Chapter 6 - The ClinicThe facility was called Briarwood Recovery Center.
For twelve hours, I didn’t know that.
Police searched roads, hospitals, motels and wooded areas surrounding the place where his Buick had been abandoned.
The blood inside the car belonged to him.
There was enough to suggest injury.
Not enough to prove something fatal.
Hale put officers outside my townhouse and told Rebecca to stay elsewhere.
She ignored him and slept on my couch.
Neither of us really slept.
At four in the morning, she found me sitting at the kitchen table staring at Elena’s letter.
“You need rest.”
“So do you.”
“I’m not the one who had knee surgery.”
“I’m also not the one who almost married a possible murderer.”
Rebecca sat opposite me.
“That sentence sounds insane.”
“Everything sounds insane.”
She wrapped both hands around a mug she wasn’t drinking from.
“I keep replaying things.”
“Like what?”
“Little things. Daniel knowing where I was even when I hadn’t told him. Asking who I talked to at work. Getting angry when I changed passwords.”
I looked at her.
“Did he ever hurt you?”
She hesitated.
That was enough.
“Rebecca.”
“Not like he hurt you.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
She stared at the table.
“He grabbed my throat once.”
My stomach tightened.
“When?”
“Four months ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“He cried afterward. Said he panicked. Said his first wife used to hit him and he had trauma.”
“Elena.”
“I didn’t know she existed.”
Of course Daniel had used the woman he victimized as an excuse to victimize someone else.
Rebecca continued.
“He made me feel sorry for him.”
“That’s what Mom does.”
The realization came quietly.
Daniel had not invented his methods.
He had inherited them.
Punish.
Deny.
Cry.
Rewrite.
Make the victim feel cruel for remembering.
At 6:20 a.m., Hale called.
They had found Dad.
He was walking barefoot along a service road almost eighteen miles from his car.
He had a cut on his scalp, two broken fingers and mild hypothermia.
His story was strange.
He claimed someone wearing a ski mask had forced him off the road, dragged him from the car and demanded the Blue Book.
Dad insisted he didn’t have it.
The attacker searched his vehicle, struck him and drove him several miles before abandoning him.
“Did he recognize the voice?” I asked.
“He says no.”
“You don’t believe him.”
“I think your father has lied under pressure before.”
At the hospital, Dad looked small.
A bandage crossed his forehead.
Two fingers were splinted.
The first thing he said when I entered was, “I’m sorry.”
I almost turned around.
“Stop apologizing.”
He looked confused.
“You use apologies like Mom uses lies. Neither changes anything.”
Hale stood against the wall.
Dad swallowed.
“What do you want?”
“The truth about the car.”
“What car?”
“The night Elena disappeared.”
His eyes shifted toward Hale.
I slammed my palm against the bedside table.
“Look at me.”
He did.
“Mom says you were in the car with Keller.”
Dad closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
Rebecca inhaled sharply behind me.
“Where did you go?”
“To an urgent-care clinic.”
That surprised everyone.
“What?”
“Elena was hurt badly. Keller said hospitals asked too many questions. He knew a doctor.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Samuel Voss.”
Hale wrote the name.
“Where was the clinic?”
“Bridgeport. Private office.”
“Was Elena alive?”
“Yes.”
“Conscious?”
“Barely.”
“What did Voss do?”
“Stitched the wound on her head. Checked her ribs. Said she needed imaging.”
“And then?”
Dad began crying.
“Keller told him to sedate her.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were there.”
“I know.”
“You watched.”
“Yes.”
“What happened after she was sedated?”
“They put her back in Keller’s car.”
“Where did you go?”
Dad stared at the wall.
“I drove home.”
“Coward.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
I wanted to scream.
Instead, my voice became colder.
“You left an injured woman unconscious with a corrupt cop and went home.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever ask where she went?”
“Once.”
“What did Keller say?”
“That Elena had been taken somewhere safe until she agreed to stop making accusations.”
“Did you believe him?”
Dad looked at me.
“No.”
There it was.
No excuses left.
Hale asked, “Did you ever see Dr. Voss again?”
“Once. At Amanda’s Christmas party.”
“When?”
“The following year.”
My stomach turned.
