Chapter 4 - Someone kept my identity alive
My credentials had been used forty-seven times after my resignation.
Someone inside the Attorney General’s Office had preserved my digital identity.
Case searches.
Evidence-room access.
Sealed warrants.
Thorne investigation files.
All under:
Daniel Hayes.
On paper, it looked as though I had secretly continued investigating Arthur for years.
I hadn't.
Someone had built a second version of me inside government systems.
Why?
Detective Lena Ortiz from the state police asked the same question.
She had been the person I messaged before driving to Silver Street.
We'd worked together fifteen years earlier.
She studied the access logs.
“This isn't just identity theft.”
“What is it?”
“Insurance.”
Someone could expose those logs anytime and make me appear responsible for whatever had been accessed or removed.
Then Julian's attorney did exactly that.
At his hearing, the defense claimed I had orchestrated the raid because of a seventeen-year vendetta against Arthur.
They demanded suppression of evidence.
Judge Nathan Cole listened.
The same judge whose initials appeared in Audrey's ledger.
He released Julian on bond.
Audrey nearly broke when she heard.
“He's coming back?”
“Not near you.”
A protective order existed.
But paper doesn't stop everyone.
That evening, an envelope arrived at my house.
No return address.
Inside was a photocopy of Rebecca's death certificate.
Across it someone had written:
She should have stopped too.
I called Ortiz.
Forensics collected it.
Then my doorbell camera captured something strange.
The person delivering it wore a hood.
But before leaving, they deliberately looked directly into the camera.
An older woman.
Silver hair.
I knew her.
“Dad?”
I couldn't answer.
Audrey looked at the image.
“Who is she?”
“Margaret Vale.”
My former supervisor.
The woman who ordered me to close the Thorne investigation.
According to public records, Margaret had died five years earlier.
Yet there she was.
Standing outside my house.
Then Audrey enlarged the image.
Margaret was wearing a necklace.
May you like
Rebecca’s necklace.
The one removed from my wife's body before her funeral.
