Chapter 3 - THE SHOE IN THE DRIVEWAY
Special Agent Evelyn Shaw arrived at the hospital shortly after three in the morning.
She wore dark slacks, a raincoat, and no visible badge until she entered the secured consultation room.
Her hair had turned almost completely silver.
Her eyes had not changed.
Christine and Randall’s attorney were waiting near the nurses’ station.
Evelyn looked at them once.
“Who is the lawyer?”
“Gregory Sloan. Randall has used him for years.”
“Your wife?”
“Christine.”
“She came with her father’s counsel instead of separately?”
“Yes.”
Evelyn’s expression gave nothing away.
“What evidence do you have?”
I showed her Mrs. Patterson’s photographs.
Jake’s shoe in the driveway.
Blood on the curb.
The open side gate.
Evelyn enlarged the shoe.
A small section near the heel appeared lifted.
“Did Jake alter his shoes?”
“He hides things in them sometimes. Soccer cards. Coins.”
“Where is the shoe now?”
“Mrs. Patterson may still have it.”
Evelyn called a federal evidence technician and asked him to meet us at the neighbor’s home with a local child-crimes detective.
She did not tell him what she expected.
At 3:41 a.m., Mrs. Patterson answered her door wearing a robe and winter coat over her nightgown.
She had placed Jake’s shoe inside a clean grocery bag.
“I didn’t touch the blood,” she said. “I watch crime shows.”
A technician photographed the shoe before opening the loose section of the sole.
Inside was a microSD card.
Jake had not lost the drone’s memory.
He had hidden it.
The drone was a birthday gift from me.
It automatically recorded video to both an onboard card and a controller.
The controller had been destroyed in Randall’s driveway.
The card survived.
The first video showed nothing unusual.
Trees.
Roofs.
A dog chasing the drone’s shadow.
Then Jake guided it over Randall’s rear lot.
Three men stood near a white work truck.
Randall.
His brother Ray.
Nolan Briggs, a county bridge inspector whose photograph I remembered from old task-force files.
They were unloading cylindrical concrete samples, folders, and sealed evidence boxes.
The boxes carried labels from Cedar Run Bridge Project.
Nolan opened one folder.
Even through drone audio distorted by wind, his words were clear.
“The independent cores fail strength by almost forty percent.”
Ray answered:
“Then those aren’t the cores we submit.”
Randall pointed toward the truck.
“The replacement set goes to the state lab tomorrow.”
Nolan looked nervous.
“What about the originals?”
Randall said:
“Crush them with the old foundation waste.”
The drone moved lower.
Its shadow crossed the driveway.
Ray looked up.
“What the hell is that?”
The image jerked as Jake attempted to pull away.
Then the drone descended.
The final seconds showed Randall reaching toward it with a metal pole.
The recording resumed three minutes later.
The drone lay sideways near a hedge.
The lens faced the driveway at an angle.
Jake stood near the truck.
Randall held his shoulder.
Ray removed the controller from his hands.
“Password,” Randall said.
Jake shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
“You flew it.”
“Dad set it up.”
Nolan looked toward the street.
“Just break the card and send him home.”
“We don’t have the card,” Ray said.
Randall crouched in front of Jake.
“Where does your father store the videos?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he still speak to government people?”
Jake began crying.
“I want my dad.”
Randall slapped him.
The sound filled the evidence room.
I turned away from the screen.
Evelyn did not stop the video.
It was her job not to look away.
Ray held Jake’s arms.
Nolan pinned one leg with his boot.
Randall struck him again.
When Jake screamed, Ray laughed.
“Your tough prosecutor daddy isn’t coming.”
Jake kicked.
Nolan cursed.
The men forced him onto the driveway.
The camera did not capture every impact clearly.
It captured enough.
Randall searched Jake’s pockets.
Ray tore one shoe off.
The card had already been hidden inside the other.
Christine appeared near the side door.
For one second, I believed she would stop them.
She did not.
She shouted:
“Dad, the Patterson woman is outside!”
The men released Jake.
Randall pointed toward the gate.
“Run home. Tell your father you fell.”
Jake staggered away with one shoe.
Christine watched him leave.
She did not follow.
The video continued for another thirty seconds.
Randall turned toward her.
“You said Michael was across town.”
“He was.”
“Then keep him there.”
The recording ended.
I stood with both hands against the evidence-room table.
Evelyn spoke quietly.
“Michael.”
I did not answer.
“You cannot go to that house.”
“I know.”
“Say it.”
“I will not go to that house.”
“Do not turn this into the reason you lose your son after saving him.”
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That was why Evelyn still had the number.
She knew rage did not become safer merely because it belonged to a prosecutor.
