Chapter 43: The Appointment

Investigators followed the old appointment entry to a clinic that had since merged with a larger medical group.
The surviving records were incomplete, but a former administrator remembered treating a young man without identification after a workplace accident.
He had been brought by an older man who paid cash and refused to provide a permanent address.
The patient had an injured wrist and appeared confused about how he had reached the clinic.
The administrator recalled that he repeatedly asked to call his father.
The older man said the patient was recovering from a concussion and would be taken home.
The clinic recorded only the first name Edward.
Eli’s full name was Elijah Mercer.
The resemblance of the names could be coincidence.
But the appointment date matched the payment entry from the pump station.
Vega requested any surviving documentation and asked the administrator to review photographs of several young men.
She identified Eli as the person who most closely resembled the patient, while acknowledging the limits of an eleven-year-old memory.

Chapter 44: The Man Who Paid Cash

The clinic administrator identified Malcolm Rourke from a photograph as the older man who accompanied the patient.
Her confidence increased when she saw a second photograph showing Malcolm wearing the distinctive gold-rimmed glasses she remembered.
She also recalled that the patient seemed frightened when Malcolm approached.
The administrator had asked whether he wanted to speak privately, but he declined after glancing toward the doorway.
She regretted not pressing the question.
Vega told her that memories can change and that she should describe only what she genuinely recalled.
The administrator agreed and signed a carefully limited statement.
The new evidence suggested Malcolm may have been involved in moving Eli after the night at the railway building.
It did not establish where Eli went afterward.
I stared at the clinic date and tried to imagine my brother alive weeks after we believed he vanished.
The thought hurt more than anything I had heard before.

Chapter 45: Vivian’s Bargain

Vivian requested another interview after learning that investigators had found the pump station.
Her attorney accompanied her, but she insisted on speaking in her own words.
She said Malcolm returned home before sunrise on the night Eli disappeared.
His clothes were wet, and his right hand was cut.
He told her Eli had escaped through the drainage passage and would be found soon.
Vivian urged him to call police.
Malcolm said that admitting the meeting would expose the foundation fraud and destroy their family.
Several days later, he told her Eli was alive and being cared for by people outside Bellhaven.
He showed her a medical receipt but never allowed her to meet the boy.
“Did you believe him?” Vega asked.
“I believed what would let me sleep,” Vivian answered.
She admitted that when my father began asking questions, she met him secretly and offered small pieces of information that Malcolm approved.
She claimed she thought the meetings might eventually persuade Malcolm to tell the truth.
In practice, they kept my father from learning anything definite.
“You knew he was suffering,” I said when Vega later summarized the interview.
“She knew,” Vega answered.
“And she chose silence.”