Chapter 7 - Blood on the Boat Changed the Meaning of Our Chase

The discovery of blood shifted everything.

Until then, Victor had been a suspect in document theft, unauthorized transfer, credential misuse, and possibly the burglary at my apartment. Now he might also be a victim.

Detective Singh refused to guess.

“The blood has not been identified. The watch proves only that his watch was on the boat.”

Harlan approved of her immediately.

“Facts before stories,” he said.

It was another thing my father used to say.

We spent the night in a small hotel near Portland because Singh did not want Leah traveling after midnight. Julian arranged rooms, but I insisted on paying for ours until I saw the rate and decided pride could wait until I had a paycheck again.

Leah fell asleep quickly.

I did not.

At two in the morning, I found Miriam sitting alone in the hotel breakfast area with a cup of tea.

“You left the museum two years ago,” I said. “But your badge still worked.”

She nodded.

“Why?”

“Because I never truly resigned.”

I sat across from her.

Miriam explained that Victor had pressured her to sign a nondisclosure agreement after she raised questions about the collection. She refused. Days later, security escorted her from the building after an accusation that she mishandled a manuscript during conservation.

“The accusation was false?”

“The incident was real. The cause was not.”

A humidity control failure damaged two pages. Victor blamed Miriam publicly while privately offering to make the investigation disappear if she stopped asking about the 1998 files.

She chose to leave rather than sign.

“Then how was your badge active?”

“Someone inside preserved it.”

“Who?”

“Elena Ruiz.”

That surprised me.

Miriam smiled without humor. “Invisible employees are not the only people who notice things.”

Elena had quietly kept Miriam’s credential in a dormant technical category tied to emergency conservation access. It was risky, probably against policy, but it allowed Miriam to enter if the disputed materials were suddenly moved or threatened.

“So Elena knew all of this?”

“She knew pieces. Not the names. Not Thomas’s role.”

I thought about trust. My father’s letter had not said trust nobody. It said trust people who risk something by telling the truth.

Elena had risked her job without recognition.

Miriam stirred her tea. “You are angry with Thomas.”

“Yes.”

“You should be.”

I had expected defense.

She continued. “He believed secrecy protected you. It also denied you choices. Those truths can coexist.”

I looked through the dark windows at the empty parking lot.

“Did he know he was dying?”

“For months.”

“He never told me how serious it was until the last week.”

“He thought he could finish first.”

“Finish what?”

“Building a public chain of evidence strong enough that no single missing document could bury the case.”

That explained the codes, copies, witnesses, and scattered instructions.

It did not excuse the silence.

But it made the silence less random.

By breakfast, Singh had new information. The blood on the boat was type O-positive. Victor’s medical records, obtained through emergency investigative channels, showed he was A-negative.

“Not his blood,” Julian said.

“Likely not,” Singh replied. “We still need DNA confirmation.”

Daniel Voss’s blood type was unknown.

Harbor cameras showed the boat stopping near a private marina in Winthrop before drifting back toward Deer Island. Two figures left the dock area in a silver sedan.

“Victor and Daniel?” Owen asked.

“Image quality is poor.”

Singh also had a message for me.

Boston police searched Daniel Voss’s apartment overnight under warrant. They found lock tools, cloned access cards, museum floor plans, and photographs of my father taken during the final year of his life.

One photo showed Thomas entering a bank.

Another showed him leaving a post office.

The oldest image was from three years before his death.

Someone had been watching him for a long time.

“Was Daniel working for Victor that long?” I asked.

“No. He was employed by a private investigations firm then.”

“Which firm?”

Singh slid a printed corporate record across the table.

Northstar Strategic Services.

Julian read the ownership line and swore.

“What?” I asked.

He turned the page toward me.

The firm’s majority investor was not Victor.

It was the Mercer Foundation.

Julian’s own family organization had paid the company that surveilled my father.

He looked genuinely shaken.

“I never authorized this.”

Harlan tapped the paper with one finger. “Maybe not. But somebody using your money did.”

Owen stared at the dates. “The invoices would have been approved before Julian became chairman.”

Julian looked up.

“My mother chaired the foundation then.”

His face changed as memory connected to something private.

“She knew Thomas Carter.”

I stood so quickly my chair scraped the floor.

“How well?”

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Julian did not answer immediately.

Then he said, “Well enough that his name was one of the last things she said before she died.”