Part 8
The surgical waiting room at the county hospital smelled faintly of industrial bleach and stale vending machine coffee. Natalie sat in a rigid vinyl chair, staring blindly at a muted daytime television mounted in the corner. Chris paced a slow, methodical track near the elevators, while Stacy sat beside Natalie, tearing a paper coffee cup into small, meticulous strips.
It had been four hours since the ambulance doors slammed shut. Four hours of waiting to find out if Peter’s violent tantrum had cost a woman her child.
“Family of Allison Hayes?”
Natalie’s head snapped up. A tired-looking attending physician in pale blue scrubs stood near the double doors of the ER observation wing. Natalie stood, her joints stiff, and walked over with Stacy right behind her.
“I’m Natalie,” she said. “I’m… we’re the ones who brought her in.”
“She’s stable,” the doctor said, glancing at a tablet in his hand. The words acted like a release valve, and Natalie let out a long, trembling breath she felt she had been holding since they left the mountain. “The cramping was brought on by the physical trauma of the fall and acute stress. There’s no sign of placental abruption. We’ve administered fluids and a mild sedative. She’s going to be severely bruised, and we’re keeping her overnight for observation, but the baby is fine. She needs strict bed rest for the next week.”
“Thank God,” Stacy whispered, leaning her head against Natalie’s shoulder.
“Can we see her?” Natalie asked.
“Briefly,” the doctor nodded. “She’s exhausted.”
When they walked into the small observation bay, Allison was lying against the crisp white hospital pillows, looking small and incredibly fragile. The polished, demanding woman from the sidewalk was gone. She turned her head as Natalie approached the bed.
“The baby is okay,” Allison said, her voice raspy. A tear slipped down her cheek, soaking into the paper pillowcase. “They said it’s okay.”
“I know,” Natalie said softly, standing near the metal railing of the bed. “I’m so glad, Allison.”
Allison closed her eyes, swallowing hard. “I was so stupid. I let him convince me that I was saving him from a terrible marriage. I actually felt sorry for him.”
“He’s a professional liar,” Stacy offered gently from the foot of the bed. “He played all of us.”
Allison opened her eyes and looked directly at Natalie. “Did you go to the apartment? Did you get the keys from my bag?”
“Not yet,” Natalie said. “We waited here to make sure you were safe first.”
“Please,” Allison urged, her monitors beeping a steady, slow rhythm. “The fern in the living room. Under the moss.”
“We’re going right now,” Chris said from the doorway, his deep voice carrying a quiet reassurance. “Get some sleep, Allison.”
They left the hospital in the fading twilight. Chris drove them into the city, navigating toward the upscale neighborhood where Allison lived. Her condo was on the fourth floor of a modern, secure building. When Natalie unlocked the door and pushed it open, she was immediately struck by the contrast between this immaculate, sunlit space and the cramped, resentful atmosphere of Lorraine’s house.
“She said the living room,” Natalie murmured, walking past a sleek glass dining table.
In the corner of the room, near a set of floor-to-ceiling windows, sat a massive, artificial silk fern housed in a heavy ceramic planter. Natalie dropped to her knees on the hardwood floor. She pushed aside the dense fronds and dug her fingers into the layer of decorative, dried Spanish moss covering the base.
Her knuckles bumped against something hard and plastic.
“I found it,” she said, pulling a thick, waterproof document box from the artificial soil.
Chris and Stacy gathered around the kitchen island as Natalie unlatched the plastic clasps. She opened the lid, expecting to see a small, black plastic camera or a tiny micro-SD card. Instead, she found a thick stack of folded legal paperwork.
Natalie pulled the papers out, smoothing them flat under the pendant lights.
“What is all that?” Stacy asked, leaning over the counter.
“Articles of incorporation,” Natalie read, her eyes scanning the dense legal print. “A commercial lease agreement for an industrial garage on the east side. Bank statements for a newly formed LLC.”
“It’s the auto detailing business,” Chris realized, pointing to a highlighted figure on one of the bank statements. “Look at the initial deposit.”
Natalie stared at the number. Fifty thousand dollars. She flipped through the attached transfer receipts, her stomach dropping. “He didn’t just hide this business from me. He’s been quietly siphoning money from Lorraine’s retirement accounts to fund it. The transfers match her banking routing numbers.”
“He stole from his own mother?” Stacy asked, appalled. “The woman who defends his every move?”
“He doesn’t care about anyone but himself,” Natalie said, tossing the papers back onto the counter. A bitter wave of disappointment washed over her. She rifled through the empty plastic box one more time, running her fingers along the bottom corners. “The dashcam isn’t here.”
“Are you sure?” Chris asked, taking the box and examining it himself.
“It’s empty,” Natalie sighed, leaning heavily against the granite counter. “If he had the camera, he probably threw it in a river months ago. Why would he keep the one thing that proves he caused the wreck?”
The silence in the kitchen was heavy. The financial documents were enough to secure her a clean divorce and protect her assets, but they did nothing to help Evan.
Stacy’s phone buzzed loudly against the countertop. She picked it up, glancing at the screen. Her brow furrowed. “Wait.”
“What is it?” Natalie asked.
“Two days ago, I posted a plea on that local neighborhood watch page,” Stacy explained, her thumbs moving quickly across the glass screen. “I just asked if anyone happened to have dashcam or security footage of the intersection of Elm and 4th from the night of the ice storm. I didn’t think anything would come of it. But I just got a direct message.”
