Chapter 17 - The Doctor at the Drop-Off
The truck driver's directions led to a shuttered motel beyond the county line. Investigators approached cautiously, supported by local officers cleared through the state team. In Room 8 they found no hostages, no hidden lab—only a man sitting at a table with an overnight bag and a bruised-looking exhaustion in his eyes.
Richard Hayes stood when Paul entered.
For a long moment neither brother spoke. Richard looked older, thinner, his hair streaked with gray. Paul wanted to hug him and wanted to shake him. Instead he said, “Mom died believing she'd lost both her sons.”
Richard swallowed. “I know.”
“You let me bury you.”
“I thought if I surfaced they'd kill whoever I talked to.”
“And the girls?”
“I tried to get them out. Price threatened Maisie and her mother. Grant held custody papers over Elena. Every time I got close, someone moved the children.”
Paul stared at him. “You should have called me.”
“Yes,” Richard said. “I should have.”
Paul asked Richard about their mother's last Christmas. Richard listened as Paul described how she'd set an extra place, just once, without saying why. 'I wanted to come home,' Richard whispered. 'Then I imagined a car following me to the house.' Paul said he believed his fear was real. He wasn't ready to say it had justified the choice. Both truths could stand in the same room.
Richard surrendered the records he still held and asked for legal counsel before a formal interview. Leah agreed. No reunion could erase the need to establish facts. Richard said he had arranged a handoff to a journalist, but someone intercepted his messages. He'd come to the motel after learning that the girls reached police.
“Why here?” Paul asked.
“Because a dispatcher I trust said you were investigating.”
“Which dispatcher?”
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Richard gave a name. Paul felt his stomach drop.
It was the station employee who had transmitted the anonymous photograph of Elena and Nora.
