Chapter 5: The Digital Trace
The basement level of the hospital hummed with the steady whir of industrial air handlers and server racks.
In a secluded storage room behind the administrative archives, Marcus sat before a folding table illuminated by the glow of three portable monitors. Cables snaked across the concrete floor, tapped directly into the city's private fiber-optic junction.
Gabriel opened the heavy metal door, carrying two paper cups of black coffee. He set one beside Marcus’s keyboard.
"Tell me you have something that will hold up in a public courtroom," Gabriel said, pulling up a rusted folding chair.
Marcus took a sip of the scalding liquid without pausing his keystrokes. "The Cayman wire transfer was routed through three shell companies, Boss. Standard corporate evasion. But the person who authorized the release made one critical, amateur error."
"What error?"
"They used an encrypted VPN hosted on a private server owned by Vance Medical Supplies—a subsidiary of Julian's foundation," Marcus explained, bringing up a split-screen display of encrypted server logs. "Whoever authorized the payment was sitting inside the executive boardroom on 4th Avenue at three forty-five yesterday afternoon."
"Can we put Julian at the keyboard?"
"Better," Marcus said, tapping a command that brought up a timestamped security still. "We have the building's internal biometric access logs. Julian didn't type it himself. His private estate manager, Evelyn Cross, scanned into the terminal five minutes before the transfer was executed. And ten minutes later, she made a direct call to the nurse's burner phone."
Gabriel stared at the glowing monitor, the glowing digits reflecting in his eyes.
"Evelyn Cross," Gabriel mused. "She’s been with the Vance family for thirty years. She knows where every body is buried."
May you like
"If we pick her up, Julian will declare it a kidnapping and send the state police," Marcus warned.
"We aren't going to kidnap her," Gabriel said, standing up and pulling his leather jacket tightly around his shoulders. "Evelyn loved Sophia. She was the one who left Sophia’s childhood scrapbooks on our doorstep after the family disowned her. She didn't do this out of cruelty; she did it out of fear. And fear can be answered with the truth."
