Chapter 12 - The Body That Wasn’t Claire
Hale stopped defending himself.
“I found her after she fell,” he said.
“You left her bleeding.”
“I thought she was dead.”
“You’re a doctor.”
“I checked.”
“Then you knew she wasn’t.”
His face collapsed.
“Yes.”
Vanessa stepped toward him.
“You monster.”
“I was afraid.”
Claire had been breathing when Hale found her.
Adrian Voss was still inside the house.
Hale believed helping Claire would expose his role in creating the continuity program.
So he walked away.
Ten minutes later, he came back.
Claire was gone.
The blood remained.
“Who moved her?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
This time I believed him.
“Then how did you get the body for the death certificate?”
Hale looked at Vanessa.
Vanessa whispered, “Marcus.”
He continued anyway.
“There was a woman brought into St. Vincent’s two days later. No identification. Similar age. Similar height. Severe facial trauma after a car fire.”
My stomach turned.
“You used her body.”
“I used her record.”
“DNA?”
“Claire gave me a stored sample from an old biopsy. I substituted it.”
Vanessa sat down.
“So a stranger was buried as Claire.”
“Yes.”
“Who was she?”
“I never knew.”
That answer was unacceptable.
We searched the hospital archive through Hale’s old credentials.
The unidentified woman had been admitted under Jane Doe 417.
A paramedic had uploaded one photograph before the record was altered.
Vanessa gasped.
I knew the face.
Not well.
But I had seen her at family dinners.
At company Christmas parties.
At my father’s funeral.
Her name was Elena Voss.
Adrian Voss’s wife.
Hale whispered, “Oh God.”
Suddenly the fake death certificate made sense in a different way.
Claire had not only used a stranger’s death.
She had used the death of the man hunting her’s wife.
Why?
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
A woman breathed on the other end.
Then Claire whispered:
“Daniel, Elena wasn’t Adrian’s wife.”
I closed my eyes.
“Claire?”
“She was ours.”
The line went dead.
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