Chapter 15 - The Chain of Custody
The Lancaster County Courthouse was quiet at six in the evening. In the office of District Attorney Evelyn Reed, three file boxes labeled *CARTER, JAMES — 1994 INQUIRY* sat opened on the long conference table.
"Margaret Carter," Reed said, sliding a certified birth certificate and an old Pennsylvania driver’s license across the mahogany wood. "Disappeared November 28, 1994. Three days before Thanksgiving. James told the borough police that she had packed two suitcases, emptied their joint savings account of four thousand dollars, and taken a bus to St. Louis with an unnamed man she met at a church bazaar."
"And the police accepted that?" Marcus asked, his arms crossed tightly across his chest.
"The police chief in 1994 was James’s second cousin, Thomas Carter," Reed said coldly. "Thomas signed off on the missing persons report, stamped it 'Voluntary Departure,' and sealed the file sixty days later. But here's what wasn't in the borough file."
She opened the second box and pulled out a small glass specimen jar containing a deformed piece of metal—identical in size, weight, and copper-wash patination to the lead fragment Dr. Mehta had extracted from my skull.
"This was recovered from the trunk of Margaret Carter’s Buick LeSabre," Reed said. "Found in the long-term parking lot at Harrisburg International Airport two weeks after she vanished. The car had been wiped clean with mineral spirits. But the state police lab tech who processed the vehicle found this slug lodged in the rear seat frame. It had passed through two layers of upholstery and four inches of foam."
"A through-and-through," Vance said, leaning against the wall.
"A through-and-through that struck something soft before it hit the seat frame," Reed confirmed, looking directly at me. "The bullet that hit you wasn't a warning, and it wasn't a ricochet. It passed through Margaret’s shoulder while she was holding you against her chest, lost half its kinetic energy, and then entered your temporal bone. That’s why the velocity was low enough for you to survive."
I reached up and pressed my fingers against my scar. For thirty-four years, I had believed I was an only child who had driven his father to madness by being clumsy, by being weak, by having a skull that couldn't bear the weight of a porcelain platter.
"He kept me," I said, my voice barely audible over the hum of the heating vent. "Why didn't he finish it? If he killed her and hid her under the basement floor, why did he take me to the hospital? Why did he raise me?"
"Because of the trust," Reed replied, opening the third box. "Margaret’s grandfather was Silas Hoffman. The lumber fortune out of Union County. The entire estate—the land, the Duke Street property, the timber royalties from twelve thousand acres in the northern tier—was tied up in an irrevocable spendthrift trust that bypassed Margaret and vested entirely in her surviving biological issue upon their thirty-fifth birthday."
She paused, letting the silence fill the room.
May you like
"If you died before your thirty-fifth birthday without issue, the entire trust dissolved and reverted to James Carter as the surviving widower," Reed said. "Your thirty-fifth birthday is next month. On January fifteenth."
***
