Chapter 14 - Room Thirty-One

The investigation into Bellhaven turned up a former orderly named June Fisher. She remembered a patient admitted without identifying documents, badly wounded, with memory problems and a severe infection. Staff called him Patient Thirty-One.

“He woke up screaming about a convoy,” June told investigators. “Sometimes he remembered a woman named Elena. Sometimes he didn't remember his own name.”

Elena listened to the recorded interview until she had to stop. She couldn't decide which was worse: believing Marcus had died instantly or imagining him alone in a locked room.

June said the patient had been transferred to a long-term care facility after Bellhaven closed. The paperwork listed a different name, but the identifying scar on his shoulder matched Marcus's old injury.

Daniel asked why nobody contacted family.

“His chart was flagged restricted,” June said. “We were told the government would handle it.”

Authorities searched the chain of facilities. One transfer record pointed to a clinic in Pennsylvania. A second listed a death certificate issued under an alias. The date was three months earlier.

Elena sat very still when the agent explained it. She'd been handed a second death before anyone had proved the first one false.

“Was there a body?” she asked.

“No. The certificate was based on administrative records. We're investigating.”

She pushed her chair back. “Then don't tell my daughter her father died twice because you haven't found the truth once.”

The agent apologized. Elena wasn't interested in apologies.

Andrew obtained permission to contact a former Hale Defense compliance officer who'd resigned after Bellhaven's closure. The woman spoke from a secure location and said the company had paid medical bills for one anonymous patient for years.

“Why?” Andrew asked.

“Insurance against testimony,” she answered. “If the man recovered his memory, they could control who saw him.”

She offered to identify the bank account carrying the payments, but wanted protection for her family first. The agents agreed to arrange it.

An hour later a courier delivered a plain brown envelope to Daniel's apartment. There was no return address. Inside lay a recent photograph of a thinner, older Marcus Bell sitting beside a window.

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Across the bottom someone had written:

FIND HIM BEFORE VICTOR DOES.