Chapter 15 - The Name Under the Concrete
The name was Samuel Price, the original safety inspector at Pier Nine. Everyone involved had believed Samuel moved overseas after the settlement. Charles told Vanessa he was paying the man to stay quiet.
Miriam found an old forwarding address in Thomas's records. It led to a retirement community in North Carolina, not an overseas hideout. Samuel was alive, eighty-one, and angry that anyone had ever called him a coward.
“I kept my mouth shut because I was told the injured men had been paid,” he said over video call. “Then I learned how small those settlements were.”
He held up a binder. He had retained copies of his inspection reports and written warnings. His original signature appeared beside the words UNSAFE UNTIL REPLACED.
Charles had submitted a second version marked APPROVED.
Daniel's jaw tightened. “He forged that, too.”
Samuel nodded. “He had practice.”
The documents gave investigators grounds to examine far more than the attempted hotel takeover. But the older case had legal complications, and Miriam warned us not to confuse evidence with an instant conviction.
At the hotel, Paul Mercer resurfaced. His lawyer contacted detectives and offered access to a password-protected account. He wanted a deal, not because his conscience had suddenly awakened, but because the funds Charles promised him had never arrived.
“Paul says Whitmore moved the money yesterday,” Martin told me.
“Where?”
“An account associated with a waterfront construction firm.”
I knew the company name from the false hotel invoices. It had also submitted a bid to build a private resort on the remaining public section of Pier Nine.
That afternoon I walked down to the beach. The wind lifted the silver hair from my shoulders. Daniel joined me without speaking.
After a while he said, “I thought being in charge meant people would stop treating me like a child.”
“It means making decisions you can defend when nobody likes them,” I answered.
May you like
My phone buzzed. A message from Miriam: THE BOARD HAS CALLED AN EMERGENCY VOTE.
And Daniel was listed as the person requesting it.
