The Dead Man in the Photograph
Chapter 06 - The Dead Man in the Photograph
For almost a minute, nobody in the SUV spoke.
Norah kept staring at the photograph on Gabriel’s phone.
Her father had aged.
That should have been obvious, but it was the detail that made the image unbearable. His hair, once dark, had gone almost entirely gray. Deep lines ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth. He wore glasses now.
He was not the father preserved in Norah’s memory.
He was a man who had continued having birthdays without her.
“That could be old,” Gabriel said.
Norah looked at him.
“He looks sixty.”
Gabriel handed the phone to Ezra.
“Metadata.”
“Stripped.”
“Background.”
Ezra enlarged the picture.
Behind Daniel and Elaine was a green wall, a brass lamp and half of a framed print. Nothing useful at first glance.
Then Norah saw the lamp.
“I know that.”
Both men looked at her.
“My mother has had that lamp since I was a child.”
“Then the photograph was taken at her house,” Ezra said.
Norah shook her head.
“No. She donated it three years ago when she moved.”
“To where?”
“A church resale shop.”
Ezra was already searching.
Gabriel watched Norah instead.
She pressed her fingertips against her mouth.
“My mother knew he was alive.”
“We don’t know for how long.”
“She knew.”
Her voice cracked on the second word.
That frightened her more than tears would have.
Norah did not cry easily. She had cried at her grandmother’s funeral, once in a hospital bathroom after her first miscarriage, and for exactly four minutes in her car after the divorce papers were signed.
She had not cried when her husband left.
She had not cried when her mother sold the house where Norah grew up.
She had certainly not cried over a father dead for seventeen years.
But he was not dead.
Which meant grief had nowhere sensible to live anymore.
Gabriel reached across the seat.
He did not touch her.
He simply placed his hand on the leather between them, palm down.
Close enough if she wanted it.
Norah noticed.
She hated that she noticed.
Ezra turned his tablet.
“The church shop sold that lamp last winter. Cash purchase. Delivery to a storage facility near Kenosha.”
Gabriel’s eyes hardened.
“Wisconsin.”
“Forty-eight miles from the border.”
Norah looked at him.
“Where you found my father’s car.”
“Yes.”
They changed direction.
The storage facility sat behind a truck stop, a row of pale metal buildings surrounded by chain-link fencing.
Ezra’s team arrived first.
Unit 214 was registered under an elderly woman who had died four years earlier.
Inside they found no people.
They found a room.
A narrow bed.
Canned food.
A desk.
Three prepaid phones.
And photographs.
Hundreds of them.
Gabriel on sidewalks.
Gabriel leaving restaurants.
Gabriel entering Rossi Holdings.
Marco outside a private club.
Elaine buying groceries.
Norah leaving her apartment.
Norah at the office.
Norah at a coffee shop.
Norah sitting alone on a bench beside Lake Michigan last spring.
She stared at that one longest.
The photograph had been taken from behind a tree.
Someone had been watching her.
For years, perhaps.
Gabriel came beside her.
“Don’t touch anything.”
“I know.”
On the desk lay a clipping from the Chicago Tribune dated six years earlier.
ROSSI HOLDINGS NAMES NEW EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO CEO.
Norah’s stomach turned.
Her appointment had apparently been considered newsworthy only because Gabriel had dismissed four assistants in eleven months.
Someone had circled her name in red.
Beneath the clipping, handwritten:
She’s in.
Norah took one step backward.
Gabriel read it.
His eyes moved to her.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Norah.”
“I said I don’t know.”
It came out louder than she intended.
Gabriel stopped.
She stared at the clipping.
Six years earlier, she had been working at a small law office. Underpaid, recently divorced, tired of answering phones for men who called her “sweetheart” when they forgot her name.
Then an executive recruiter had contacted her.
A recruiter she had never applied to.
He said a client had seen her résumé.
He offered an interview at Rossi Holdings.
Two weeks later, she was sitting across from Gabriel Rossi while he asked why she had left law school after one year.
She remembered answering truthfully.
“My mother got sick.”
He had hired her that afternoon.
Norah turned to Ezra.
“Find the recruiter.”
“What was his name?”
“Paul Merrick.”
Ezra typed.
Thirty seconds passed.
His face changed.
“There’s no Paul Merrick in the licensing database. No recruiter by that name in Chicago matching the firm you mentioned.”
Norah felt something sink inside her.
Gabriel picked up one of the prepaid phones without touching it directly.
“Someone placed you in my office.”
“No.”
The word came automatically.
She looked at the photographs again.
A life observed from corners.
“No.”
Ezra found a locked drawer beneath the desk.
Inside were copies of Gabriel’s internal schedules.
Not public calendars.
Private ones.
Norah recognized the formatting because she had created it herself.
Her face went cold.
“Those came from my computer.”
Gabriel said nothing.
Norah turned toward him.
“You think I gave them to someone.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You thought it.”
“I think whoever is doing this had access to you.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
She wanted him to defend her faster.
The realization embarrassed her.
Ezra lifted another document.
It was an employment application.
Norah’s.
At the bottom, beneath the HR approval, was a handwritten note.
Hire her.
The initials beside it were E.H.
Elaine Hayes.
Norah stared until the letters blurred.
“My mother arranged my job.”
Gabriel’s voice was quiet.
“It appears so.”
The door behind them opened.
Every security man turned.
Norah spun around.
A woman stood there holding a small revolver with both hands.
Her mother.
Elaine Hayes looked exhausted, furious and very much unkidnapped.
“Mom?”
Elaine’s eyes moved past her toward Gabriel.
“Tell your men to put their guns down.”
Gabriel did not move.
“Where is Daniel?”
Elaine’s mouth tightened.
“Alive.”
Norah felt the floor shift beneath her all over again.
“You knew.”
Elaine looked at her daughter.
This time, there was shame.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Norah—”
“How long?”
Her mother’s eyes filled.
“Seventeen years.”
Norah laughed once.
It sounded broken.
Gabriel stepped closer, but she lifted a hand.
“No.”
She looked at Elaine.
“You watched me bury him.”
“I was trying to keep you alive.”
“You watched me bury him.”
Elaine lowered the gun.
“I’m sorry.”
Norah shook her head.
“Don’t say that yet. I don’t think you’ve earned it.”
Elaine closed her eyes.
Then Gabriel asked the question that had brought them there.
“Did Marco take you?”
“No.”
“Then who sent the photograph?”
Elaine looked toward the back of the storage unit.
“My husband.”
Norah stared at her.
“Dad sent it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Elaine’s answer was almost a whisper.
“Because he needs you to stop trusting Gabriel.”
Gabriel’s expression did not change.
May you like
Norah’s did.
And then Elaine added, “He also needs you to understand that Marco Rossi is not the man you should be most afraid of.”
