Chapter 5 - What Happened at Bay Four
“Leo was working part-time for a delivery contractor near your waterfront terminals,” I began.
Roman nodded.
“Mariner Logistics.”
I looked up, surprised.
“You remember?”
“I remember reviewing the contractor agreement.”
“Leo needed money for college.
He worked evenings, mostly delivering paperwork between warehouses.
He liked the job because he could learn about logistics systems.”
I swallowed.
“On the night of his accident, he called me at ten-fourteen.”
I could still remember every second of that conversation.
His frightened breathing.
The distant noise of trucks.
The way his voice sounded when he said my name.
“Tess, I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see.”
I’d been sitting at our kitchen table, eating leftovers and reviewing a spreadsheet for work.
“What do you mean?”
“Something’s wrong with the shipping records.”
“Leo, it’s late.
Come home.”
“Some containers have different numbers than the paperwork.
And I saw a man changing the security seals.”
“Then tell your supervisor.”
“No.”
His answer had been immediate.
Too immediate.
“Tess, I recognized somebody.”
“Who?”
A truck horn sounded in the background.
Then Leo whispered something I hadn’t understood.
“Bay Four.
The blue seal.”
“Leo?”
“Please don’t tell anybody at your office.”
I sat up.
“Why?”
There was a pause.
Then he said something that haunted me long after the call ended.
“Because I think somebody there wants to make sure nobody finds out.”
The call disconnected.
I tried calling back.
No answer.
An hour later, the hospital contacted me.
Leo had been found unconscious beside a service road near the docks.
His bicycle was crushed.
His phone was damaged.
Doctors weren’t sure he would survive the night.
I rushed to the hospital and spent hours sitting outside the operating room.
That was where Elias Rourke approached me.
He wore a dark coat over a white shirt and carried a police identification badge.
He introduced himself as the detective assigned to Leo’s case.
At first, I was grateful.
I thought he had come to help.
“He told me Leo had lost control of his bicycle,” I explained to Roman.
“That the road was wet and nobody else was involved.”
Roman frowned.
“Was that consistent with his injuries?”
“I didn’t know enough to question it.
But then I remembered what Leo had said on the phone.”
I looked down.
“I asked Rourke whether someone might have been chasing him.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked why I would think that.”
My hands began shaking.
“I told him Leo had seen something at the docks.”
Roman didn’t move.
“And?”
“Rourke’s entire expression changed.”
The hospital corridor returned to me with terrible clarity.
Rourke had stopped writing in his notebook.
Then he’d asked a question that made me suspicious.
Did your brother record anything?
I had stared at him.
I’d never mentioned a recording.
I’d only said Leo saw something suspicious.
“When I told him I didn’t know, he stepped closer,” I whispered.
Roman’s jaw tightened.
“He threatened you.”
I nodded.
“Not directly.
Not at first.”
I could still hear Rourke’s low voice.
Your brother is in serious condition, Miss Hayes.
You need to think carefully about what you say.
I’d demanded to know what he meant.
He’d looked through the glass door toward the operating room.
Then he’d said:
“People who interfere with certain businesses don’t always get a second chance.
Your brother already used his.”
Roman’s expression turned cold.
“What else?”
“He told me not to mention the shipping terminals.
He said the investigation would go more smoothly if I accepted the accident report.”
“And you did?”
I lowered my head.
“Yes.”
Roman was silent.
“I was twenty-six.
My brother might have been dying.
Our mother was gone, and I didn’t have anyone else.
I didn’t know who to trust.”
I looked at him.
“And the only thing I knew about your world was that people who crossed it sometimes disappeared.”
Roman absorbed that without arguing.
“So you believed I might be involved.”
“Yes.”
“And you still came to work every day.”
“I needed the job.”
My voice cracked.
“Leo needed treatment.
I couldn’t afford to lose my income.
And I was terrified that if I asked the wrong question, somebody would finish what they’d started.”
Roman slowly sat down.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then he asked, “Did you ever get a copy of the original police report?”
“No.
Rourke said the final report would be available later.
When I requested it, I received a short accident summary.
