Chapter 14 - The Bridge Road
They didn't try to confront the sedan. Daniel called the investigator working the fraud case, and a patrol car soon arrived. The sedan was gone by then, but a camera at the hardware store had captured its license plate.
At the abandoned bridge, detectives found old traffic records showing a utility truck had crossed shortly before Grace's fatal crash. The truck had been registered to a subcontractor owned by Celeste's husband, Thomas Vale.
Thomas had always seemed like a quiet figure behind Celeste's louder personality. At the wedding he'd offered Eleanor a chair, then looked away as Madison began shouting. Daniel remembered the tiny hesitation and hated what it suggested.
Thomas agreed to an interview after investigators confronted him with the vehicle log. He admitted he had ordered employees to move a truck that evening, but claimed he hadn't known what would happen on the bridge.
Under the bridge, the water moved steadily over stones, indifferent to the history people had forced onto the road above. Daniel pictured his mother's headlights on the railing and fought the urge to search for a mark that would prove she had been there. A detective explained that old scenes could yield evidence but could not be made to tell a story on demand. Mara stood beside Daniel without speaking. Back at Eleanor's, they made sandwiches and checked the doors. For the first time Daniel thought of safety as a practice rather than a promise.
"Someone had to stop Grace," he said in a recorded interview. "Harold said she was going to destroy the company."
"Did you know there was a child?" the investigator asked.
Thomas covered his eyes. "I heard there was a little girl. I thought they'd taken her somewhere safe."
When Daniel learned this, he stood outside the station for a long time while the cold wind moved through the flags. Mara came beside him.
"Don't make me lose you because you're angry," she said.
"I don't know how to turn it off."
"You don't have to turn it off. Just don't let it drive."
He nodded, and the two of them walked to Eleanor's car.
That night investigators located Pike at a rural hospital, alive with a broken arm. He had been struck by a vehicle after fleeing Eleanor's house. Under protection, he agreed to tell everything he knew.
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His first statement changed the entire case.
"Harold didn't order Grace's crash," Pike said. "He was already in a hospital bed. Celeste gave the order herself."
