Chapter 10 - THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN DOOR
Paul Heller turned up alive the next morning at a clinic. He had a broken nose and two cracked ribs. Rachel waited until a doctor cleared him to speak.
Paul admitted selling access to estate cameras. Vincent had paid him to report when Lorenzo left home and when Sophia worked late. Paul claimed he had never known Isabella was being held.
“Why watch Sophia?” Rachel asked.
“Vincent said she had copied documents.”
Paul gave investigators Vincent’s payment messages and the account he had used. His information helped police obtain warrants for Vincent’s office and home.
The search turned up financial records, messages with Anthony, and a photograph of a small house with a green front door. Anthony identified it as the place where Isabella had first been held.
In a storage box there, investigators found a page torn from Claire’s blue ledger. Claire had listed payments to fake crews beside dates when the port had been closed. She had also written down the number of a bank account linked to Vincent.
The evidence was growing. Isabella was still missing.
That afternoon, a volunteer at a church shelter called Rachel. A woman with short dark hair had come in two nights earlier with a black dog. She seemed injured. She had left when a gray SUV slowed outside.
“Did she say where she was going?” Rachel asked.
“No. But she left something in our office.”
It was a folded page from a free city map. One street had been circled in pen, three blocks from the shelter. On the back, Isabella had written:
I saw him at the window. If he follows me here, ask Rachel Ortiz for help.
Lorenzo read the note in Rachel’s car. Isabella had known the detective’s name from the original crash investigation. She was trying to reach someone outside the estate.
Rachel drove to the circled street. A church kitchen there served evening meals. Bruno’s description was already on a flyer inside.
The kitchen manager pointed down the hall. “She came back an hour ago. I put her in the office.”
Rachel told Lorenzo to wait in the car while she checked the room.
Fourteen minutes passed.
May you like
Then Rachel came out and opened his door.
“She’s here,” she said. “And she asked for you.”
