Chapter 4 - The Offer to Disappear
Marco's lawyer arranged a formal interview after the recording was authenticated sufficiently to support questions. Marco acknowledged speaking with Henry but said the offer to "disappear" referred to temporary relocation while legal concerns were assessed. He claimed Henry feared retaliation from company executives and asked for help reaching a private attorney. Marco said he provided a rental car and recommended a motel, then lost contact.
"Why didn't you tell his family?" Brooks asked.
"He told me not to. He said someone had access to his communications. I believed it would put them at risk."
"You let them search for twelve years."
Marco looked down. "I made a choice. I don't know if it was the right one."
Mei heard the summary and felt anger so sharp she had to walk outside before replying. Marco had sat in her shop and asked for his stained suit as though he was a stranger. He had known Henry was planning to leave and let her confront him without acknowledging the past.
She wanted to call him and demand an explanation. Brooks asked her not to approach him. There were matters investigators still needed to test: whether his account matched the payment trail, who controlled the memory card, and whether Henry actually reached the motel. Mei agreed. She would not give Marco another opportunity to frame the story in a private conversation she couldn't verify.
Lily asked whether the truth about Henry might be shameful. Mei said it might. He could have made mistakes while trying to do something good. He could have left voluntarily for a time and then been harmed. He could have been involved in financial wrongdoing himself. They needed to allow the evidence to reveal a real person rather than protect an idealized photograph.
Together they opened Henry's old files with a copy supplied by investigators. Some contained ordinary invoices, inventory lists, and spreadsheets. Others showed discrepancies between cargo bills and company logs. Henry had flagged repeated payments to a subcontractor connected to Marco's business. The amount was large enough to be serious, but financial fraud couldn't be proven merely by unusual numbers.
One spreadsheet also contained payments to a small business registered in Mei's name. She stared at the account details. The shop had received no such funds. She asked Carla to check old deposit records and contacted her bank for archival statements. It was humiliating to discover her business might have been used in records she never saw.
Carla found no corresponding deposits. The ledger may have been fabricated, altered, or referencing a different account. Mei provided the documentation and asked Brooks whether the company could have used her name to discredit Henry if he reported the payments. The agent said it was one possibility under investigation, not an established motive.
During this period Mei made a costly mistake. A reporter approached the shop and asked whether Marco had threatened her. Still angry, she said he knew more about Henry than he'd ever admitted. The quote appeared online beside a photograph of the shop. Within hours strangers called to demand that she expose the entire company. A few threatened her because they believed she had stolen from it. Lily's college classmates saw the article and began asking whether Henry was a criminal.
Mei issued a short statement through counsel clarifying that the investigation was ongoing and declining to make further accusations. She apologized to Lily for creating attention before they understood the records. Lily told her it was hard enough being the daughter of a missing man without becoming the daughter of a public scandal.
That night a woman in her sixties knocked at the shop door. She introduced herself as Judith Lane, Henry's former assistant. She carried a folder of employment records and said she had been afraid to come forward because company managers controlled her retirement benefits.
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"Henry told me to hold these if he didn't return," she said. "I thought he was hiding with you. When you said he was missing, I was too frightened to tell you I had them."
Mei took the folder but did not open it. She called Brooks, explaining what Judith brought. Judith agreed to deliver the records directly. Before leaving, she said one thing Mei couldn't forget: "Your husband was supposed to meet someone at the motel. It wasn't Marco. It was a woman from the company's audit committee."
