Chapter 4 - The Woman in the Grave
Dorian did not speak for almost a full minute.
Nobody did.
The basement felt colder.
Zelda watched his face.
She had seen families receive devastating information many times.
Cancer.
Brain death.
A child lost in surgery.
There was always a moment when language stopped working.
Dorian Ferraro, a man people crossed streets to avoid, looked no different from anyone else in that moment.
“What do you mean it wasn’t Bianca?” he asked.
Robert Dane wiped tears from his face.
“I never saw her after they put her in the car.”
“That does not answer me.”
“I heard Heller and Voss talking three days later.”
Heller stepped forward.
“He is mentally unstable.”
Dane laughed bitterly.
“Four years you let me carry this.”
Heller’s face changed.
Dane looked at Dorian.
“They needed a body.”
Zelda felt her stomach turn.
Dane continued.
“There had been an unidentified woman in the morgue. Similar age. Similar height. Severe facial trauma from an accident.”
Dorian’s eyes went empty.
“They switched her.”
“I think so.”
“You think?”
“I didn’t see it.”
Dorian turned toward Heller.
Heller backed away.
Zelda caught Dorian’s arm.
“Do not.”
His muscles were rigid.
“He helped bury a stranger under my sister’s name.”
“And if you kill him, we may never find Bianca.”
That stopped him.
The possibility hung in the air.
Bianca might not have died four years ago.
She could have.
Probably had.
But maybe not.
Dorian looked at Dane.
“Where did Voss take her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think.”
“They used one of the hospital transport sedans.”
“Plate?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Destination?”
Dane shook his head.
“I heard something later.”
Dorian waited.
“New Hampshire.”
Heller suddenly ran.
Not far.
One step.
Two.
The security officer beside him tried to block Dorian.
Chaos exploded.
Zelda moved away from the struggle.
Dane shouted.
Dorian’s men appeared from the corridor.
Within seconds, Heller was restrained against the wall.
Dorian stared at him.
“New Hampshire.”
Heller breathed hard.
“I don’t know anything.”
Zelda looked at him.
“You knew she did not die outside.”
He said nothing.
“That alone makes you part of this.”
Heller looked toward her.
His expression shifted.
“You should be more worried about yourself.”
Dorian’s voice became cold.
“Wrong answer.”
Zelda stepped between them again.
She was beginning to feel ridiculous.
“Stop.”
Dorian looked at her.
“Do you intend to protect every person who threatens you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I intend to keep useful witnesses conscious.”
Dane made a strange choking sound that might have been laughter.
Dorian stared at Zelda.
Then looked away.
He was learning.
Slowly.
Heller was turned over to state investigators Dorian trusted more than Providence police.
Zelda did not ask how a crime boss had “trusted investigators.”
She decided there were some questions that did not improve sleep.
The bigger problem was the grave.
Bianca Ferraro had been buried in a private family cemetery outside Providence.
Dorian had never allowed exhumation because there had seemed no reason.
Now there was.
DNA testing confirmed the truth thirty-one hours later.
The woman in Bianca’s grave was not related to Dorian.
The unidentified victim was eventually traced to a twenty-seven-year-old woman named Angela Vale, reported missing by an estranged sister in Connecticut.
Dorian stood beside the cemetery when the result arrived.
Zelda had not intended to be there.
He had asked.
Not ordered.
Asked.
That distinction mattered.
Dorian looked at the open grave.
“I stood here every Sunday for four years.”
Zelda remained beside him.
“I talked to her.”
He laughed once.
There was nothing happy in it.
“I told a stranger things I couldn’t tell anyone alive.”
Zelda looked toward the trees.
“Maybe the words were still for Bianca.”
“That sounds like something people say to make grief prettier.”
“Yes.”
He looked at her.
She continued.
“Grief is ugly enough. Sometimes prettier is allowed.”
For several seconds he said nothing.
Then he asked, “Do you think she could be alive?”
Zelda answered carefully.
“Yes.”
He looked at her.
“I also think you need to prepare for the possibility that she isn’t.”
He nodded.
That was why he asked Zelda things.
She did not sell hope.
She did not sell despair.
She told the truth as far as she knew it.
The external drive from the basement became the next key.
It was encrypted.
Dorian had people who could access it.
Zelda did not ask what else those people did.
The first recovered file contained pediatric research records.
St. Aubberon had participated in a private clinical study involving children with rare neurological disorders.
On paper, the study tested nutritional support.
In reality, several children received an unapproved cognitive stimulant.
Consent documents had been falsified.
Bianca discovered it because two of her pediatric patients developed nearly identical cardiac abnormalities.
