Chapter 4: The Investigator in the Back Room
The man Tobias trusted lived above a dry-cleaning shop on a side street three blocks from the Savannah waterfront.
His name was Calvin Marsh.
He was sixty-one years old, broad-shouldered, and he opened the door before Tobias could knock a second time, as though he had been expecting us for hours.
"You look like the river," he said, looking at me.
"We were in it," Tobias said.
Calvin stepped back and let us in without another word.
The apartment was small and deliberately plain.
No photographs on the walls.
A folding table covered in manila folders.
Two laptops, both open.
A police scanner on the kitchen counter, volume low, numbers cycling through frequencies in a steady murmur.
He poured two mugs of coffee and set them on the table without asking.
"Sit," he said.
"Talk."
Tobias laid out the waterproof case.
The medical report.
The email intercepts.
The screenshot of the message from the unknown number.
Calvin read each document without expression, moving from one to the next the way a man reads train schedules — looking for the gap, the missed connection, the place where the system breaks.
When he finished, he set them down in a neat stack.
"The compound in the medical report," he said.
"Hepatotoxic.
Slow accumulation.
Administered orally over an extended period." He looked at me.
"You've been having fatigue?
Appetite changes?"
"I thought it was stress," I said.
"The shipyard has been difficult this year."
"It wasn't stress." He turned to Tobias.
"You have the name of the laboratory on the invoice?"
"Meridian BioAnalytical.
Delaware registration."
Calvin typed without looking at the keyboard.
"Shell company.
Registered eighteen months ago.
Parent company is a holding group out of the Cayman Islands." He scrolled.
"The holding group has one named director."
He turned the laptop toward us.
The name on the screen was not Garrett's.
It was his father's.
*Warren Voss.*
"Garrett's father," I said.
"Still alive," Calvin said.
"Seventy-three.
Retired publicly from Voss Maritime Holdings eight years ago.
Unofficially, he still controls the board through two proxy seats." He leaned back.
"This was never just Garrett's plan.
The son was executing something the father designed."
Tobias's hand came down flat on the table.
Not hard.
Just final.
"Warren Voss," he said.
"He was the one who hired the mechanic who tampered with Mom and Dad's brakes."
"I believe so," Calvin said.
"I couldn't prove it fifteen years ago.
The mechanic disappeared before I could get a sworn statement." He looked at Tobias steadily.
"But the document trail you've built in the last six weeks is stronger than anything I had then.
Combined with the medical report and the inheritance filing, we have enough to take to a federal prosecutor."
"We go to the prosecutor and Garrett knows within the hour," I said.
"He has Martin Hale."
Calvin didn't look surprised by the name.
"You already knew about Martin," Tobias said.
"I suspected." Calvin closed the laptop.
"Hale drafted the trust restructuring.
He was also the notary on the inheritance filing.
A family attorney doesn't do that work for a son-in-law without the principal's knowledge." He paused.
"Meaning your father's attorney has been working against your family's interests for at least fifteen years."
The coffee mug was warm in my hands.
I focused on that.
"What do we do?" I asked.
"We don't go to the prosecutor yet," Calvin said.
"We go to the shipyard's independent auditor first.
If Garrett has already begun moving assets in anticipation of your death, there will be a financial trail that exists separately from anything Hale can touch." He stood up and moved to the second laptop.
"I need forty-eight hours."
"We don't have forty-eight hours," Tobias said.
"Someone on that shore sent a message.
They know Rosalind is alive.
Garrett will know by morning if he doesn't already."
Calvin was quiet for a moment.
"Then we accelerate." He picked up his phone.
"I have a contact at the FBI field office in Atlanta.
We went to school together.
If I call her tonight with what you've brought me, she can open a preliminary inquiry that freezes Garrett's ability to move the inheritance filing without tipping Hale." He looked at me.
"But I need something from you first."
"What?"
"I need you to go back," he said.
"Not home.
Not yet.
But I need you to make contact with Garrett.
Let him believe you survived by accident.
That you don't know about the wire, the compound, or the filing." He held my gaze.
"I need him to think he still has time."
The room was very quiet.
"You want me to walk back into his reach," I said.
"I want him to stop running," Calvin said.
"A man who believes his plan is still intact doesn't destroy evidence.
A man who knows he's been caught does."
Tobias looked at me.
I looked at the stack of documents on the table.
The medical report with my name at the top.
The invoice from a laboratory that had been slowly preparing my body to fail.
"How long?" I asked Calvin.
"Twenty-four hours," he said.
"One conversation with Garrett.
Controlled.
With a recording device and a location I can monitor." He paused.
"Can you do that?"
I set the mug down.
"He spent three years lying to my face," I said.
"I think I can manage one conversation."
Calvin nodded once.
But Tobias had gone very still beside me.
"What?" I said.
He was looking at his phone again.
The unknown number had sent a third message.
*I found the wheelchair.
It's empty.
He's going to want to know about the brother.*
May you like
Garrett didn't just know I was alive.
He now knew Tobias could walk.
