Chapter 6 - HARRISON’S THIRD VIDEO
The encryption key came from Chloe.
Not deliberately.
The forensic analyst noticed the password hint:
WHAT CHLOE CALLS THE MOON.
I asked her.
“The cookie.”
“What?”
“When moon is little, Daddy says cookie moon.”
CRESCENTCOOKIE opened the first encrypted partition.
Children should not become passwords to adult crimes.
Another thing I planned to discuss with Harrison if he came home.
The folder contained eleven videos.
Most were brief.
Harrison speaking directly to me.
Video one:
“If you’re watching these, assume somebody is trying to make North Vale mine.”
Video two:
“I found duplicate freight credentials using my photo.”
Video three:
“The return program doesn’t just lose product. Some boxes come back with substitute material.”
Video four:
“Victoria says it’s insurer-approved recovery. It isn’t.”
Video five:
“I think somebody inside Compliance is changing the weights after scan.”
Then six.
Recorded in his car.
“I made a mistake. I tried to investigate without outside counsel because I thought bringing federal agents in would kill the company.”
He rubbed his face.
“I told myself I was protecting six hundred employees.”
That sounded like Harrison.
He could justify almost any delay by imagining workers losing jobs.
Then:
“I created a private evidence copy. I used North Vale credentials I found in the system to enter their warehouse under the name they already assigned me.”
So he had used the fake identity after discovering it.
That explained the license in the doll.
Bad idea.
Potentially legally complicated.
Not proof he created it.
Video seven showed a spreadsheet.
No customer names visible.
Only weights and claim numbers.
Video eight:
“If anything happens to me, Sarah needs to know I did not authorize the Henry Cole identity.”
Video nine:
“Do not trust Victoria.”
The one I saw.
Video ten was worse.
Harrison sat in the same dark room.
A bruise near his mouth.
“This is not the corporate apartment.”
He looked toward something off-camera.
“I came willingly because Victoria said she would show me the original North Vale file. Instead her security people took my phone.”
My breathing stopped.
“If she gets the doll, she gets the copy they missed.”
A sound interrupted.
Metal door.
Harrison looked up.
The video ended.
Video eleven lasted nineteen seconds.
Black screen.
His voice whispered:
“They’re moving me.”
Then:
“Tell Chloe I’m sorry I made her keep secrets.”
The apology nearly broke me.
At least he understood.
Agent Cole enhanced the audio.
A reverse alarm beeped in the background.
Then a train horn.
Then a public-address announcement too faint to understand.
Location analysis began.
The videos established unlawful confinement if authentic.
Victoria’s lawyer argued Harrison could have staged them.
Possible.
Then one of Victoria’s former security contractors disappeared.
Owen Pike.
Forty-five.
Former police officer.
Now director of corporate risk at Sterling Protective Services.
His badge logs placed him at the Connecticut corporate apartment the night Harrison vanished.
He had accessed the elevator after midnight.
Victoria claimed Pike acted independently.
Pike’s company invoices showed direct payments from a Victoria-controlled executive budget.
The board froze them.
By afternoon, Pike’s abandoned SUV was found near Providence.
Inside:
Plastic restraints.
Two phones.
A Carter Sterling security badge.
And one scrap of dirty cotton stuffing.
May you like
Lucy’s stuffing.
Someone had already handled the doll before it reached Chloe.
