Chapter 8 - The Women in Daniel’s FilesThere were nine women.
She had checked into a small luxury inn near the Canadian border under the name Margaret Collins.
That part almost made me laugh.
Even fleeing a criminal investigation, Amanda Wellman apparently required Egyptian cotton sheets.
She had forty-three thousand dollars in cash.
Two passports.
A prepaid phone.
And copies of files taken from Daniel’s storage unit.
She also had something else.
A photograph of me taken the morning after my surgery.
Not from social media.
Not from the hospital.
Through the window of my townhouse.
Someone had been watching me.
When Hale told me, I looked immediately toward the living-room curtains.
Police searched the neighborhood.
No suspect.
Mom refused to talk after arrest.
Her attorney released a statement describing her as “a respected mother and philanthropist being persecuted because of distorted accusations made by an estranged daughter.”
Estranged.
We had spoken every week until Daniel attacked me.
But Amanda understood public image.
If she could turn me into the unstable daughter, she could revive a story she had been building since I was seventeen.
Then the media arrived.
Local first.
Then national.
WEALTHY CONNECTICUT FAMILY LINKED TO SECRET TREATMENT CENTER
MISSING WOMAN CASE REOPENED AFTER 16 YEARS
SISTER’S ASSAULT EXPOSES ALLEGED FRAUD NETWORK
My face appeared everywhere.
I hated it.
Rebecca disconnected my doorbell.
Hale assigned protection.
Dad moved into a motel because I refused to let him stay with me.
Daniel remained in jail after his bail was revoked when prosecutors presented evidence that he had tracked multiple former partners.
Rebecca gave police everything.
Texts.
Emails.
Voice messages.
One recording changed the assault case.
Daniel had called her minutes after she left Mom’s birthday party.
“You think Claire saved you?” he screamed on voicemail. “She just signed her own death warrant.”
Attempted revenge suddenly sounded like premeditated intimidation.
But the investigation into Elena remained incomplete.
We still didn’t know what happened after Briarwood.
The final recording of Elena was dated twenty-four days after her disappearance.
Then nothing.
A transport ledger contained a single line:
E-14 transferred 03/16. Destination private. Authorized A.W.
No destination.
No signature.
No later file.
Dr. Voss remained missing.
Keller refused to cooperate.
Then someone tried to kill him.
He was transported from jail to a courthouse hearing when the van developed brake failure on a downhill road.
The driver managed to stop using the emergency brake.
Inspection showed the brake line had been cut.
That meant somebody connected to the old network was still free.
Somebody frightened enough to silence Keller.
Hale came to my house that evening.
“You’re leaving.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going into hiding.”
“You have no vote.”
“I’m a thirty-four-year-old woman. I have several votes.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“Claire, someone sabotaged a correctional transport.”
“Then protect Keller.”
“We are.”
“And protect me.”
“That’s what relocating you does.”
I hated that he was right.
Rebecca and I were moved to a safe location near the coast.
No social media.
No visitors.
Different phones.
I spent the days learning to walk again.
Physical therapy hurt worse than surgery sometimes.
My therapist, Jasmine, had zero interest in family drama.
“Straighten.”
“I am.”
“That’s forty degrees.”
“It feels like a hundred.”
“Your feelings are incorrect. Straighten.”
I loved her.
There was something healing about pain that had an honest purpose.
No manipulation.
No hidden meaning.
You bent the joint.
It hurt.
It slowly improved.
Family should have been that simple.
Three weeks after Mom’s arrest, my father requested to see me.
I said no.
Then he sent Hale a letter.
I know where Elena was taken.
That got him through the door.
Dad looked worse than before.
He sat across from me in the safe house while Hale recorded everything.
“I lied at the hospital.”
“I assumed.”
“I remembered more than I said.”
“Why?”
“I was afraid.”
“Your favorite hobby.”
He accepted it.
“Keller called me two months after Elena disappeared.”
My heart accelerated.
“He said she was still causing problems.”
“Where?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Because Amanda went to meet him.”
“Where?”
“A property near Lake Candlewood.”
“What property?”
“An old summer house owned by a company.”
“Which company?”
Dad removed a folded paper.
“I wrote down the license plate because I was suspicious.”
Hale unfolded it.
“Whose plate?”
“Voss.”
Police searched property records.
A shell company connected to Briarwood had owned a lakeside cottage from 2009 to 2013.
The property had burned down thirteen years ago.
Cause listed as electrical.
No fatalities reported.
My stomach sank.
“Was Elena there when it burned?”
“We don’t know,” Hale said.
Investigators excavated the property.
For two days they found nothing.
On the third, they discovered human remains beneath what had once been a detached storage building.
I was sitting beside Rebecca when Hale called.
I couldn’t answer.
She did.
Then she looked at me.
Her face told me everything.
“Is it Elena?”
“They need DNA.”
Three days later, the result came back.
Female.
Approximately thirty years old.
The remains had been there more than a decade.
But they were not Elena.
Dental records identified the woman as Melissa Grant.
Another name from Daniel’s files.
Melissa had dated Daniel for eight months.
Then supposedly moved to California.
Her family hadn’t heard from her in twelve years.
Police dug deeper.
A second set of remains was discovered.
Male.
Unidentified.
Then a third.
Suddenly Elena’s disappearance was part of a possible serial pattern.
Daniel stopped speaking to his lawyer.
Mom demanded protective custody.
And Raymond Keller finally asked for a deal.
He would tell prosecutors everything.
But only if they guaranteed he would never be placed anywhere near Amanda Wellman.
When Hale asked why a former detective was so terrified of a sixty-five-year-old woman, Keller gave a simple answer.
“Because you people still think Amanda cleans up Daniel’s messes.”
Hale waited.
Keller shook his head.
“You’ve got it backward.”
“What do you mean?”
“Daniel was useful.”
“For what?”
Keller leaned toward the recorder.
“Amanda chose the people.”
The room went silent.
“What people?”
“The ones with money.”
“The Briarwood patients?”
“Some.”
“What happened to the others?”
Keller swallowed.
“Some people wouldn’t sign.”
“Sign what?”
“Trust transfers. Property authorizations. Powers of attorney.”
“And if they refused?”
Keller looked toward the camera.
“They became Daniel’s problem.”
The brother I had feared my entire life had suddenly become something worse.
Not the mastermind.
May you like
The weapon.
And my mother had been holding the handle.
