Chapter 3 - The Investigation of the Apartment
By 5:00 A.M., the quiet neighborhood around the apartment building was alive with the flashing blue and red lights of the Grand Rapids Police Department. Two patrol cars were parked horizontally across the entrance to the courtyard, their tires throwing up wet slush as the officers set up a preliminary perimeter around the maple tree.
Liam sat in the back of an investigative cruiser, his hands wrapped around a paper cup of lukewarm coffee that he hadn't touched. His clothes were damp from the snow, his face pale and scratched from a desperate, fruitless search along the rocky banks of the river. The dive team had already been notified, but the river’s current was dangerously high due to the recent autumn rains, and they couldn't deploy their boats until sunrise.
Detective Marcus Vance stepped out of the apartment building's glass lobby and walked toward the cruiser. He was a short, stocky man with graying hair and a heavy leather coat that smelled of old tobacco. He tapped on the window, and Liam slid the door open.
"Mr. Carter," Detective Vance said, pulling out a small notepad from his pocket. "We’ve finished the initial walkthrough of your unit. Your sister, Gwen, is currently upstairs providing a formal statement to my partner."
"Did you find her?" Liam asked, his voice cracking, his eyes wide with a desperate, pathetic hope. "Is there any sign of her along the upper bridges?"
"The highway patrol is checking the highway overpasses, but so far, nothing," Vance said, his eyes scanning Liam’s face with a clinical, unreadable neutrality. "But I need to ask you about the state of your apartment, Liam. My technicians are inside right now, and things aren't matching up with the story your sister is telling."
Liam frowned, his mind struggling to focus through the fog of exhaustion and grief. "What do you mean? I told you what happened. We had an argument about the money, I locked her on the balcony, and when I went to let her in, she was gone. She left the note."
"Your sister claims the argument was entirely about financial fraud," Vance said, leaning against the doorframe of the cruiser. "But when we examined the sliding glass door, we found something strange. The lock mechanism didn't break from the outside. It was melted."
"Melted?" Liam repeated, the word sounding foreign in his ears.
"Yes. Someone applied a high-temperature chemical compound—likely a commercial-grade thermite paste—directly to the brass latch from the outside of the balcony," Vance explained, watching Liam’s reaction closely. "And that trail of water you mentioned? It didn't come from your wife's clothes. Our field test shows the liquid contains high concentrations of river silt, industrial runoff, and a specific type of algae that only grows in the deep drainage channels beneath the old shipping docks."
The image of the wet trail returned to Liam's mind—the broad, smeared footprints that led from the inside front door to the balcony.
"If the lock was melted from the outside," Liam whispered, a sudden, cold terror gripping his spine, "then someone climbed up the brickwork. Someone came onto the balcony while she was out there."
"That’s what the physical evidence suggests," Vance agreed, his face hardening. "But here’s the problem, Mr. Carter: the front door of your apartment was deadbolted from the inside, and the security cameras in the main lobby show no one entering or leaving your floor between midnight and three in the morning. The only people who had access to that unit were you, your wife, and your sister."
"Are you saying I did something to her?" Liam shot out of the seat, spilling the cold coffee across the cruiser's floorboards. "I loved her! I was trying to protect our future!"
"I’m saying that your wife’s mother isn't dead, Liam," Detective Vance said quietly, pulling a printed document from his file folder and holding it up to the light.
May you like
Liam froze. "What?"
"We verified the social security number associated with the bank transfers you found on her phone," Vance said. "The $8,000 didn't go to a mortuary or a medical board. They were routed directly into a private corporate account owned by Vance Global Holdings—a private security firm based out of Detroit. And the registered owner of that account is a woman named Eleanor Vance. Your wife’s biological mother. Who is currently alive, well, and listed as a fugitive by the federal government for industrial espionage."
