Chapter 6: What Dennis Greer Knew
Hale called me at half past two that afternoon.
"We picked up Greer an hour ago," he said.
"He lawyered up immediately, which tells you something.
But his lawyer is a public defender who's been practicing for eighteen months, and Greer is looking at falsification of public records, obstruction, and potentially accessory charges depending on what else we find."
"Did he talk?"
"Not yet.
But we executed a search warrant on his office this morning." A pause.
"James, there are four other files."
I sat down.
"Four other cases," Hale continued, "going back eleven years, where a death record was filed for an individual who, as far as we can currently determine, did not actually d*e.
Two of those individuals we have not been able to locate.
One filed a missing persons report under her own name two years ago and was told the case was inactive.
One—" He stopped.
"One what?"
"One was found d*ad fourteen months ago.
Ruled accidental.
We're reopening it."
I pressed my hand flat against the table in front of me.
"Ryan knew about all of them?"
"We don't know yet how connected he was to the other cases.
Greer may have had multiple clients.
But Ryan Calloway's name appears in Greer's personal records in connection with two of the four files, not just Emily's."
"Two."
"We're working to identify the second."
I thought about what Emily had said in the hospital room.
*He said Dennis has handled this before.
Nobody came looking that time either.*
He had said it to frighten her.
He had said it because he wanted her to understand that the system had already swallowed someone else and no one had noticed.
"Hale," I said.
"The woman who was found d*ad fourteen months ago.
Was she connected to Ryan?"
A beat of silence.
"We're looking into that," Hale said carefully.
"I can't tell you more right now."
That was answer enough.
I drove to the family services office where Lily had been placed temporarily that morning, a quiet building on the east side with a small playground visible through a chain-link fence.
The caseworker, a tired woman named Ms.
Pruitt, met me at the front desk and walked me back to a room with low chairs and a table covered in paper and crayons.
Lily was drawing.
She looked up when I came in, and for a moment she just looked at me, assessing, the way children do when they are trying to decide whether the adult in front of them is safe.
Then she said, "Is Mommy real?"
I sat down across from her.
"Yes.
She's real.
She's at the hospital getting better."
"Why is she at the hospital?"
"Because she was hurt.
But the doctors are taking care of her."
Lily looked back at her drawing.
It was a house with a tree beside it.
In the tree, she had drawn a small box.
"I knew about the box," she said quietly.
I looked at the drawing.
"Mommy showed me once.
She said if I was ever really scared and Uncle James wasn't answering, I should go to the tree and open the box and there would be a phone inside." She kept coloring.
"She said the phone had a number already in it and I should call it and say I was Lily and someone would come."
My throat tightened.
"Did you ever call it?"
"No." She put the crayon down.
"Daddy found the phone in my room once and asked where I got it.
I said I found it outside.
He took it away." She looked up at me.
"I thought Mommy's plan was broken."
"It wasn't broken," I said.
"She had another one."
Lily considered this.
"The envelope."
"Yes."
She nodded slowly, with the gravity of a child who has been carrying something heavy for a long time and is only now being told she can set it down.
"Uncle James," she said.
"Can I see her?"
"Tomorrow," I said.
"I promise."
She picked up the crayon again.
After a moment she added a figure to the drawing, standing beside the tree.
Small, with long hair.
"That's Mommy," she said.
"I'm putting her back."
I didn't trust myself to speak.
My phone buzzed against my leg.
I looked at the screen.
It was a number I didn't recognize.
I let it ring through.
Thirty seconds later, a voicemail appeared.
I stepped into the hallway and played it.
The voice was Ryan's.
"James.
I know you think you've won something today.
You haven't.
I have resources you don't know about, and I have information about Emily that will come out in the full hearing whether you want it to or not.
Call me back.
We can still handle this quietly." A pause.
"Think about what's best for Lily.
Think about whether a courtroom is really where you want her story told."
I stood in the hallway for a moment.
May you like
Then I forwarded the voicemail to Hale and to Carol.
And then I went back into the room and watched Lily draw her mother home.
