Chapter 8 - THE PACKAGE AVA NEVER GAVE HIM
Michael asked Ava one question.
“What was in the package?”
We were in a federal interview room.
No restaurant.
No drama.
Just fluorescent light and four exhausted people.
Ava looked at her hands.
“I don't know.”
Michael laughed quietly.
“You signed for it.”
“Yes.”
“Then?”
“I gave it to my father.”
That hurt him more than the affair for a second.
I watched it happen.
“Why?”
“Because he told me Thomas had stolen company documents.”
“My father was dead.”
“I know.”
“You were dating me.”
“Yes.”
“And you gave my mail to your father.”
She cried.
“Yes.”
“What was inside?”
“I never opened it.”
William Marsh had.
Federal agents executed a warrant on his penthouse that morning.
Inside his safe:
Thomas Collins's package.
Unopened?
No.
Resealed.
Inside were soil reports, photographs, structural studies and a handwritten letter to Michael.
Son,
If you receive this, then I failed to convince William Marsh to stop.
Michael covered his mouth.
Ava stared at the table.
The letter continued:
Do not let them tell you safety is negotiable because people with money can afford better lawyers than the dead.
Michael's eyes filled.
Thomas had tried to expose contamination beneath the old Calder waterfront site.
The same site where Meridian Tower was later built.
There it was.
The accident had not begun with a retaining wall.
The entire project sat above previously contaminated and unstable ground.
Michael's foundation design accounted for known soil conditions.
What he did not know was that William Marsh and the Calder Group concealed older underground voids and industrial waste pockets to avoid tens of millions in remediation.
That was why they changed the retaining system.
Not only savings.
The correct system risked exposing the buried contamination during deeper excavation.
Three workers died because people wanted the ground to remain secret.
Michael whispered:
“My father knew.”
“Yes.”
“And Ava's father buried it.”
Ava sobbed.
“I didn't know.”
Michael looked at her.
“You knew enough to steal his package.”
She closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
Accountability again.
Painful.
Necessary.
Then investigators found something worse.
Thomas Collins had not died naturally.
His medical records showed an unusually high concentration of potassium in his postmortem blood test.
Ignored at the time.
Possibly accidental.
Possibly not.
William Marsh's private driver visited Thomas's house the night before he died.
Ava's face went white.
“My father killed him?”
No one answered yet.
Evidence first.
Then Daniel's phone call came from the hospital.
“Richard contacted me.”
I stared.
“What did he want?”
“The Rivera recording.”
“He knows we have copies.”
“He wants the original.”
“Why?”
Daniel whispered:
“Because the original has another conversation after the collapse.”
“What conversation?”
“Richard and William.”
Michael stood.
“What did they say?”
Daniel hesitated.
“They talk about Thomas Collins.”
Michael stopped breathing.
The original audio had been in Daniel's possession.
He had hidden it from Richard.
One act of cowardice?
Or one act of conscience?
Maybe both.
“Where is it?” I asked.
Daniel looked at me through the video call.
“In our apartment.”
Of course.
“Where?”
“Inside the blue first-edition copy of The Great Gatsby.”
I almost laughed.
My favorite book.
He had hidden evidence of death inside something I dusted every week.
Federal agents retrieved it.
The audio continued beyond what James's scheduled email contained.
Richard:
Meridian is turning into Collins all over again.
William:
Thomas should have taken the money.
Richard:
Instead he threatened us.
William:
And now he's dead.
Pause.
Richard:
Don't say that like I had anything to do with it.
William laughed.
Then:
You handled Rivera. I handled Collins.
Ava screamed when she heard it.
Her father had just confessed.
Michael sat motionless.
Then the recording continued.
A third voice entered.
Older.
Calm.
Senator Calder.
He said:
Enough. Both deaths disappear, or all of us do.
The conspiracy reached higher.
Then the final sentence:
Use Daniel's wife if you need a clean account.
Me.
Again.
My marriage had been selected as infrastructure before I knew the game existed.
Then the federal agent beside me said:
“Professor Lane, there is something else.”
They had analyzed the handwriting on the offshore account application.
The forged signature was not Richard's.
Not Daniel's.
Not Ava's.
It matched samples from my university office.
Someone at Columbia had forged my name.
And only one administrator had access to my employment files.
May you like
Dean Charles Whitmore.
My oldest professional mentor.
