Chapter 13 - Rebecca Had Hidden The Biggest Link
Rebecca Sloan didn't deny it.
When Detective Bennett confronted her, she sat behind her conference table and removed her glasses.
“Yes. Sophie lived with me and Ethan.”
Marcus stared.
“You let my daughter into this building without telling me the teenager connected to my dead wife's investigation lived in your home?”
Rebecca's face tightened.
“I didn't know Sophie had contacted Maya.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No. I expect you to investigate it.”
Bennett asked why Rebecca had hidden the foster relationship.
Rebecca answered carefully.
“Because Sophie's juvenile history is private.”
“That doesn't explain withholding a conflict of interest.”
“No.”
“Then explain.”
Rebecca looked at Marcus.
“Because I was ashamed.”
Years earlier, Rebecca had accepted referrals from Thomas Walsh.
At first, she believed he was helping desperate families find specialized care.
Then she noticed a pattern.
Thomas exaggerated urgency.
He discouraged second opinions.
He received money through consulting arrangements.
Rebecca severed ties.
Later, when Sophie entered foster care, Rebecca and Ethan took her in partly because both felt responsible for failing to stop Thomas sooner.
Marcus looked at Ethan, who had joined the interview with counsel.
“You two were married?”
“Were,” Ethan said.
They had divorced three years earlier.
Another hidden relationship.
Another reason their stories overlapped.
Rebecca continued.
When Claire contacted her about Maya, Rebecca recognized the surname Walsh.
She should have refused the case.
Instead, she saw an opportunity to determine whether Thomas's patterns had continued through Claire.
“That is unbelievably unethical,” Marcus said.
“Yes.”
“Why not call police?”
“Because I had suspicions, not evidence.”
“So you used my daughter to test a theory?”
Rebecca looked ashamed.
“Yes.”
Marcus stood.
Bennett stopped him with a quiet look.
Anger was justified.
Losing control would help nobody.
Rebecca said she received the forged authorization from the fake Marcus email and believed, briefly, that he had consented.
She called the fake phone number and spoke to a man claiming to be Marcus.
“Did you record it?” Bennett asked.
Rebecca nodded.
The recording was played.
A man's voice answered questions about Maya.
He described her as increasingly unstable.
He authorized an assessment.
Marcus listened.
“That isn't me.”
Ethan went pale.
Rebecca looked at him.
“What?”
Ethan shook his head.
Bennett noticed.
“Mr. Grant?”
Ethan rubbed his forehead.
“I know the voice.”
Marcus turned.
“Who?”
Ethan whispered, “Caleb Walsh.”
Claire's dead brother.
Marcus felt the room tilt.
Claire had said Caleb was dead.
Bennett immediately verified the record.
Caleb Walsh had died eighteen months earlier in a motorcycle crash in West Virginia.
The recorded call was dated three weeks ago.
Impossible.
Unless the voice had been generated.
Or the death record was wrong.
Forensic audio analysis took two days.
The answer was stranger.
The recording was not synthetic.
It had been assembled from older audio clips.
Words and phrases cut together.
Someone had access to recordings of Caleb.
Claire knew who.
“My father recorded everything.”
Thomas Walsh had recorded business calls for years.
Those archives were supposed to be destroyed after his death.
They weren't.
Bennett traced access to the records-management company.
Ethan's company.
Again.
Ethan denied creating the fake call.
Then investigators found the login.
It came from a user account belonging to his former employee.
A woman named Denise Harper.
Marcus stared at the name.
Denise.
The birthday decorator.
May you like
The woman who had “found” Maya's wish card.
She had been inside his house from the beginning.
