons, who owned the house before me, had remodeled extensively.
We contacted them.
Mr. Wilson remembered contractors discovering a narrow cavity behind the old brickwork.
“What was inside?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Just an old metal box.”
I nearly dropped the phone.
“What did you do with it?”
“Left it with the contractor.”
The contractor was dead.
His company had closed.
But his son still lived nearby.
He remembered the box.
Dark green.
Metal.
His father brought it home intending to return it to the homeowners.
Then someone from the HOA collected it.
“Who?”
He looked at an old photograph.
Gregory Shaw.
The green file had been found thirteen years earlier.
Gregory had it.
Which explained why Robert could never locate it.
But Gregory had disappeared.
That meant whoever found him first might find Patricia’s records.
Investigators searched financial accounts.
Airport footage.
Traffic cameras.
Finally, they located a rental car purchased under a false name tied to one of Gregory’s old shell companies.
The vehicle had traveled south.
Police traced it to a motel.
Gregory was gone.
But somebody else had been there.
Charles.
Fingerprints confirmed it.
The two men were together.
That changed Linda’s status.
Until then, investigators had treated her as a frightened participant.
But bank records revealed something harder to explain.
Every year since Charles’s fake death, Linda received a payment.
$24,000.
Always routed through different companies.
Always in December.
“Protection money?” I suggested.
Alvarez shook her head.
“Possibly compensation.”
“For silence?”
“Possibly.”
Linda denied knowing the source.
Nobody believed her.
Then another account appeared.
This one contained $680,000.
Beneficiary: Aaron Mercer.
Linda’s son.
Deposits originated from shell companies connected to fraudulent property transactions.
Charles had indeed placed money in Aaron’s name.
But Linda had withdrawn from the account twice.
Once five years earlier.
Once three years earlier.
Total withdrawn:
$86,000.
When confronted, Linda finally admitted it.
“I used the money.”
“For what?” Alvarez asked.
“Aaron’s medical bills.”
“You knew where it came from?”
“I suspected.”
“You spent stolen money.”
“I was desperate.”
There it was.
Not evil.
Not innocence.
Something messier.
Linda had been afraid.
Then compromised.
Then trapped.
Then benefited.
Each decision made the next easier.
“You could have stopped,” I told her.
She looked at me through red eyes.
“So could Robert.”
She was right.
That didn’t excuse either of them.
It merely made the story less comfortable.
Then Linda gave investigators a name.
Thomas Reed.
Retired police lieutenant.
The same man whose name frightened Michael into disappearing.
Thomas had provided Charles with information about complaints, investigations, and warrants for years.
He was the reason Robert distrusted local law enforcement.
He was also the person who had signed the original missing-person report when Robert vanished.
And he lived only twenty minutes away.
Federal agents searched Reed’s property.
They found records.
Cash.
Burner phones.
And a photograph taken recently.
Charles Mercer standing beside Gregory Shaw.
Behind them was a distinctive red barn.
Michael recognized it.
An abandoned property previously owned by Greenstone.
Agents raided the location.
Gregory was there.
Charles wasn’t.
Gregory surrendered.
Inside the barn, investigators found Patricia’s green metal box.
Empty.
Almost.
At the bottom lay one handwritten index card.
It contained an address.
Not a bank.
Not a lawyer.
A house.
418 Briarwood Drive.
I stared at it.
“That isn’t our street.”
“No,” Alvarez said.
“Where is it?”
“Another subdivision.”
“Does Charles own it?”
“Not officially.”
“Who does?”
Alvarez turned her laptop toward me.
Owner:
EVELYN MERCER.
I frowned.
“Who is Evelyn?”
Linda, sitting across the room, made a sound.
Almost a gasp.
We turned.
Her face had lost all color.
“Linda?”
She whispered one word.
“Mother.”
Charles Mercer’s mother had supposedly died twenty-two years earlier.
Apparently, the Mercer family had a habit of burying people who weren’t necessarily dead.
Investigators drove to 418 Briarwood Drive.
The house was empty.
But inside a bedroom closet, they found women’s clothing.
Fresh groceries filled the refrigerator.
Someone had been living there recently.
In the kitchen was a framed photograph.
Charles Mercer.
Older.
Beside him stood an elderly woman.
And between them stood another person.
Someone none of us expected.
Aaron Mercer.
Linda’s son.
The son she claimed had no idea his father was alive.
On the back was a date.
Three months earlier.
Linda saw it.
Then closed her eyes.
I felt anger rise.
“You lied again.”
She whispered:
“Yes.”
May you like
And that was when we learned Linda hadn’t been protecting Aaron from Charles.
Aaron had known the truth all along.
