Chapter 5 - An Old Ally Resurfaces
Maribel’s smile flickered. "You're bluffing. You have no leverage."
"Do you remember Marcus Vance?" I asked softly.
A flicker of genuine dread passed across Maribel’s eyes.
Marcus Vance had been the lead investigator for the Indiana State Fire Marshal’s Office during the 2017 warehouse blaze. He was the one man Maribel’s father couldn't bribe, the one man who had crawled through the scorched drywall to find the welded brackets on Exit B. He had retired from the state two years ago, but retirement for a man like Marcus meant opening a private forensic consulting firm.
"Vance has no jurisdiction here," Maribel scoffed, trying to reclaim her posture. "This is a different state. Apex is fully incorporated under Ohio commercial law."
"Marcus Vance doesn't need state jurisdiction," I said, reaching into my trench coat pocket. I pulled out a small, unobtrusive digital audio recorder and placed it firmly on the table between our coffee cups. The little red light was glowing steadily.
Maribel's skin turned the color of chalk.
"You just confessed on tape that you deliberately targeted my husband to frame him for regulatory evasion," I said evenly. "You admitted that the Marion County warehouse uses the same illegal practices that killed Logan. And more importantly, you admitted personal ownership of Apex Global through your father’s trust."
"You... you can't use that," she stammered, reaching for the recorder.
I snatched it off the table and slipped it back into my pocket before her fingers could touch it. "Ohio is a one-party consent state for audio recordings, Maribel. As a former paralegal, I made sure of that before I sat down."
She stood up so violently her chair scraped across the pavers, drawing glances from patrons three tables away. "You think you're clever, Iris? Damian will never back you up. He’s already in too deep. If I go down, he goes down with me, and he knows it!"
She turned and marched out through the café's interior, leaving behind the heavy scent of her perfume and the bitter taste of truth.
I pulled out my phone and dialed the number Marcus had given me at six that morning.
"Marcus?" I said when he answered.
"I heard the whole thing through the patch, Iris," Marcus Vance’s gravelly voice came through the receiver. "She hasn't learned a damn thing in seven years. But she was right about one thing."
"What's that?"
"Damian is the legal linchpin," Marcus said heavily. "If we go to the Feds right now, the paper trail points entirely at your husband. Maribel’s signature isn't on a single permit. Unless we can get Damian to flip on her and hand over the Apex master server logs, he’s going to take the entire fall."
I closed my eyes, picturing Damian’s cowardly, arrogant face from the night before.
May you like
"I'll make him see," I whispered. "He's an idiot, Marcus. But he doesn't deserve to spend a decade in prison for a monster."
***