Chapter 3 - The Crime Scene in Room 412
By two in the morning, the police had arrived, but Mason had already secured the primary scene using his private security firm, Apex Tactical. He met Detective Marcus Vance in the anteroom of VIP Suite 412, the room where Claire had delivered the triplets only hours prior.
Detective Vance was a veteran homicide investigator brought in quietly by the chief of police—a personal acquaintance of Mason’s. Vance was a thick-set man with tired eyes and a beige trench coat that had seen better decades. He carried a small notepad and looked around the luxurious suite with an expression of practiced skepticism.
"Your security team did a good job locking down the physical room, Mr. Sloane," Vance said, snapping on a pair of nitrile gloves. "No entry or exit logs have been altered since midnight. But a hospital room during a triple delivery is like a train station during peak hours. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, cleaning staff, family members... everybody comes and goes."
"The toxin wasn't in the room beforehand," Mason said, his voice flat and precise. "I had my security detail perform a sweep of the suite twenty-four hours before Claire was admitted. Every surface, every sealed medical pack was audited. The poison was brought in during the delivery."
Vance walked over to the bedside table, where several used medical trays sat under plastic covers. "Dr. Bennett says the chemical was introduced through an secondary IV push line. That means whoever did it needed three things: access to the room, professional medical knowledge to manipulate an IV without setting off immediate air-embolism alarms, and access to a restricted agricultural compound."
"Look at the access logs," Mason demanded, pointing to a digital tablet mounted beside the door frame. "Every medical staff member wears an RFID badge. Who scanned into this room between 8:00 PM and 9:15 PM?"
Vance pulled up a printout from his pocket. "Nine individuals. Dr. Bennett, three primary obstetrics nurses, two anesthesiologists, one neonatal specialist, the floor manager... and your Chief Operating Officer, Vanessa Vale."
Mason’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Vanessa was in the waiting lounge."
"According to the RFID log, her guest badge scanned into the outer anteroom of Suite 412 at 8:42 PM," Vance said, pointing a gloved finger at the paper. "Right when the third baby was being delivered and the medical team was distracted by the neonatal resuscitation table."
Mason remembered that exact moment vividly. The third baby, little Arthur, had been born slightly pale, and the nurses had rushed him to the warming station in the corner of the room to clear his airways. The entire room's attention had shifted for roughly ninety seconds. Mason himself had been holding Claire’s hand, staring at his newborn son, crying tears of relief.
During those ninety seconds, someone had stepped up to the IV pole positioned on the left side of Claire’s bed—the side hidden behind the privacy curtain.
"Vanessa said she was in the family lounge," Mason murmured, his mind piecing together the timeline. "She told me she had just arrived from the corporate office."
"We’ll talk to her," Vance said smoothly. "But don't go jumping to conclusions yet, Mr. Sloane. In cases involving high-net-worth individuals, the motive usually falls into two categories: corporate control or personal inheritance. Who stands to gain if your wife passes away?"
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Mason felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. Under the terms of his family trust, which held fifty-one percent of the voting shares in Sloane Infrastructure Group, Claire was the sole primary trustee in the event of Mason’s death or incapacitation. But if Claire were to die, and the newborns were deemed legally incompetent due to age, the temporary control of the trust’s voting power would revert to an executive board panel—a panel led directly by Vanessa Vale and Mason’s primary financial backer, Richard Sterling.
"She doesn't gain directly," Mason said, his tone turning dangerously low. "She gains structural control of my company."