Mom invited him into our home.
“What did they talk about?”
“I don’t know.”
Dad suddenly stiffened.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“There was something.”
He looked at Hale.
“Voss asked Amanda whether Daniel was ‘still having trouble with the women.’”
Rebecca and I exchanged a glance.
“What women?”
“I don’t know.”
Hale asked, “Was Natalie Cross one of them?”
Dad’s face changed.
“You know Natalie?”
“Yes.”
Dad whispered, “Oh God.”
“What?”
“She came to the house.”
“When?”
“About six months before she died.”
“Why?”
“She asked about Elena.”
My heart pounded.
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing.”
Of course.
“What did Mom do?”
“She invited Natalie inside.”
Hale stopped writing.
“For how long?”
“Maybe an hour.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Amanda told me to leave.”
“When you came back?”
“Natalie was gone.”
Dad frowned as if forcing himself to remember.
“And Daniel was there.”
I felt sick.
“They were already involved?”
“No. Not then, I don’t think.”
But months later they were.
Daniel got close to Natalie after she came asking about Elena.
Exactly as Elena’s journal predicted.
Hale stepped into the hallway to make calls.
I stayed beside Dad.
“Who attacked you last night?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“Did they ask for anything besides the Blue Book?”
Dad hesitated.
“What?”
“They asked where Claire keeps Elena’s letter.”
A cold wave moved through me.
Rebecca’s eyes widened.
“That means whoever attacked him knows Claire has the letter.”
Dad nodded.
Only a small number of people knew.
Police.
Rebecca.
Dad.
Maya.
My mother.
Possibly Daniel through his lawyer.
I asked Dad, “Was it Mom?”
“No.”
“How can you know?”
“The attacker was a man.”
“Keller?”
“He’s seventy-two.”
“Could still be him.”
Dad shook his head.
“This man was younger.”
Hale returned.
“Samuel Voss is alive.”
“Where?”
“Retired. Lives outside Hartford.”
“Can we talk to him?”
“We already sent detectives.”
His phone buzzed again.
He answered.
Listened.
Then swore.
“What?”
Hale looked at us.
“Dr. Voss’s house is empty.”
“Maybe he went somewhere.”
“His neighbor says he left twenty minutes after your brother was arrested.”
Rebecca whispered, “He ran.”
Hale nodded.
But the next discovery was worse.
Investigators searched property records tied to Samuel Voss.
One was an abandoned rehabilitation facility in northern Connecticut.
Closed twelve years earlier.
Daniel’s shell company had paid its property taxes for six years.
Police entered the building that afternoon.
Most rooms were empty.
One wasn’t.
A basement office contained dozens of patient files.
No names.
Only numbers.
Photographs were attached.
Women.
Bruised.
Sedated.
Some apparently injured.
Hale showed me six images.
I recognized one immediately.
Natalie Cross.
Another showed a much younger Elena.
Alive.
Photographed three weeks after my family claimed she had left Connecticut.
I nearly dropped the picture.
“She survived.”
“For at least three weeks,” Hale said.
I stared at Elena’s frightened face.
Behind her was a white wall.
A calendar.
And somebody’s hand gripping her shoulder.
“Who ran this place?”
“We’re finding out.”
“What was it?”
“Officially? Addiction recovery.”
“And unofficially?”
Hale’s face hardened.
“A place where wealthy families could send people they considered inconvenient.”
My pulse thudded in my ears.
“Against their will?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
I thought of Elena.
Natalie.
The unnamed women in Daniel’s files.
My brother’s violence suddenly seemed like only the surface of something much larger.
Hale turned over Elena’s photograph.
Someone had written a note.
Subject E-14. Resistant. Memory protocol unsuccessful. Transfer authorized by A.W.
A.W.
Amanda Wellman.
My mother.
And beneath that:
Dr. Voss recommends increased dosage.
The nurse’s question returned to me.
Has anyone in your family ever tried to make you believe you remembered something that never happened?
They had not only done it emotionally.
They had a doctor.
They had drugs.
They had a facility.
They had a method.
I looked at Hale.
“What is a memory protocol?”
May you like
He didn’t answer.
Because we both already knew enough to be afraid of the answer.
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