Chapter 9 - The Doctor’s Signature
I called Dr. Lang at 1:14 in the morning.
He answered on the fourth ring sounding terrified.
“Claire?”
“Did you write a letter saying I was mentally incompetent?”
Silence.
Dad put the call on speaker.
“Dr. Lang,” he said, “this is Thomas Hawthorne. Choose your next words very carefully.”
The doctor started breathing faster.
“I wrote no such letter.”
Miriam emailed him the document.
Thirty seconds later, he said, “That is my signature, but not my letterhead.”
“Could someone have copied your signature?”
“Yes.”
“Who has access?”
“My office manager. Billing. Records.”
“Anyone else?”
Another pause.
“Vanessa Crane requested records on Claire months ago. We denied the request.”
“Did she come to the office?”
“Yes.”
I sat down slowly.
Dr. Lang continued. “She claimed she was your sister.”
Adrian whispered, “She doesn’t even look like Claire.”
“People believe confidence,” Dad said.
The police arrived twenty minutes later.
For the first time that night, Adrian became useful. He turned over the riding crop, the phones, the house camera login, and every password he knew.
When an officer asked who had struck me, he said, “I did.”
No excuse.
No mention of Vanessa.
Just those two words.
I appreciated the truth and hated that it had come so late.
They photographed my injuries and took my statement.
Adrian was arrested for assault before sunrise.
As officers led him outside, he stopped near me.
“Claire.”
I didn’t answer.
“I believed her because believing her was easier than admitting what I was becoming.”
I looked at the handcuffs around his wrists.
“You didn’t become anything tonight, Adrian. Tonight you just stopped hiding it.”
He lowered his head.
Then he was gone.
I thought I would feel relief.
Instead, I felt empty.
Dad took me to his townhouse rather than a hotel. I slept for two hours and woke to Miriam knocking on the guest-room door.
Her face told me something had happened.
“Vanessa’s missing,” she said.
“What?”
“She never went home.”
“Her phone?”
“Abandoned near the river.”
I sat up.
Miriam held out another phone in an evidence sleeve.
“This was delivered to the townhouse gate twenty minutes ago.”
The screen showed one unread video.
It was addressed to me.
I pressed play.
Vanessa appeared in a dark room.
She was crying.
Then a man stepped into frame behind her.
May you like
I recognized him immediately.
He was Adrian’s chief financial officer.
