Chapter 17 - Detective Brooks
After the call ended, Ava looked at Brooks.
“What happened to your father?”
Brooks did not answer immediately.
Then she closed the command-room door.
“My father was an assistant district attorney.”
Ethan leaned forward.
“In 2007?”
“Yes.”
Ava remembered Martin’s story.
Someone inside the DA’s office had warned Pike that Samuel was building a fraud case.
“Was it your father?”
Brooks’s jaw tightened.
“He was accused of leaking sealed information. The case was never proven. He resigned.”
“Did he know Pike?”
“Yes.”
“Did he warn him?”
“I don’t know.”
Ava watched her carefully.
“You never told us.”
“Because until tonight, I did not know my father had any connection to Samuel Monroe.”
“Pike knew.”
Brooks nodded.
“That concerns me too.”
She immediately reported the conflict to her supervisor and offered to step off the case.
Ava respected that.
Her supervisor kept her on but added a second lead detective.
Then Brooks did something harder.
She called her father.
Thomas Brooks was seventy-two, retired, and living in New Jersey.
He agreed to come in.
When shown Pike’s old financial records, his hands trembled.
“I didn’t warn Pike,” he said.
“Then who did?” Nina asked.
Thomas looked at his daughter.
“My boss.”
The former district attorney had accepted money from a legal defense fund connected to Pike.
Thomas had discovered it.
Before he could act, he was framed as the leak.
Samuel Monroe believed him.
That was why Samuel kept the last ledger separate.
It named public officials, bankers, attorneys, and trustees who had protected Pike.
“Where is it?” Ava asked.
Thomas looked at her.
“Samuel gave me a clue. He said, ‘If my daughter ever needs the truth, she’ll find it where she learned to stand.’”
Ava went completely still.
Where she learned to stand.
Not walk.
Stand.
Her father used that phrase about one place.
The old ballet studio he had built in their first family home.
The house had been sold years ago.
Ava knew who owned it now.
Margaret Vale.
Ethan’s face changed.
“My mother bought that house?”
“She bought it through a trust two years after my father died,” Ava said.
They looked at each other.
Margaret had not merely targeted Ava after the crash.
She had been collecting pieces of Samuel Monroe’s past for years.
Brooks obtained a search warrant.
At 2:00 a.m., police entered the old Monroe home.
Behind a mirrored wall in the abandoned ballet studio, they found a narrow safe.
Inside was one blue leather ledger.
And a recent photograph.
Conrad Pike holding today’s newspaper.
May you like
Across the bottom, in black marker, he had written:
THANK YOU FOR FINDING IT FOR ME.
