Chapter 2 - THE ROAD THAT BELONGED TO NO ONE
The checkpoint officer's name was Patrick Hennessey, and he had spent twelve years learning when a routine stop was becoming something else.
He looked at the nurse in the middle seat.
She was pale, exhausted, and holding a canvas bag as though it contained the only solid thing left in the world.
"Are you under arrest?" she asked.
"Not at the moment."
"Then I need to reach Boston."
"I understand."
"No," Mave said. "You don't."
Hennessey waited.
"At nine Monday morning, a committee is going to decide whether evidence concerning hundreds of elderly people disappears into a sealed archive. I have the evidence they say doesn't exist."
Hennessey looked toward the storm.
Then he made a decision that would eventually cost him his position.
He radioed dispatch and requested a supervisor.
Not the contractor whose credentials had generated the alert.
A state police supervisor.
He documented the discrepancy and asked for a verification of the underlying complaint.
While they waited, he allowed the snowplow to remain in the turnout with its engine running.
Twenty minutes later, the answer came back.
The complaint was real, but its supporting documents were missing.
The alert had been distributed before a sworn statement had been filed.
Hennessey looked at Mave.
"Someone rushed this."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I'm supposed to be in a jail cell before Monday."
He studied her.
Then stepped away and called his supervisor again.
When he returned, he handed Rafe a paper bearing a case number.
"I can't authorize you to ignore the road closure. And I can't tell you to continue a municipal route that dispatch hasn't approved."
Rafe said nothing.
"But I can tell you that the hospital access road is being cleared by an authorized contractor. They're sending a vehicle to collect stranded medical personnel."
Mave looked at him.
"Who requested it?"
Hennessey gave her a tired smile.
"I did."
The ambulance arrived forty minutes later.
Its driver was a woman named Erin Voss, a paramedic who had worked with Mave during a winter influenza surge three years earlier.
Erin recognized her immediately.
"Mave?"
Mave closed her eyes.
"Please don't ask."
Erin looked at her bandaged hand.
"Fine. I'll ask after I get you somewhere warm."
The ambulance had been dispatched to transport stranded healthcare workers to a regional emergency coordination center.
Rafe's people arranged a separate lawful transfer from there, while his attorney contacted Naomi Whitcomb's office to request an emergency evidence handoff.
The plan was imperfect.
But it had one advantage.
It no longer depended entirely on Rafe's connections.
There would be dispatch logs, witnesses, and recorded communications.
Mave insisted on that.
"If they can make this look like a mafia boss smuggling stolen medical records," she told Rafe, "they'll bury everything."
Rafe nodded.
"Then we don't give them that story."
At 3:18 Sunday morning, the ambulance reached a regional hospital near the Massachusetts border.
Mave was examined by a physician.
She had mild hypothermia, dehydration, and an infected wound that required treatment.
The doctor recommended admission.
Mave refused until he explained that she could be treated while remaining in contact with counsel.
Then she agreed to stay for observation.
Rafe waited outside her room.
For the first time since she'd reached his gate, he had nothing useful to do.
He couldn't order the storm to stop.
He couldn't buy a clear highway.
And he couldn't make Mave trust him faster than she wanted to.
At dawn, Gio arrived with coffee.
"Boss."
Rafe looked up.
"What?"
"We found Franklin Doyle."
Rafe stood.
"Where?"
Gio's expression changed.
"At your mother's old house."
Franklin Doyle had been Teresa Balandi's attorney.
He had handled her estate, medical directives, and property transfers.
After her death, he had told Rafe that her Federal Hill house had been sold to cover outstanding care expenses.
Rafe had accepted the explanation.
He'd been grieving.
And Franklin had represented the family for twenty-seven years.
Now Gio had discovered that the house had never been sold.
Its title had been transferred into a trust.
The trust's administrator was Thornfield Senior Living.
Rafe stared at the documents.
"My mother owned that house outright."
Gio nodded.
"She did."
"Then why would she transfer it?"
"That's what we need to find out."
Rafe looked toward Mave's hospital room.
May you like
For the first time, he understood that his mother's death and Mave's investigation were not merely connected by circumstance.
They might be parts of the same crime.
