Chapter 4 - THE SECOND WRISTBAND
The little plastic bracelet felt unnervingly light in my palm, brittle with age, the blue hospital lettering faded to a ghostly gray. Baby Boy David. November 14, 1998.
Marcus was thirty-two years old, born in 1994. He had no brothers. Evelyn had paraded her status as a mother of an "only son and sole heir" through every charity gala and country club luncheon in the tri-county area for three decades.
"Who is David?" I demanded, looking from the plastic band to Miriam’s pale face.
Miriam pulled her coat tighter around her throat, her eyes darting toward the stained-glass doors of the chapel. "I only know what I overheard when Evelyn's husband, Thomas, died six years ago. There was an older boy born four years after Marcus. The family told everyone the baby died of respiratory distress three days after delivery. St. Jude had a private maternity wing back then, paid for by the Vance foundation."
"If he died," Rachel said, her voice taut, "why does Evelyn have a private terminal storage key attached to his birth record?"
"Because Thomas Vance didn't leave his estate to Marcus," Miriam whispered. "Thomas knew what Marcus was. Even as a teenager, Marcus was cruel. He killed two neighborhood dogs and Thomas had to pay off the county sheriff. When Thomas drew up his secret will, he left forty percent of the Vance enterprise to Marcus, but the controlling voting shares were placed in an irrevocable trust for a second son—or that son’s legitimate, living heirs."
My hand moved instinctively to my stomach, resting over my unborn daughter.
"Evelyn has spent twenty-eight years pretending that boy didn't exist so Marcus could control the dividends," Miriam said. "If your child is born a girl, Marcus retains his nominal share. But if you walk away from Marcus and take your father's transit money, Evelyn’s creditors will audit the holding company. They’ll open Thomas’s original probate file. And once probate opens, that storage vault at Union Terminal has to be inventoried by the court."
"What's in the terminal vault, Miriam?" I asked.
"The original adoption release," a deep, gravelly voice echoed from the rear of the chapel.
Rachel instantly stepped in front of my wheelchair. Miriam gasped, dropping her satchel onto the carpeted aisle.
Standing in the shadow of the entryway was Detective Carl Vance. He was Marcus’s estranged uncle—Thomas’s younger brother—a retired homicide investigator who had cut ties with Evelyn a decade ago. He wore a rumpled corduroy sport coat over a black turtleneck, his detective badge clipped unceremoniously to his belt loop.
"Uncle Carl?" I breathed, my heart slamming against my ribs.
Carl walked slowly down the aisle, his boots thudding softly on the runner. He didn't look at Miriam; his eyes were fixed on the silver key in my hand.
"I got a call from the chief of security upstairs," Carl said quietly, stopping three paces from my chair. "They told me my nephew was causing a riot outside room 412, waving threats around about county liens. I figured Evelyn wouldn't be far behind him."
Rachel didn't lower her guard. "Whose side are you on, Carl? Because the last time I saw you at Thanksgiving, you sat at the opposite end of the table and didn't say three words to Brianna."
"I sat at the other end of the table because I couldn't stomach watching Evelyn pour poison into my brother’s house," Carl said, his voice flat and worn. He looked down at my cast, his jaw muscles clenching until a vein pulsed along his temple. "He used a hammer, didn't he?"
"You saw the post?" Rachel asked bitterly.
"I didn't have to see the post," Carl said, reaching into his coat pocket. He pulled out a battered, black-and-white polaroid photograph from thirty years ago and handed it to Rachel.
The photograph showed a younger Evelyn, her hair styled in an immaculate French twist, standing beside a bruised, crying young girl whose arm was bound in a sling.
"That was my sister, Clara," Carl said. "Marcus didn't invent this cruelty, Brianna. Evelyn raised him on it. Clara threatened to expose Thomas’s embezzlement back in ninety-two, and two days later she 'accidentally' fell down the service stairs at Crestview. The family covered it up, paid off the local precinct, and shipped Clara off to an institution in Vermont."
Carl leaned down, resting his calloused hands on the armrests of my wheelchair, looking directly into my eyes. "David didn't die, Brianna. My brother Thomas couldn't stand Evelyn’s cruelty anymore, so when David was born with clubfoot, Evelyn wanted him hidden away in a home. She said the Vance family didn't display broken children. Thomas paid a young couple from Pennsylvania to take the baby straight from the delivery ward. But Thomas kept the legal papers in locker 418 at Union Terminal."
"Why didn't you stop them years ago, Carl?" I asked, tears of anger stinging my eyes. "You were on the police force!"
"Because Thomas swore the papers were destroyed to protect the boy from Evelyn," Carl admitted, shame cracking his gruff facade. "I thought David was safe, living an ordinary life somewhere far from this sickness. But six months ago, Marcus started getting letters from an architectural firm in Pittsburgh. An associate engineer named David Miller was hired by the township to survey the transit corridor through Crestview."
The pieces slammed together with brutal clarity.
"Marcus didn't just want the three-million-dollar buyout," Rachel realized out loud, her eyes widening. "He realized the surveyor was his brother. If the transit purchase went through, David Miller would be sitting across the table from the county clerk, reviewing the original property deeds!"
"And if David saw Thomas’s signature on the township easements," Carl finished, "he’d start asking questions about who his real parents were."
Suddenly, the chapel’s internal telephone mounted on the wall near the altar began to buzz with a short, urgent ring.
Carl stepped over, lifted the receiver, and listened for five seconds. His expression hardened into stone.
"Hang up and lock the side doors," Carl told the caller, then slammed the receiver back onto its hook.
He turned toward us, pulling a set of heavy steel keys from his belt. "Marcus didn't leave the hospital grounds. He paid off an orderly from linen services to let him into the maintenance tunnels beneath the emergency room. He's heading for the utility elevator right behind this chapel wall."
Rachel grabbed the handles of my wheelchair. "Where do we go?"
"We don't run," Carl said, stepping toward the heavy oak exit door that led to the secure records basement. "We go down to the old records annex. That's where Thomas kept the 1998 birth logs before the hospital digitized them."
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"Why?" I asked, gripping the velvet box against my stomach.
"Because," Carl said, looking at the chapel doors as a heavy metal latch clicked open from the corridor outside, "the birth certificate in the hospital safe isn't signed by a doctor. It was witnessed and signed by Evelyn herself—and Marcus's name isn't on the trust as an heir at all."
