Chapter 13 - THE BLOOD BENEATH THE REAR SEAT
The blood sample belonged to a child, but no match appeared in state databases.
Harper refused to tell reporters about it until investigators knew more.
The compartment also held three school photographs.
Emma.
Lila.
And an unidentified girl with dark blond hair and a missing front tooth.
A date on the back showed the image was five years old.
That placed it before Greg met Rachel.
The photograph had been cut from a classroom sheet.
No name remained.
Pastor Eli reviewed old refuge records because Greg had briefly volunteered there during the same period.
One intake form mentioned a mother named Karen Mills and her six-year-old daughter, Abby.
They left the shelter suddenly after Karen began dating a man volunteers knew only as Greg.
No forwarding address was recorded.
Eli remembered Karen.
“She believed he could help her start over.”
“What happened?” Harper asked.
“She stopped answering calls.”
Police traced Karen through tax records.
She was alive in Tennessee.
Abby, now eleven, lived with her grandmother.
Karen agreed to speak.
Greg had controlled her finances, tracked her movements, and threatened Abby. One night, the child struck her head while trying to escape his truck.
The blood in the compartment likely came from that injury.
Karen left after Greg fell asleep and never reported him.
“He said no one would believe me because I had been homeless,” she told Harper. “I believed him.”
Abby survived.
The hidden blood did not reveal a murder.
It revealed how long Greg’s method had continued because each family thought it faced him alone.
Karen’s testimony strengthened the prosecution.
It also changed St. Matthew’s procedures.
No volunteer could access intake records alone.
Personal information would be minimized.
Families leaving with new partners would receive private follow-up through multiple contacts.
Pastor Eli did not defend the old system.
“We wanted to be welcoming,” he said. “We confused openness with safety.”
Mike helped destroy obsolete paper files under legal supervision.
He saw his own intake form from years earlier.
Assault conviction.
Divorced.
Anger-management requirement.
Someone reading only that page could build a false version of him.
He understood how records could become weapons when separated from context.
Emma moved back with Rachel full-time nine months after the diner.
The court kept oversight in place.
Rachel did not celebrate by declaring the past finished.
She changed locks, maintained direct contact with the school, and allowed Emma privacy.
The house could not be returned because Greg’s attempted transfer created long legal disputes.
The independent bank sold it properly.
Rachel and Emma moved into a modest apartment near St. Matthew’s.
Emma preferred it.
“I can see the front door from the kitchen.”
Mike visited only when invited.
Sometimes he brought dinner.
Sometimes he repaired a cabinet.
Sometimes Emma asked him to leave because she wanted time alone with Rachel.
He left without making rejection into punishment.
Greg’s murder trial for Daniel’s death was scheduled after the abuse and financial cases.
He accepted guilty pleas on several fraud counts but denied trying to kill Rachel and Emma.
He denied killing Daniel.
Prosecutors rejected any agreement that removed the violent charges.
At the preliminary hearing, the Bay Four footage played.
Greg entered the control room.
The loading arm activated.
Daniel died.
Then another camera angle appeared from a hallway backup Harper had recently found.
Greg left the control room holding the override key.
He looked directly toward Daniel’s body.
He did not call for help.
He walked away.
The judge ordered the murder charge to trial.
Outside court, Rachel held Emma’s hand.
“Dad was alone,” Emma whispered.
“He shouldn’t have been,” Rachel said.
Mike stood several steps back.
He understood the moment did not belong to him.
Harper then received a message from the laboratory.
A fiber found beside the blood beneath Greg’s truck seat matched a blue school jacket.
The unidentified girl in the old photograph wore the same jacket.
Abby Mills never owned one.
The blood and photograph belonged to different children.
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One more child remained unidentified.
👉 Greg’s history was longer than investigators believed, and a second unknown girl might never have escaped his truck.
