Chapter 3 - A Name on the Visitor Log
By Monday morning, the DeLuca Freight offices looked exactly as they always had: polished floors, framed photographs of trucks, receptionists speaking softly into headsets. The familiarity irritated me.
Nothing in the lobby acknowledged that my past had split in half over a cup of coffee.
Briggs waited beside the elevator. “We should talk about Friday.”
“We will. Bring Owen. And the café's owner, if he's willing to speak to an outside investigator.”
His jaw tightened. “You want to make an official issue of it?”
“I told you to move a man against his will. That was my decision. You're responsible for the force you used. I won't pretend this didn't happen.”
“Victor says the man is dangerous.”
“Victor isn't the police.”
In my office, I asked our controller, Priya Shah, to review the $382,000 relocation transfer without Victor. The money had moved to an escrow service for distressed property deals. The transaction used my digital certificate, but Priya warned that didn't prove I authorized it.
“That means I signed it?” I asked.
“No. It means the system recorded a credential associated with you. We need an independent log review to know who actually submitted it.”
I stared at the screen. My signature appeared as a neat black line, with a timestamp of 9:13 a.m. on the Thursday Daniel had visited the credit union.
“Where was I at nine thirteen?”
“Your calendar shows a union arbitration meeting. The conference room has a visitor log.”
Within an hour, Priya located a photograph of me beside three union representatives at 9:11. We were holding a poster about a new truck maintenance apprenticeship. I could not have been standing at the credit union two miles away two minutes later.
“That proves the photograph Briggs showed me wasn't me,” I said.
“It doesn't prove Daniel signed anything either,” Priya replied.
She spoke plainly, the way too few people did around me.
Victor arrived without knocking. Dark blue suit, immaculate silver hair, leather folio held against his chest.
“You should have informed me before initiating an audit,” he said.
I closed the dashboard. “Why?”
“Attorney-client privilege. Exposure. We have an impostor using your face.”
“Who found him?”
“A private investigator.”
“What's the investigator's name?”
Victor set his folio down. “Enzo, you're exhausted. Your father's death has made you a target.”
“Answer the question.”
“Harold Pike.”
I asked Priya to write it down. Victor watched her pen with a dislike he did not bother to conceal.
“Daniel Mercer works in a school,” I said. “He sent letters about a damaged roof at our Kent Avenue warehouse. Did you see them?”
“Routine nuisance correspondence.”
“That warehouse is next to a playground.”
“The property is vacant. Our consultants have addressed its condition.”
“Then we can show the reports to the district.”
He leaned closer. “Your father handled matters like these privately. He understood the value of discretion.”
I thought about Rosa's plastic sleeves and the way she kept flattening the same creases in a hospital form.
“My father also told me to read what I signed,” I said. “Maybe I should have started with the documents he signed.”
Victor's face became very still.
He placed a prepared nondisclosure agreement on my desk. A section near the bottom named Daniel Mercer and Rosa Mercer. The paper was dated three days before the café incident.
“Why are their names here?” I asked.
“Because exposure is predictable.”
“You knew Daniel was my brother.”
“I knew he claimed to be.”
“Before you called him a fraud.”
Victor said nothing.
I stood and opened the office door. “We're done until outside counsel reviews the file. Do not contact the Mercers, and preserve your messages and records. Priya will send that instruction in writing.”
He gathered the folio without touching the agreement. “You think removing me will save you from the press?”
“I think everyone deserves to know what's been done in their name.”
When he left, Priya waited until the elevator light went dark.
“There's one more thing,” she said.
She turned her laptop toward me. The visitor log for the previous month showed two entries by Harold Pike, the investigator Victor had named. Both visits listed the same guest: Daniel Mercer.
But I knew Daniel had never been inside our office. Priya enlarged the scanned signatures. On one form, the handwriting was ordinary block letters. On the other, the line marked GUEST was blank, yet the security system still showed a completed check-in.
“Someone entered his name without him,” she said.
Someone had entered Daniel's name into company systems without his knowledge. I wondered what else the records were designed to make me believe.
May you like
At four, a photograph arrived from an anonymous number. Daniel stood outside his school, carrying a toolbox. A circle had been drawn around his head.
Underneath were six words: Tell your brother to stop asking.
