Chapter 3 - The Shadow of the Beast
"Melissa?" a voice muttered.
It was Grant. He stood in the doorway, his silk pajamas loose, his hair messy. He was rubbing his eyes, holding an empty glass as if he had come up to get a drink of water from the master bath but had noticed the sliver of light under the office door.
I slithered behind the heavy oak desk, pressing my back against the cold wooden paneling, holding my breath. My hand gripped a heavy brass paperweight from the desk. If he looked behind the desk, I would kill him. I knew I would. The rage in my veins was screaming for it.
Grant stepped into the room. He didn't turn on the overhead light, but he walked over to the window, looking down at the street.
"Thought I heard something," he murmured to himself.
He walked over to the filing cabinet. He noticed the drawer was slightly open, but because the padlock was hanging loose, he didn't realize it had been picked—he simply pushed it closed with his foot, the metal latch clicking softly.
He turned and walked out of the room, his bare feet padding softly down the hallway.
I waited five agonizing minutes before I moved. I carefully slid the documents into my tool bag, slipped the lock back into place so it looked untouched, and crept down the stairs.
I didn't breathe easily until I was back in my truck, the engine running, driving away from the house of the monsters who had raised me.
I drove straight to the police station in downtown Richmond.
The lobby was bright, smelling of floor wax and stale coffee. A young officer sat behind the bulletproof glass, typing on a terminal.
"Can I help you, sir?" he asked, barely looking up.
"I need to report a murder," I said, my voice steady.
He stopped typing. He looked at my grease-stained work shirt, my bloodshot eyes, and the heavy tool bag in my hand.
"Name?"
"David Callahan. My daughter, Emma Callahan, died at Richmond General Hospital two days ago. She was murdered by her aunt and a man named Grant Holloway."
The officer’s expression hardened. He picked up his phone. "Get Detective Vance down here. We have a walk-in."
Ten minutes later, I was sitting in a small, windowless interview room. Detective Marcus Vance was a solid man in his late forties, his tie loosened, a yellow legal pad open in front of him. He listened to me without interrupting for thirty minutes. He didn't look at the papers I laid out; he just watched my face.
When I finished, I pulled the digital recorder from my pocket and placed it on the table.
"Listen to this," I said.
He pressed play. He listened to my sister’s voice. He listened to Grant's cold coordination of my daughter’s death.
By the time the tape finished, Detective Vance’s face was as hard as granite. He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his jaw.
"Mr. Callahan," he said slowly. "This is... horrific. But I need to be honest with you. Grant Holloway isn't just a consultant. He's the brother-in-law of the deputy state attorney. He has deep roots in this city's political and legal structure. If we move on him with just this, his lawyers will have this tape thrown out as illegally obtained, and the paperwork from your sister’s house will be ruled inadmissible due to the warrantless search."
"I don't care about his lawyers," I growled, leaning across the table. "He killed my daughter!"
"And I want to put him in a cage for the rest of his life," Vance said, his voice dropping to a low, intense whisper. "But if we do this wrong, he walks. We need the doctor. We need Dr. Miller. If we can get the man who actually supplied the poison to talk, we have a federal conspiracy case. They can't protect him then."
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"How do we find him?" I asked.
"The email chain mentioned a Zurich account and a residential address for the formulation," Vance noted. "We need to find where that medicine was being manufactured or stored. And we need to do it before they realize you have those documents."
