“It’s not a confession to every offense we’re examining,” she told Sophie’s attorney. “But it gives us a reason to seek records nobody has volunteered.”
The attorney nodded. Sophie sat between her parents with both hands folded beneath the table. She looked older than the photographs of her laughing beside Logan at the summer carnival, and much more frightened.
“What happens to him?” she asked.
“That’s not something I can promise,” Price replied.
“His mother always fixes things.”
“Maybe that’s part of what we need to understand.”
The next morning, a judge approved targeted warrants for communications and records connected to the vehicle-title filings and Sterling Asset Recovery. Investigators were careful not to treat the HOA complaints alone as proof of a criminal enterprise. They wanted transaction records, authentication information, and witnesses who could tell them who had instructed the recovery company.
By Thursday, the facts had begun arranging themselves into an unsettling picture.
Lakeview Collector Holdings had been registered by an attorney working in Gregory Hartman’s building. Sterling Asset Recovery had received a substantial consulting payment from Lakeview the week after the replacement-title application was filed. The business account that had paid the consultant was controlled through an investment vehicle in which Gregory held a concealed interest.
The separate businesses shared an accountant. They also shared a storage yard on the edge of town.
But the most disturbing discovery concerned the blue Mustang.
An internal email recovered from Sterling’s records referred to “the genuine donor vehicle” and instructed employees to prepare a secure bay in advance of its arrival.
The email contained a photograph of Elijah’s driveway.
And it was dated before Vivien called the police.
Price stared at the photograph for nearly a minute. The garage door stood open. The Mustang’s left front wheel was visible, along with the brass wind chime hanging beside Elijah’s kitchen window. Somebody had taken the picture from within his property line.
“We need to find out who took this,” she told her team. “And I want to know what they meant by donor.”
One investigator looked up from his screen. “Could mean parts.”
“Could,” Price said. “Or it could mean a legitimate car whose identity they intend to borrow.”
Across town, Elijah was trying to make breakfast. He had not slept well since the title filing appeared. He kept imagining his father’s signature beneath a date his father had never lived to see.
