Chapter 4 - The Shadows of St. Agnes
By midnight, the mansion was sealed with yellow federal crime scene tape.
I was taken to St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital to have my collarbone and arm checked by doctors after the strain at the staircase. Agent Vance sat in the armchair beside my hospital bed, two federal guards posted outside my door.
"The grand jury returned a ninety-count indictment an hour ago," Vance said, setting a fresh cup of coffee on my bedside table. "Vivian and Julian are being held without bail at the federal detention center. But Clara... we ran into a wall."
I adjusted my ice pack and looked at him. "What kind of wall?"
"We recovered the digital financial ledgers from her subterranean server," Vance explained, pulling out his tablet. "We can trace the money—fifty-two million dollars laundered through Panamanian banks. But the physical adoption records from St. Agnes Orphanage from twenty-six years ago... they aren't in the system."
My heart sank. "She kept physical books. Paper ledgers."
"If we can't prove where those children were sent, we can only charge her with financial fraud and attempted murder," Vance said grimly. "Without the physical paper trail connecting her to the international buyers, the human trafficking charges won't stick in court. Her high-priced defense team will claim she was just a dirty accountant, not a monster who sold children."
I closed my eyes.
I could still smell the damp stone walls of St. Agnes Orphanage. I could still hear the heavy iron doors shutting at night. I remembered the red ribbon Vivian had tied in my hair before handing me over to the woman with bruised knuckles.
I wasn't doing this just to put Vivian in prison for trying to kill me. I was doing this for the children whose names had been erased.
"She didn't burn them," I said softly, opening my eyes.
Vance frowned. "How do you know?"
"Vivian is an extreme narcissist," I said. "She doesn't destroy her trophies. She keeps them. She kept my mother’s wedding ring in a safe for twenty years just to remind herself that she took my father away from her."
"We swept the mansion with thermal imaging and ground-penetrating radar," Vance said. "There are no hidden safes left."
"Not at the mansion," I said, a realization dawning on me. "The old family estate in Blackwood Falls. The summer house my father bought before he died."
Vance hesitated. "That property was abandoned fifteen years ago after the fire."
"That's why it's perfect," I said, leaning forward despite the dull throb in my shoulder. "Vivian never sold it because it was tied up in my father's contested estate. She used that house to store everything she couldn't risk keeping in the city."
Vance stood up, pulling his jacket on. "I'll get a search warrant for Blackwood Falls."
"No," I said, holding up my good right hand. "You won't find it without me. The house has a subterranean root cellar beneath the carriage house. My father built it during the Cold War. It's lined with lead and reinforced steel—ground radar won't pick it up."
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Vance looked at my wheelchair parked in the corner of the room. "Clara, you're broken. You have a fractured collarbone, a cast on your arm, and your legs are in braces."
I looked Vance straight in the eyes. "I don't need my legs to remember where my father hid the key."