Natalie stood up straight. “Read it.”
“It’s from a blank profile,” Stacy said, her eyes tracking the text. “It says: I have the dashcam video from the other car. Clean footage. I know what it’s worth. Fifty grand, and it’s yours. Meet me at the community park on 8th tomorrow night at eight.“
“Fifty thousand dollars?” Chris repeated, his jaw tightening. “That’s extortion. It’s a scam.”
“Or it’s someone who knows exactly how much a civil liability lawsuit is going to cost Evan,” Natalie said, her mind racing. “If they know it was from the other car… they might actually have it.”
“I’m not letting you two walk into a park at night to meet a blackmailer,” Chris said flatly. “I have a mandatory overtime shift tomorrow night at the logistics center. I can’t be there.”
“I’ll call Evan,” Natalie decided, reaching for her own phone. “It’s his life on the line. He should be there. We meet this guy, see if he actually has the footage, and figure it out from there.”
The following evening, the community park was bathed in the long, amber shadows of dusk. The playground was mostly empty, the humid air thick with the sound of cicadas.
Natalie and Stacy sat on a wooden bench near the edge of the tree line. Fifty yards away, Evan sat in his parked sedan, the engine idling, watching them closely through the windshield. He had agreed to stay out of sight, not wanting to spook the informant if the man recognized him from the crash.
At exactly eight o’clock, a man walked up the paved trail.
He was dressed entirely in dark, unremarkable clothing. A gray hoodie was pulled up over a dark baseball cap, and oversized mirrored sunglasses obscured the top half of his face. A blue surgical mask covered his mouth and chin, a leftover habit from recent years that provided the perfect excuse for anonymity.
He stopped a few feet from the bench, keeping his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his hoodie.
“You bring the money?” the man asked. His voice was muffled through the mask, deliberately lowered into a gravelly rasp.
Stacy shifted uncomfortably, but Natalie remained seated, her posture relaxed. “I’m not handing a bag of cash to a stranger without seeing the merchandise first.”
“That wasn’t the deal,” the man said, shifting his weight. “You want the footage that clears the guy in the sedan, you pay for it.”
“I need proof the file isn’t corrupted,” Natalie insisted.
The man sighed, pulling his right hand out of his pocket to gesture his frustration. As he raised his arm, the sleeve of his hoodie rode up slightly, exposing his thick wrist and the edge of a distinct, faded tribal tattoo near the base of his thumb.
Natalie’s breath hitched in her throat.
She knew that tattoo. She had seen it reaching across her dining room table to grab a handful of chips during Peter’s poker nights. She had seen it holding a clipboard at the hospital when a “concerned officer” came to take her preliminary statement.
It was Stan. Peter’s best friend. The police officer who had worked the crash scene.
The realization clicked into place with horrifying clarity. Stan hadn’t lost the dashcam. He had stolen it to protect Peter. But Stan was not a loyal friend; he was a pure opportunist. He likely planned to use the footage to extort Peter eventually. But when Stacy’s post appeared online, signaling that someone was actively looking for the video, Stan realized he could squeeze cash out of a desperate third party without ever having to confront his poker buddy.
Natalie forced her heart rate to slow. If she let on that she recognized him, he would turn around, walk away, and destroy the memory card tonight.
“Fifty thousand is a lot of money to move without raising flags at the bank,” Natalie said smoothly, keeping her eyes fixed on the mirrored sunglasses. “I couldn’t get it all today. I need a week to liquidate a CD.”
Stan hesitated. Greed warred with caution behind the dark lenses.
“A week,” Natalie repeated, standing up to show she was serious. “Next Friday, same time, same bench. I’ll have the cash in a duffel bag. You bring the raw file on a flash drive, and a laptop to verify it. We do the swap, and we never see each other again.”
“If you don’t show,” Stan warned, dropping the gravelly affectation just slightly in his annoyance, “the drive goes in the river.”
“I’ll be here,” Natalie promised.
Stan gave a sharp nod, turned on his heel, and walked briskly back down the trail, disappearing into the gathering dark.
As soon as he was out of sight, Stacy let out a massive breath. “Nat, you are insane. Where are we going to get fifty grand?”
Evan’s sedan pulled up to the curb a moment later. He threw it into park and hurried over to the bench. “What happened? Did he have it?”
“He didn’t bring it,” Natalie said, watching the empty trail. “But I know who it is.”
“Who?” Evan asked, his shoulders dropping in disappointment.
“It’s Officer Stan,” Natalie said, turning to look at him. “He kept the camera. He’s trying to sell the evidence.”
Evan stared at her, running a hand through his hair. “A cop has it? Then we’re dead. If we report him, he destroys it before Internal Affairs even opens a file. If we pay him, we’re committing a felony.”
“We aren’t paying him,” Natalie said, her mind working furiously. “And we aren’t going to rely on him. Stan having the camera proves one thing for certain: the crash happened exactly the way you said it did. We just need to prove it without him.”
“How?” Stacy asked. “It’s been six months. Any skid marks are gone. The cars are crushed.”
Natalie looked past the park, her eyes focusing on the distant, lit-up skyline of the commercial district just a mile away. “Evan, tell me exactly where that intersection was again. Which corner?”