Chapter 3 - THE BROTHER WHO CALLED FIRST
Caleb Thorne arrived at the hospital shortly after eight.
He was thirty-eight, broad-faced like Elias in the driver’s-license photo, wearing work boots and a jacket embroidered with THORNE RECOVERY & TOWING.
Harper refused to see him.
That mattered more to Sarah than Caleb’s explanations.
“I’m her uncle,” he told Dana Kelley. “I should be allowed in.”
“Harper has asked not to see you.”
“She’s seven.”
“She still gets to say she’s frightened.”
Caleb looked at Sarah.
“You put that in her head?”
Sarah’s patience disappeared.
“I met her unconscious on a floor three hours ago.”
His expression faltered.
For the first time, he asked whether Harper was okay.
Sarah noticed it had taken him four minutes.
Lieutenant Sloan arrived and moved the conversation into a consultation room.
Sarah remained because she had made the initial welfare entry.
Caleb’s story sounded reasonable at first.
Elias had become “paranoid” during the previous month.
He claimed police were harassing businesses.
He claimed Mercer was protecting someone.
He planned to take Harper to his sister Rachel’s home near Scranton.
Caleb told him not to.
“Why?”
“Because Rachel has enough problems.”
“That’s not what Harper says you argued about.”
Caleb’s eyes shifted.
Sloan caught it.
“What does Harper say?”
Sarah answered.
“That you told police where Elias was.”
Caleb leaned back.
“I called Cole.”
Mercer.
Not the police.
Cole.
“Why?” Sloan asked.
“Because Elias was worked up.”
“About what?”
“He’d convinced himself he’d uncovered some huge scandal.”
“What scandal?”
Caleb rubbed his palms together.
“Our tow company gets police rotation calls. Accidents, impounds, DUI seizures. Elias thought Mercer was steering certain jobs to us.”
Sarah stared at him.
“Was he?”
Caleb’s jaw hardened.
“That isn’t why Elias disappeared.”
Sloan said, “Answer the question.”
Caleb looked down.
“Yes.”
The room changed.
“How much money?” Sloan asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You own the company.”
“My father started it. Elias and I inherited it together.”
There it was.
Family money.
Police access.
A missing father.
Caleb continued quickly.
“Elias wanted to report Cole. I told him if he did, we could lose the rotation contract and maybe the business.”
“So you called Mercer.”
“I wanted him to talk Elias down.”
Sarah stared.
“You gave a police sergeant the location of a man planning to report him.”
Caleb looked sick.
“I didn’t think Cole would hurt him.”
Nobody spoke.
Then Sloan asked:
“When was the last time you saw Elias?”
Caleb answered too quickly.
“Four nights ago.”
Sarah watched his face.
He knew immediately that he’d made a mistake.
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The official missing-person report said Caleb had last seen his brother six days earlier.
The first serious inconsistency had just entered the room.