She compared their charts.
Then found the hidden study codes.
Zelda scrolled through the recovered notes.
Bianca had been methodical.
Dates.
Names.
Initials.
Payment transfers.
One note read:
IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME, DORIAN MUST NOT TRUST L.V.
Leonard Voss.
Another:
M.H. KNOWS.
Malcolm Heller.
And one final line.
THEY MOVED THE GIRL TO ASHBROOK.
Zelda looked at Dorian.
“Ashbrook.”
He immediately called one of his men.
There were three Ashbrook facilities in New England.
One was a psychiatric hospital.
One was a rehabilitation center.
The third was a private long-term neurological residence in northern New Hampshire.
Owned four years earlier by a subsidiary connected to Leonard Voss.
Dorian was already moving.
Zelda stood.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
She glared.
“We have covered this.”
“No.”
“Bianca was a nurse. The records involve medical conditions. If she’s alive, she may have neurological injury.”
Dorian stopped.
That part mattered.
“She may not know you.”
His face changed.
Zelda continued more gently.
“She may be disabled. She may be frightened. She may not understand what happened.”
Dorian looked toward the floor.
“I am still coming.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
Then nodded.
They drove to New Hampshire in two vehicles.
Snow began north of Manchester.
Dorian sat beside Zelda in the rear seat.
For the first hour, neither spoke.
Eventually Zelda said, “You can ask.”
He turned.
“Ask what?”
“You’ve looked at me six times like you want to ask something.”
Dorian looked toward the window.
“How do you do this?”
“This?”
“Walk into terrible things every night and return the next day.”
Zelda thought.
“I don’t.”
He looked at her.
“Not completely.”
She continued.
“Every patient keeps something.”
“That sounds unhealthy.”
“It is.”
“So why stay?”
“Because sometimes they leave something good too.”
Dorian said nothing.
Zelda looked at him.
“Your sister probably knew that.”
His eyes shifted.
“You would have liked her.”
“You keep saying things that make me feel like I already do.”
That hurt him.
She saw it.
But he did not shut down.
Progress.
Ashbrook Neurological Residence stood beyond a long private road.
No sign at the highway.
No public directory listing.
Dorian’s people confirmed it still operated.
Private-pay patients.
Heavy confidentiality.
They entered legally.
Dorian had arranged for state authorities to accompany them.
Zelda was quietly relieved.
She did not want to participate in an armed raid on a medical facility.
Records staff denied ever admitting Bianca Ferraro.
Dorian produced photographs.
Nothing.
Zelda watched the administrator.
A woman in her sixties.
Controlled.
Professional.
Too controlled.
Zelda asked, “Do you have any residents admitted under unknown identity after traumatic brain injury approximately four years ago?”
The administrator’s eyes flickered.
There.
Nurses noticed small changes.
“We protect patient privacy.”
“That wasn’t a request for a name.”
Silence.
Zelda continued.
“Female. Mid-twenties. Possible head injury. Brought from Rhode Island.”
The administrator looked toward the state investigator.
Then back.
“I’ll need to review records.”
Dorian stood.
“I’ll come.”
“No.”
The investigator stopped him.
They waited forty-three minutes.
Dorian walked the hallway nineteen times.
Zelda counted.
On the twentieth, she said, “Sit.”
He looked at her.
“Sit.”
He sat.
“You order me around more than my captains.”
“I have no idea what a captain means in your world.”
“That’s probably healthy.”
The administrator returned.
Her face was pale.
“There was a patient.”
Dorian stood.
“Name?”
“Admitted as Beatrice Fallon.”
Dorian stopped.
Bianca’s middle name was Beatrice.
The administrator continued.
“She arrived October eighteenth four years ago.”
Alive.
Dorian’s face broke.
“Where is she?”
The administrator looked down.
“She was transferred.”
“When?”
“Seven months later.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Dorian slammed one hand against the wall.
Zelda flinched.
He immediately looked at her.
Not anger.
Regret.
The administrator continued.
“Her records were removed by executive order.”
“Whose?”
“Dr. Leonard Voss.”
Zelda felt Dorian go still again.
But then the administrator held up something else.
“There is one item.”
A sealed patient property bag.
The transfer paperwork had left it behind.
Inside was a cheap plastic stethoscope designed for children.
The same one Bianca held in the photograph.
And beneath it, folded four times, was a piece of paper.
The handwriting was uneven.
BIANCA FERRARO.
DORIAN, IF YOU FIND THIS, I REMEMBER YOU.
Zelda looked at Dorian.
His eyes filled.
May you like
He turned away.
For the first time, he did not hide it.
