Page 8 of Quiet Protector
This is the first time I’m hearing about any theories.
Breathing out, Phillipa slips into the chair next to me while pondering on what to tell me. I assume she goes for honesty when she mutters, “The wire transfer receipt in Melody’s file has you worried that she was sold, but what if she wasn’t sold… more stolen? And the wire transfer receipt in her file was payment for an attempted recovery?”
When she spots nothing but confusion on my face, she digs into her briefcase for the umpteenth time the past sixteen-plus hours. “Do you remember how Tobias’s fridge was covered with photos?” I jerk up my chin, my stomach too swishy to issue a worded reply. “I took a closer look when I was investigating Tobias’s case.” She slides the picture of Isabelle and Katarina I took a snapshot of with my cell phone across the table. “Do you know who they are?” I lift my chin again since words are still alluding me. “What about the child in the far back corner of this photo?”
My heart whacks out a funky tune when she hands me an almost identical picture. The child next to Katarina isn’t Isabelle. Only half of her face is exposed since she’s been removed part the way through the photograph being snapped, and she’s barely a toddler, but I’m confident it’s Melody. I’d recognize her face anywhere.
With my thrusting chest revealing that I’m clicking on to what she’s implying, Phillipa opens the file she used when interviewing Melody at her office weeks ago. “There isn’t a single photo of Melody before the age of four inanyof her family snaps. She mentioned during our interview that her father hid her photos when her grandmother came to visit.” My head bobs when I recall reading that on the transcripts Phillipa logged in the Bureau mainframe weeks ago. “Then, there’s this.” She pushes a blown-up photograph of a stairwell across the table. There are a dozen or so portraits lining the wall. “This is from the brownstone the Greggs owned before they moved to Saugerties.”
Shock rains down on me. “How did you get this photo? I haven’t unearthed any information about the Greggs before they arrived at Saugerties.”And believe me, I’ve been looking.
Phillipa drags her teeth over her lower lip before murmuring, “I have my resources.” After a quick swallow, she keeps my head in the game we’re playing instead of the old one I continually slip into of late. “Once again, these photos show Melody at around the age of four or five… all except this one.”
Confusion bombards me when she points to a portrait at the base of the stairs. “That’s not Melody. The facial structure is wrong.” I could be mistaken, but the child has boyish features.
“It isn’t Melody,” Phillipa discloses, putting me out of my misery. “It’s Henry Gottle, IV.”
“The fourth? As in Henry’s son?” I’m taken aback when she nods. “That can’t be right. Why would the Greggs have a portrait of Henry’s son in their home?” Although I appear to be asking questions, I’m more summarizing than seeking answers. It’s how I operate.
Phillipa doesn’t realize that, though, “I don’t know. I was hoping Melody would solve the riddle for me, but she appeared as shocked as you are now.”
“Did you tell her this is Henry’s son?” I point to the evidence I plan to authenticate the instant I catch my breath.
She shakes her head. “No. At the time, I didn’t realize what I was stumbling toward.” She slouches low into her chair as her brows pull together. “Come to think of it, I was put on suspension only hours after disclosing my findings to my supervisor.”
I thought her late suspension for Crombie’s death was weird but shrugged it off. She’s the Director’s daughter. That makes her virtually untouchable, but I guess this goes even higher than the head of the FBI. This extends all the way to the top rung of the ladder. It’s just a criminal entity totem pole instead of the agency sworn to take them down.
“We have photographic evidence, a wire transfer receipt in a file relating to the Greggs, and knowledge Henry knows who Melody is. That’s already damning, Brandon, but this… this is the icing on the cake.”
The printout Phillipa hands me is badly water-damaged. Hardly any of the ink is legible, but it isn’t needed to decipher what it is. It’s the result of a hearing test conducted on a female child born the same month and year as Melody. The name the report is addressed to is smudged, but I can work out the last four letters—ttle.
That’s not close to Gregg.
“I asked an audiologist to decipher the results for me,” Phillipa discloses, her tone softening with sympathy. “He advises the child tested was born profoundly deaf.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Two out of every thousand children born in the US have some type of hearing impediment.” I slump into a seat, so I can cradle my throbbing head in my hands. My brain is so overloaded, it feels like it’s about to seep out of my ears. “She also looks like her mother, Phillipa. Those genes can’t be forced.”
My head pops up from my hands when she asks, “What about her dad? Does she look like him?”
“What are you implying? Are you saying Liam isn’t Melody’s dad?”
Guilt fills her eyes when she replies, “I’m not implying anything. I’m just looking at the facts as they’re presented to me.”
“Facts can be wrong, Phillipa. Evidence can be wrong.”
She glares at me as if I have a second head. “Evidence doesn’t lie—”
“It does when it’s put in the wrong hands!” I interrupt, shouting. “I’m not okay with this. This feels wrong. You didn’t see Wren with Liam. She wouldn’t have hurt him like you’re suggesting. She loved him.”Kind of how Melody loved me before she cheated on me.
“There’s an easy way to untwist the knot in your stomach, Brandon.” I realize I need to watch her more closely when she says, “Give me a strand of hair from her brush in your safe, and I’ll run it through CODIS.”
Even with my brain pounding my temples, I fiercely shake my head. “No. I’m not going to do that.”
“It will give us answers.”
“And it will have me breaking Melody’s trust! I’m not doing it, Phillipa. I won’t deceive her like—”
“She deceived you?”
