Chapter 4 - The Road to Blackwood
Blackwood wasn’t a person.
It was a place.
More specifically, it was an old industrial district forty miles southeast of Columbus where abandoned factories, storage warehouses, and vehicle lots stretched between railroad tracks and two-lane roads.
Grant Mercer owned property there.
Not directly.
That took Detective Ellis three hours to uncover.
The land belonged to an LLC named GMR Holdings.
GMR Holdings belonged to another company.
That company ultimately traced back to one of Grant’s dealerships.
By late afternoon, Ellis had enough for a search warrant.
I wanted to go with them.
She refused.
“You are a witness and the father of a potential victim.”
“My daughter’s mother might be there.”
“And if she is, we will find her.”
The logic made sense.
I still hated her for saying it.
Emily and I spent the next several hours at my house under police protection.
She showered three times.
The first time because she was dirty.
The second because she said she still felt like Grant’s house was on her skin.
The third time she simply sat on the bathroom floor with the water running.
I stayed outside the door.
“Dad?”
“I’m here.”
“Do you believe me?”
My throat tightened.
“Every word.”
“I should’ve told you before.”
“No.”
“I knew Grant was bad.”
“You’re ten years old, Em.”
“But—”
“You are ten.”
I crouched outside the bathroom door even though she couldn’t see me.
“Adults were supposed to protect you. You were never supposed to figure out how to protect us.”
For a long moment, there was only running water.
Then she said, “Mom figured it out.”
“What?”
“The cars.”
I leaned closer.
“What about them?”
Emily turned off the water.
A minute later she emerged wrapped in a towel.
We sat on the hallway floor.
She told me that several weeks earlier, Rebecca had gone to one of Grant’s dealerships after forgetting her wallet in his office.
While there, she heard two men arguing behind a closed service door.
One of them said Ryan Cole had “kept copies.”
The other said Grant had already fixed that problem.
Rebecca began investigating.
She had worked in accounting before Emily was born.
Numbers made sense to her.
Grant’s numbers didn’t.
He had dealerships reporting vehicles stolen that had supposedly already been sold.
Insurance payouts appeared alongside transfers from shell companies.
Cars with one vehicle identification number were being shipped under another.
Ryan Cole had apparently discovered it first.
Rebecca became convinced his death was connected.
“Why didn’t she call police?” I asked.
Emily’s expression became strangely adult.
“She said bad people look normal when they know important people.”
That sounded exactly like Rebecca.
The doorbell rang.
I nearly jumped.
Officer Ross checked outside before opening it.
Detective Ellis stood there.
I searched her face.
“You didn’t find Rebecca.”
“No.”
My hope collapsed.
“What did you find?”
At Blackwood, police discovered a fenced vehicle storage lot containing seventeen luxury cars.
Six had altered identification plates.
Four had been reported stolen.
Inside an office, investigators found stacks of title documents, burner phones, and shredded insurance paperwork.
Grant’s criminal exposure had just become very real.
But Rebecca wasn’t there.
They did find something belonging to her.
One earring.
Silver.
Small emerald stone.
I recognized it instantly.
I had given Rebecca that pair on our eighth wedding anniversary.
For reasons neither of us ever discussed, she kept wearing them even after our divorce.
The earring had been found beside a metal chair in the storage office.
There was blood nearby.
Preliminary testing suggested the same blood type as Rebecca.
Emily began crying.
I held her while Ellis continued.
“There’s something else.”
A traffic camera caught Rebecca’s car at 12:42 Friday night.
Traveling south.
Grant’s SUV was less than a minute behind.
At 1:06 a.m., another camera recorded only Grant’s SUV returning north.
Rebecca’s car never returned.
That night, police issued a statewide bulletin for her vehicle.
At 7:14 Tuesday morning, it was found.
A county road worker spotted tire marks near an embankment outside Lancaster.
Rebecca’s car lay nearly forty feet below the road.
Driver’s door open.
Windshield cracked.
Blood on the steering wheel.
No Rebecca.
I reached the crash site an hour later despite Ellis telling me not to.
I stayed behind the tape.
The car looked impossibly small at the bottom of the ravine.
Investigators moved around it.
A state trooper searched the woods.
Dogs followed a scent from the driver’s door to the creek.
Then lost it.
“Could she have walked away?” I asked Ellis.
“Possibly.”
“Could someone have moved her?”
“Possibly.”
I hated that word.
Inside the car, police found Rebecca’s purse.
Her wallet.
Her driver’s license.
Her wedding ring.
And her phone, smashed beneath the passenger seat.
Grant’s attorney immediately released a statement.
His client was devastated.
He prayed for Rebecca’s safe return.
He denied involvement in her disappearance.
He described the Blackwood property as a leased facility managed by employees without his direct oversight.
Watching Grant’s televised statement made something inside me burn.
He stood outside his attorney’s office looking solemn.
He even asked the public to “bring Rebecca home.”
Emily saw ten seconds before I turned off the television.
“He does that,” she whispered.
“Does what?”
“Makes his face sad when he isn’t sad.”
That evening, Detective Ellis returned with my phone.
The threatening messages had not originated from it.
Someone had spoofed my number.
That cleared one problem.
Then she gave us another.
Grant had disappeared.
His lawyer claimed he didn’t know where he was.
Police went to his home.
Empty.
His downtown apartment.
Empty.
Dealership offices.
Nothing.
A man who had voluntarily returned to challenge us had vanished the moment police discovered Blackwood.
Which meant he believed they were getting close.
At 11:30 that night, Emily came downstairs carrying her stuffed fox.
It was old, orange, and missing one plastic eye.
Rebecca had bought it when she was four.
Emily sat beside me.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I remembered why Mom took me to the bank.”
I straightened.
“What do you mean?”
“She didn’t go inside.”
“Then why were you there?”
“She used the boxes outside.”
“Safe deposit boxes?”
Emily nodded.
“She had an envelope.”
“Did she put it there?”
“No.”
“Then what did she do?”
Emily opened the Velcro seam along the back of her stuffed fox.
From inside, she removed a folded receipt.
I stared.
“Where did you get that?”
“Mom gave it to me.”
Printed across the top were the words:
MIDWEST SELF STORAGE.
Unit 417.
My pulse jumped.
The blue key.
Not a bank.
Not a locker.
A storage unit.
Ellis had the key in evidence.
I called her immediately.
Police reached Midwest Self Storage shortly after midnight.
Emily and I remained home.
At 12:46, Ellis called me.
“Ethan.”
Her voice sounded different.
“What did you find?”
“Records.”
“What kind?”
“Enough to connect Grant directly to Blackwood.”
I closed my eyes.
“And Rebecca?”
“No.”
My chest sank.
Then Ellis continued.
“But there’s a laptop in the unit. It has several video files.”
“What videos?”
“One was recorded by Rebecca Thursday night.”
My entire body went cold.
“What does she say?”
Ellis hesitated.
“She says if anything happens to her, Grant is responsible.”
I gripped the phone.
“And?”
“There’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“The last file wasn’t recorded Thursday.”
I stopped breathing.
“It was recorded Saturday morning.”
Saturday.
After Rebecca’s car supposedly crashed.
“What’s on it?”
“Rebecca.”
Alive.
She was sitting somewhere dark.
She looked injured.
But alive.
May you like
And before the video ended, she leaned toward the camera and said six words.
“Ethan, don’t trust the crash site.”
