Chapter 3 - THE EMPTY AMBULANCE
Police found the ambulance beneath an overpass.
The driver and orderly were unconscious but alive.
Eleanor was gone.
A hospital bracelet lay on the floor beside a cut restraint.
Blood marked the side door.
Diane denied knowing anything.
Her attorney claimed the needles and photographs in her purse had been planted.
Ortiz asked who would plant items inside a hidden compartment only she knew existed.
Diane smiled and requested bail.
The court released her before sunset.
She had no prior convictions.
She owned property.
She appeared respectable.
I remained in the hospital with stitches removed from my lips and fear locked inside every muscle.
Dr. Brooks arranged for a forensic nurse to document each bruise.
The bruises told a timeline.
Some were fresh.
Others were weeks old.
One beneath my left shoulder had healed badly.
An X-ray revealed a fracture I never knew I had.
Mark told me I fell in the shower that month.
I had believed him because Diane made me tea afterward.
Ortiz searched our house.
She found the curved needle’s packaging in the kitchen trash.
She found black thread beneath the sink.
She found my blood on the floor.
Then she found a locked room behind the basement laundry wall.
Mark claimed he did not know it existed.
Inside were four chairs bolted to the concrete.
A camera faced each one.
Shelves contained medication, restraints, and labeled boxes.
ANNA.
MELISSA.
REBECCA.
ELEANOR.
A fifth empty box had my name.
Investigators recovered video files from a hidden drive.
Most were encrypted.
One opened.
It showed Melissa sitting in the basement eleven years earlier.
Diane stood behind her.
Mark’s father, Richard, faced the camera.
Melissa said, “I withdraw every accusation against the Mercer family.”
Her voice sounded slow and drugged.
Richard held a written statement.
Diane adjusted the tape over Melissa’s mouth after she finished.
Mark watched the video at the hospital.
He vomited into a wastebasket.
“My father knew.”
“He helped,” Ortiz said.
Richard had died five years earlier from a sudden heart attack.
His medical treatment was supervised by Diane.
Ortiz now wanted the body exhumed.
Mark whispered, “What did my mother do to all of them?”
I wrote one word.
ASK YOURSELF.
His phone buzzed.
A text had arrived from Eleanor’s number.
She sent an address and one sentence.
I escaped, but Claire’s husband knows why she was selected.
Mark read it twice.
I looked at him.
May you like
“Selected for what?”
He could not answer.
