Chapter 8 - THE MAN IN ROOM 17
The blood inside the motel room did not belong to Claire.
DNA testing identified it forty-eight hours later.
It belonged to Dr. Nolan Vale.
That discovery changed the investigation.
Until then, Vale had been treated as Richard’s accomplice.
Now detectives considered the possibility that he had become a liability.
The motel’s exterior camera showed Vale arriving alone at 10:42 p.m.
At 11:07, a dark SUV entered the parking lot.
The driver never stepped into view.
At 11:36, the SUV left.
Vale was not seen again.
The registration plate had been covered.
But a witness remembered one detail.
A cracked left taillight.
Claire listened from her hospital bed while Ortiz explained.
“Do you think Richard had him killed?”
“We don’t know that.”
“Do you think he’s alive?”
“We don’t know that either.”
Ethan had learned to hate those four words.
We don’t know that.
There was too much nobody knew.
Who helped Richard transport Claire?
Who disabled the funeral home cameras?
Where was Paul Mercer?
Where was Dr. Vale?
And why did Richard seem so calm in jail?
That afternoon, Ethan was allowed to see the shattered coffin again as part of the evidence review.
Ortiz believed retracing the funeral might help him remember something.
The hall was empty now.
Flowers had been removed.
Broken wood remained sealed beneath clear evidence covering.
Ethan stood several feet away.
“I was right there.”
Megan stayed beside him.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I want to.”
Ethan walked to the side of the platform.
Something caught his eye beneath the coffin stand.
A small metal disk.
He pointed.
“What’s that?”
A crime scene technician crouched and examined it.
It was a magnetic GPS tracker.
Someone had attached it beneath the coffin platform.
Ortiz frowned.
“Why track a coffin?”
The technician turned it over.
“It’s not from the funeral home.”
Ethan remembered Richard repeatedly checking his phone before the service.
Every few minutes.
He had assumed Richard was receiving condolences.
Maybe Richard had been monitoring the coffin.
Or someone had been monitoring Richard.
Ortiz ordered the tracker traced.
Its serial number led to a security company.
The purchaser had paid cash.
But the store camera captured the buyer.
Paul Mercer.
Then investigators made a second discovery.
The tracker contained stored movement data.
It showed where the coffin had been before arriving at the funeral home.
For six hours the previous night, Claire had not been at a hospital.
She had not been at the funeral home.
The coffin had been taken to a warehouse at the edge of the city.
Police searched the address.
Inside they discovered medical supplies.
Sedatives.
Disposable gloves.
Copies of Claire’s records.
And photographs.
Dozens of photographs.
Most were of Claire.
May you like
Some were of Rebecca Sloan.
But one wall was covered almost entirely with pictures of Ethan.
