Chapter 2 - The Death Certificate
Daniel did not open the envelope immediately.
Police searched first.
The study windows were locked from inside. No one was behind the curtains, desk or bookcases. There was no obvious route through which a person could have escaped.
Yet someone had been there.
The rotating chair proved almost nothing scientifically.
The bracelet proved much more.
Daniel recognized the small repair mark beside the clasp. Claire had broken it while gardening three years earlier.
Noah recognized it too.
“Mom always wore that.”
Vanessa sat silently in the living room.
Daniel finally opened the envelope.
Inside was a photocopied death certificate.
CLAIRE ELISE CARTER.
Daniel felt his stomach tighten.
Date of death:
April 17.
Seven months earlier.
The same day Claire disappeared.
Cause:
undetermined complications following accidental trauma.
Facility:
St. Matthew Private Medical Center.
Daniel stared.
No hospital had ever contacted him.
Claire had never been admitted under her own name.
And no body had been returned.
At the bottom appeared a physician’s signature:
DR. ELLIOT MARSH.
Daniel knew the name.
Marsh had been his father’s private physician.
But Dr. Marsh had died two years earlier.
“This is fake.”
Vanessa whispered:
“Maybe.”
Daniel looked at her.
“You knew this existed.”
Three weeks earlier, Vanessa admitted, she received a photograph of the same certificate.
An unknown man called afterward.
He told her the original was somewhere inside Daniel’s study.
“What did he want you to do?”
“Find it.”
“Why?”
“He said Claire hid something with it.”
“What?”
Vanessa looked down the hallway.
“I don't know.”
Daniel did not believe her.
Then forensic examination produced the first surprise.
The registration number on Claire’s certificate was real.
It belonged to an actual death recorded on April 17.
But not Claire Carter.
The deceased was a seventy-three-year-old woman named Margaret Ellis.
Someone had taken a genuine death registration and substituted Claire’s identity.
The certificate had never been officially filed under Claire’s name.
It was manufactured evidence.
But evidence for whom?
Daniel looked at Vanessa.
“Someone wanted somebody to believe my wife was dead.”
Vanessa shook her head.
“No.”
“What?”
Her voice dropped.
“I think someone wanted Claire to believe she was already dead.”
Daniel stared.
Vanessa explained that two days before Claire disappeared, Claire called her.
She sounded terrified.
She said:
“They've already written the ending.”
At the time Vanessa thought she meant her investigation.
Now she wasn't sure.
“What investigation?”
Vanessa hesitated.
Daniel stepped closer.
“What was Claire investigating?”
Before Vanessa could answer, Noah appeared in the doorway.
He was holding one of the broken photographs from the console.
“Dad?”
Behind the family photograph was another picture.
Someone had hidden it inside the frame.
Claire stood in Daniel’s study.
Beside her was Vanessa.
Between them lay the same fake death certificate.
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And written on the back in Claire’s handwriting:
IF I DISAPPEAR, ASK VANESSA WHY SHE HELPED THEM DECLARE ME DEAD.
