Chapter 4 - THE GAS IN THE WALLS
We reached my house behind two fire engines.
Emergency lights painted the neighborhood red and white. Firefighters wearing breathing equipment carried Harold from the side entrance on a stretcher.
His face was pale.
Shirley screamed his name and tried to run toward him, but an officer held her back.
“He’s breathing,” a paramedic said. “We’re taking him to Emory.”
Three agents who had remained inside the house were treated with oxygen. None had lost consciousness.
The carbon monoxide had been detected early because I had installed a smart environmental system after renovating the property.
Everett apparently did not know that I had upgraded the sensors.
Investigators found the source behind the wall of the guest bedroom.
A flexible hose had been connected to an old fireplace gas line and routed through an electrical vent. The system could be activated remotely.
The guest bedroom was where Shirley and Harold were supposed to sleep.
But the gas had spread into the hallway and living room.
Had Everett’s original plan succeeded, both of his parents could have died during their first night in my home.
I would have been alone with them.
The public records would identify me as the owner of a care company accused of medication abuse.
My forged signatures would suggest financial desperation.
And surveillance footage could be edited to show me entering their room.
It was a perfect frame.
Almost.
Agent Price stood beside the exposed wall.
“The installation is professional,” he said. “This was done during construction.”
“I renovated this wing two years ago.”
“Who supervised the contractors?”
“Everett.”
Naomi looked at me.
“He began planning this two years ago?”
“Maybe earlier.”
A technician recovered a small black receiver from inside the wall. The activation signal had been transmitted through a private cellular network.
The device contained a partial location record.
The last command had come from a moving vehicle less than three miles away.
Police established roadblocks.
They found the vehicle abandoned near a shopping center.
Inside were one of Everett’s phones, a laptop, and Vanessa’s cream-colored coat.
There was blood on the passenger seat.
Not enough to prove someone had died.
Enough to terrify me.
Agent Price examined the car.
“Either they fought, or someone wants us to think they did.”
A message appeared on the abandoned laptop every time investigators attempted to access the drive.
RETURN THE LEDGER.
I had no idea what ledger it meant.
Shirley did.
When Agent Price showed her the message at the hospital, she stopped breathing for several seconds.
“What ledger?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You reacted to the phrase.”
“I’m upset. My husband was nearly killed.”
Agent Price leaned closer.
“Your son attempted to kill him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We traced the signal to Everett’s device.”
Shirley turned toward the window.
“Mrs. Norris,” I said, “what is the ledger?”
She looked at me sharply.
I rarely called her anything except Shirley.
Perhaps hearing the distance in my voice finally convinced her that loyalty to Everett would not save anyone.
“It belonged to my father,” she whispered.
Her father, Walter Duvall, had owned a small pharmacy chain in rural Georgia during the 1980s and 1990s. Shirley had always described him as a successful businessman who lost everything because of unfair regulations.
The truth was darker.
Walter had operated an illegal distribution network supplying controlled medication to private clinics and nursing homes. He maintained a handwritten ledger recording cash payments, false patient names, and political bribes.
After his death, the ledger disappeared.
“Everett found it in my attic eight years ago,” Shirley said. “He told me he destroyed it.”
“Why would someone want it now?”
“Because some of the names are still powerful.”
Agent Price asked whether she remembered any of them.
She named a former state senator, two physicians, and the founder of a pharmaceutical distribution company called Vale Medical Logistics.
Vanessa’s father had founded Vale Medical Logistics.
The affair suddenly seemed less romantic.
Vanessa had not entered Everett’s life by accident.
Their families had been connected through the ledger for decades.
“Where is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
Agent Price did not believe her.
Neither did I.
Harold regained consciousness shortly after midnight.
The first thing he said was not a question about Everett.
It was a warning.
“Don’t let Shirley go home.”
She stared at him from beside the bed.
“What are you talking about?”
Harold removed his oxygen mask.
“She has the ledger.”
The room became completely silent.
He explained that Shirley had hidden it years earlier inside a locked sewing case. Everett discovered only photocopies.
When the care-company investigation began, Shirley moved the original ledger.
“Where?” Agent Price asked.
Harold looked at me.
“In Stella’s house.”
Shirley stood abruptly.
“I was protecting it.”
“You hid evidence in my home?”
“I hid it somewhere Everett would never search.”
“Where?”
She closed her eyes.
“Inside your father’s memorial cabinet.”
My father’s ashes, architectural awards, and private journals were kept inside a custom-built wooden cabinet in my home office.
I felt physically ill.
Everett had surrounded me with evidence from the moment we married.
We returned to the house under armed protection.
The cabinet appeared undisturbed.
An investigator removed the back panel and discovered a narrow compartment.
Inside was a black leather ledger.
The first pages contained handwritten names and payments dating back thirty-five years.
The final pages were recent.
Everett had continued the record.
One entry was dated three weeks earlier.
S. Norris — final transition — December 14.
My planned death had a date.
December 14 was eleven days away.
Underneath it was the name of the person assigned to complete the job.
Vanessa Vale.
At that exact moment, the doorbell camera sent an alert to my phone.
Vanessa was standing on my front porch.
Her face was bruised.
May you like
Blood covered one sleeve.
And she was holding a gun.
