Chapter 3 - THE SECRET ARCHIVE
Inside the interview room, the air had grown thick and warm.
Rachel sat down across from Eli again. She had brought a paper cup of warm water from the cooler in the hall, setting it on the table between them.
Eli hadn't touched his cup. His eyes were still fixed on the dark spot on the Formica.
"He went home, didn't he?" Eli asked softly.
"Yes," Rachel said. "Detective Brooks wouldn't let him take you. You're safe here tonight, Eli."
"Nobody is safe from Mark," Eli said. His tone was not dramatic; it was flat, stated as a physical law of the universe, like gravity or rain. "Mark knows how to make people disappear without leaving anything behind. That's his job."
Brooks sat down in the chair next to Rachel, leaning his heavy elbows on the table.
"What do you mean, that's his job, Eli?" Brooks asked.
Eli finally looked at the detective. "He works for the county land registry office. He handles old deeds. He knows which houses are empty because the owners died without heirs. He knows which roads don't have cameras. He knows where the old limestone quarries are behind the river."
Brooks pulled out his small notebook and a pen. "Eli, the recording inside the doll... where did you get that recorder?"
Eli reached down and rubbed his right wrist where the skin was pale and thin.
"It belonged to my dad," Eli said. "My real dad. He died when I was five, but Mom kept his old office stuff in a box in the attic. When Mark moved in last year after Mom got sick, he didn't know about the box."
"Why did you start recording him?" Rachel asked gently.
Eli looked down at his shoes. "Because Mom told me to."
Rachel felt a cold shiver run down her spine. "Your mother?"
"Before she went to the hospital for the last time," Eli said, his voice dropping so low that Brooks had to lean forward to catch the words. "She knew she wasn't coming back. She told me... she said, 'Mark isn't who he says he is, Eli. If anything happens to me, don't let him take Lucy to the farm.'"
"What farm?" Brooks snapped, his pen hovering over the paper.
"The old dairy farm near the river," Eli said. "His family owned it thirty years ago. It's been abandoned since the state built the new highway bypass."
"Is that where Lucy is?" Rachel asked, leaning across the table, her hands clenched into tight fists. "Is Lucy at the farm?"
Eli looked directly into Rachel's eyes.
"Lucy isn't a baby anymore," he said.
The room fell completely silent.
Rachel blinked, her brain struggling to parse the sentence. "What?"
"Lucy isn't a baby," Eli repeated. His small, dark eyes didn't waver. "Lucy is four years old."
Brooks slammed his pen down on the notebook. "Eli, the recording we played... there was a baby crying on that tape. A newborn baby. A woman was screaming that she wouldn't keep anything down."
"That wasn't my mom," Eli said softly. "And that wasn't Lucy crying."
"Then who was it?" Rachel gasped.
Eli took a deep breath, his small chest rising and falling beneath the giant gray sweatshirt.
"Mark brings them to the house," Eli said. "Pregnant women. Women who don't have anywhere else to go. Women from the shelter in the city or girls who run away from the foster homes down in Raymond County."
Rachel felt the room tilt slightly. The air in her lungs suddenly felt thick, like water. She reached out and grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself.
"He keeps them in the basement behind the furnace room," Eli continued, his voice calm, clear, and horrific in its precision. "He pays them money—or he gives them pills—and then when the babies are born, people come in dark cars at night and bring envelopes of cash. Then the women leave."
"God in heaven," Rachel whispered, her hand instinctively flying to her own swollen stomach, pressing hard against her unborn daughter.
Brooks was already on his feet, his chair screeching violently against the linoleum floor.
"Eli," Brooks said, his face dark with a terrifying, white-hot rage that he was barely holding back. "The woman on that tape... when was that recorded?"
"Three days ago," Eli said. "Her name was Clara. She came from the bus station in the city. She had her baby on Tuesday night in the basement. But the baby was sick. She wouldn't stop crying, and she had a high fever."
"And Mark?" Brooks rasped.
"Mark said a sick baby was bad business," Eli whispered. "He told Clara that if she took the baby to a hospital, the police would arrest her for taking pills while she was pregnant. He said he had a buyer in Chicago who had a private doctor who would fix the baby."
"And the doll?" Rachel asked, tears finally spilling over her eyelashes and running down her cheeks. "Why did you bring me the doll?"
Eli looked at Rachel's stomach—at the high, round shape beneath her bathrobe.
"Because I saw you at the grocery store last week," Eli said simply. "I saw you buying baby clothes by yourself. I saw you sitting in your car in the parking lot crying."
He reached out his small, thin hand and touched the vinyl sleeve of Rachel's robe.
"Mark told Clara that he was taking the baby to a woman down the road who lost her husband," Eli said softly. "He told her he was giving the baby to you."
Rachel choked on a gasp, a sound of pure horror escaping her throat. "What?"
"He was going to frame me," Rachel whispered, the horror blooming in her mind like black ink in clear water. "If the baby died... if the sick baby died..."
"He was going to leave the baby on your porch," Eli said nodding once. "And then he was going to call the police and tell them that a crazy, pregnant widow on Pine Ridge Road stole a baby from a girl at the bus station."
"Why?" Brooks demanded. "Why frame Mrs. Bennett?"
"Because Mrs. Bennett's husband was Daniel Bennett," Eli said, looking up at the detective. "Daniel worked at the water facility. Daniel was the one who found the old tax records for the farm near the river before he died."
Brooks froze.
His eyes drifted slowly from Eli to Rachel, his mind connecting the pieces of a dark, sprawling puzzle that had been hiding in plain sight in a small town for years.
"Daniel..." Rachel whispered, her hands shaking uncontrollably. "Daniel was looking at land deeds before the accident. He told me... he told me he found something strange about the county property transfers near the river."
"Daniel wasn't killed by a drunk driver," Eli said softly, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp truth that cut through the quiet room like a blade. "Mark paid a guy two thousand dollars to hit his car on Route 9."
May you like
Rachel stopped breathing.
The room around her seemed to dissolve into a terrifying, weightless void. The sound of her own heartbeat roared in her ears, loud as a freight train crossing a river in the dead of night.
