Chapter 8 - A Funeral Without a Body
Adrian had buried an empty coffin.
He told me that himself when Ortiz finally let us speak in a small witness room. Sophie had fallen asleep on a couch with her rabbit tucked beneath her chin. June sat beside her, one arm resting protectively on the cushion.
“Laurel’s parents wanted a closed ceremony,” Adrian said. “They said the crash had been terrible. They said I shouldn’t see her that way.”
“Did you believe them?” I asked.
“I wanted to. It was easier than asking why no one would let me touch my wife’s hand.”
His voice carried no self-pity. Just disgust at the man he had been.
“I spent the next year working,” he continued. “I told myself Sophie was grieving, that Vivienne understood children better than I did. Every time Sophie tried to tell me something, there was another specialist, another report, another reason I should stay out of it.”
“You can do better now,” I said.
“I have to.”
Ortiz joined us with photographs of a silver ambulance leaving the Ashford Grand on a snowy night fourteen months earlier. The plate was partly obscured by road salt.
“June identified that vehicle,” she said. “We traced it to a private transport company called Northline Medical.”
June’s face hardened. “The same company that took Laurel.”
“Where?” Adrian asked.
“A facility outside Coldwater. The building was sold six weeks ago.”
“Who bought it?”
Ortiz turned the photograph over. “A shell company. Its registered agent is one Marcus Wynn.”
Adrian went still. “Marcus is my CFO.”
I thought of the fancy benefit downstairs, the donors, the staged recordings, the guardianship papers. All of it required planning and money. Not just one angry stepmother improvising in a ballroom.
Ortiz folded her arms. “We also found something about the crash.”
She showed us a police evidence photo: a black SUV with its front end crushed against a highway barrier. A tiny white sticker clung to the rear windshield.
I recognized it immediately. A little crescent moon above three stars.
My brother had worn the same sticker on his backpack before he disappeared at fifteen.
“Where did that come from?” I whispered.
Ortiz frowned. “Why?”
May you like
I held the picture closer. “Because I saw that symbol once before.”
And suddenly I knew my past hadn’t followed me into the hotel by accident.