The detailed investigation file was supposedly unavailable.”
“Did Leo remember anything?”
“Sometimes.
But his memory was confused after the injury.
There were days when he couldn’t finish a sentence without becoming exhausted.”
I wiped my eyes.
“Once, he tried to tell me about a black vehicle.
Another time he kept repeating something about a blue label.”
Roman looked toward the photograph.
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because two days after Leo came home, someone left an envelope outside our apartment.”
I could feel myself trembling again.
“Inside was a photograph of Leo sleeping in his hospital bed.”
Roman stood so suddenly that his chair scraped across the floor.
“What?”
“There was a note.”
“What did it say?”
I looked directly into his eyes.
“Keep your brother alive by keeping your mouth shut.”
Roman stared at me.
Then he turned away.
For the first time in three years, I saw his control begin to fracture.
He placed both hands against the edge of his desk.
His shoulders were rigid.
But when he spoke, his voice was quiet.
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
I let out a bitter laugh.
“Roman, you followed me home with a gun because somebody told you I’d stolen money.”
He flinched.
“Would you have believed me seventeen months ago?”
He didn’t answer.
And that silence was answer enough.
Roman’s telephone rang.
He listened for several seconds.
Then his expression darkened.
“Send the records to my secure account.”
He ended the call and turned his computer toward me.
A newspaper article appeared on the screen.
I recognized the headline.
Former NYPD Detective Presumed Dead After Brooklyn Warehouse Fire.
There was Elias Rourke’s photograph.
I felt sick.
“That’s the article.”
Roman scanned the page.
“Presumed dead,” he said.
“Not confirmed.”
“What?”
“The building collapsed after the fire.
Investigators recovered personal effects, but there wasn’t enough evidence to conclusively identify a body.”
I gripped the chair.
“So he could have survived?”
“He may never have been inside.”
Roman opened another document.
“This says Rourke left active police service several months before your brother’s accident.”
I frowned.
“That’s impossible.
He showed me a badge.”
“A former officer can still possess an identification case.
That doesn’t make him an active detective.”
My stomach turned.
“He lied about investigating Leo?”
“Possibly.
Or he used his former position to make you believe he had authority.”
Roman looked at me.
“The police records show Leo’s accident was handled by a patrol unit.
Rourke’s name doesn’t appear on the official assignment.”
I stared.
“Then how did he know where I was?”
“That’s what we need to establish.”
He opened the financial report.
“And I think the missing money is connected.”
He pointed to a line near the bottom.
The recipient was Eastbridge Patient Transport.
Twenty thousand dollars.
Transferred the previous evening.
“The account belongs to a company registered through several intermediaries,” Roman explained.
“One of the people connected to it is Elias Rourke.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“So the money went to him?”
“Through a business he controls.”
“But why use my credentials?”
Roman’s expression hardened.
“Because somebody wanted me to believe you stole it.”
“Carlo.”
He didn’t answer immediately.
That frightened me.
Carlo had been Roman’s closest lieutenant for more than a decade.
If he was involved, then the danger came from inside the organization.
And Roman had spent the previous evening listening to the wrong man.
Finally, Roman said, “Carlo provided the report.
He also pushed me to question you.
But I won’t accuse him without evidence.”
I stared at the photographs of Leo.
“Roman, somebody has been watching my brother for months.”
“I know.”
“And that man is alive.”
“I know.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
Roman looked directly at me.
“We’re not waiting.”
He reached for his phone.
But this time, he didn’t call one of his men.
He called his attorney.
“I need you to contact the state attorney general’s investigative division,” Roman said.
“Tell them I have evidence of financial fraud, possible witness intimidation, and a threat against a civilian.”
I stared.
He was contacting law enforcement.
A man whose criminal organization had spent years avoiding outside scrutiny was voluntarily inviting investigators into his business.
Roman noticed my surprise.
“I’m not going to solve this by making someone disappear, Tessa.”
He looked back at the photographs.
“Whatever happened to Leo started inside my organization.
That makes it my responsibility to expose it.”
May you like
I wanted to believe him.
But belief had become something I could no longer give easily.
