Chapter 7: The Thing They Did to My Father
The investigator's name was Sandra Okafor.
She had been with the financial crimes division for eleven years, and she had the particular stillness of someone who had heard a great many things and learned not to react until she had heard all of them.
She listened to everything I brought her — Nora's documentation, Douglas Parrish's folder, the recording from the dinner, the threatening message — without interrupting once.
When I finished, she was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, "The physician.
Dr.
Reeves.
You understand that what you're suggesting — that he disclosed a patient's medical information to a third party who then used it to begin a financial scheme — that's a serious allegation."
"I understand."
"Do you have anything beyond the timeline and the board connection?"
"Not yet," I said.
"But I'd like to know if you do."
She looked at me steadily.
"Dr.
Reeves retired eighteen months ago.
Moved to Portugal." A pause.
"We've had his name in a different file for some time.
Unrelated matter.
Or what we thought was an unrelated matter."
I felt the shift in the room.
"What kind of file?" I said.
"I can't share that with you." She folded her hands on the desk.
"What I can tell you is that the timeline you've presented is consistent with information we already hold.
And that consistency is significant."
"Significant enough to act on?"
"Significant enough to escalate." She picked up her pen.
"I'm going to need you to be patient.
And I'm going to need you to stop moving independently.
No more freezing accounts, no more recordings without coordination.
If this goes where I think it might go, I need the evidence chain to be clean."
"Understood." I paused.
"How far do you think it goes?"
Sandra Okafor looked at me for a long moment.
"I think," she said carefully, "that Grant Blackwood is not the architect of this.
I think he was handed a plan and told to execute it.
And I think the person who built the plan has been very careful to stay several steps removed from anything traceable."
"Eleanor," I said.
She didn't confirm it.
She didn't deny it.
"Be patient," she said again.
"And be careful.
The message you received last night — forward everything to me.
Don't respond.
Don't engage."
I nodded and stood to leave.
"Mrs.—" She stopped herself.
"Olivia.
One more thing." She looked at me with something that wasn't quite sympathy and wasn't quite professional distance.
It was somewhere between the two.
"Your father.
Did he know, at the end, what had happened to his company?"
I thought about the last conversation I'd had with him.
In the hospital, three months before he d*ed.
He had been lucid that day — one of his last fully lucid days.
He had held my hand and told me he was sorry he hadn't protected things better.
I had told him there was nothing to protect against.
That everything was fine.
I had believed it when I said it.
"No," I said.
"He didn't know."
She nodded once.
"Then let's make sure it counts for something," she said.
I walked out into the corridor and stood there for a moment with my hand flat against the wall.
My father had spent forty years building something honest.
They had started dismantling it before he even knew he was sick.
They had used his illness as a window.
They had used me as a door.
My phone buzzed.
A message from Nora.
*Grant's attorney just filed a motion to have the injunction lifted.
Hearing is set for Thursday.
Also — Eleanor Blackwood checked out of her home this morning.
Destination unknown.*
I read it twice.
Eleanor was running.
May you like
Which meant she knew what was coming.
Which meant it was coming faster than any of us had planned.
