Chapter 14 - The Man Who Ran
Victor disappeared before we landed in Chicago.
His office was empty. His home was empty. His company car sat at O'Hare with the keys inside.
But he had taken one thing from Blackwell headquarters.
The master vendor token.
With it, he could authorize transfers from dozens of subsidiary accounts.
Nolan calculated our exposure at more than forty million dollars.
"Freeze everything," I said.
"That will stop payroll too," he warned.
I thought of June on the pantry floor.
"Then manually release employee wages first. Everyone else waits."
For once, the people at the bottom would not pay for what executives had done.
June came to headquarters carrying the blue notebook in a clear evidence bag. Police had returned it after imaging the pages.
"There's a number in here we missed," she said.
Caleb had written it beside the words RIVER SAFE.
It was not a bank account.
It was a storage unit number at a marina on the Calumet River.
Inside the unit, investigators found payroll backups, bribery ledgers, and a small hard drive sealed in plastic.
Victor had used the space for years.
The hard drive contained recordings.
One was dated the night before Caleb died.
Caleb's voice: "If anything happens to me, Victor Lang and Stephen Cross are moving cash through labor accounts."
Another voice answered.
Evelyn.
"I believe you."
June covered her mouth.
Then a third voice entered the recording.
My father.
He had been alive then.
"You two have no idea what you're touching," he said.
My skin crawled.
The recording ended with my father ordering Caleb to go home and promising to "fix it."
He never did.
Nolan found one final audio file.
Recorded two years later, after my father's death.
Victor speaking to Stephen.
"Evelyn is going to Marcus tomorrow."
Stephen: "Then stop her."
Victor: "I can scare her."
Stephen: "Scared people still talk."
A long silence.
Then Victor said, "No bodies. Not again."
The recording clicked off.
June looked at me.
"Not again?"
Before I could answer, Rachel's phone rang.
She listened, then went pale.
"They found Victor."
"Where?"
"Lake Forest."
"At his house?"
"No."
May you like
She looked at me.
"At Evelyn's grave."
