Chapter 10: The Son Who Knew Where the Bodies Were Buried
Derek Kane came out of the fire on a stretcher, not walking, not laughing, and not looking like a man who had ever owned a room in his life.
Two agents dragged him through the side bay while paramedics ran in with a burn blanket. His right sleeve had melted in patches. His cheek was red and blistering along the jaw. Soot had turned his expensive haircut into a blackened mess, and every breath he took sounded like it was scraping past broken glass.
He kept saying one sentence over and over.
“He left me.”
No one answered him.
A paramedic pressed oxygen over his mouth. Derek shoved weakly at the mask.
“My father left me in there.”
Morales stepped beside the stretcher, rain shining on his jacket, smoke rolling behind him from the warehouse doors.
“Derek Kane, you’re under arrest.”
Derek’s eyes found him.
Then they found me.
For one second, I saw the same man from the auction—the smirk, the cruelty, the son of a king who believed everybody else was born to crawl.
Then pain folded him in half.
“Evan,” he rasped.
I stood wrapped in a thin emergency blanket, coughing so hard my ribs hurt. Natalie sat twenty feet away in the open back of an ambulance while a medic checked her pupils and blood pressure. Sarah stood between us like she was still deciding who needed protecting more.
Derek tried to lift his bandaged hand toward me.
“I can tell you where he put Bell.”
The rain seemed to get quieter.
Morales leaned closer.
“What did you say?”
Derek swallowed, grimacing.
“Not here.”
Sarah’s eyes narrowed.
“Say it now.”
Derek looked at the agents, the firefighters, the burning warehouse, the dark lot full of flashing red and blue.
“No. Immunity first.”
Morales laughed once, and there was no humor in it.
“You kidnapped a federal witness, held her at gunpoint, participated in an extortion attempt, and were present at a fire scene with armed private security. You don’t get to say immunity like it’s a room-service order.”
Derek coughed into the oxygen mask. His eyes watered from smoke or fear.
“I know things.”
“Then start knowing them out loud.”
Derek looked back at the warehouse.
For the first time all night, he seemed less afraid of prison than of the empty space where his father should have been.
“Richard got out,” he whispered.
Morales turned sharply to another agent.
“Confirm.”
The agent jogged away, radio already in hand.
Sarah stepped closer to Morales and lowered her voice, but not enough to keep me from hearing.
“If he has direct homicide facts, you need a proffer. Narrow. Recorded. No blanket protection. No promises you can’t keep.”
Morales glanced at her.
“You’re not his lawyer.”
“No,” Sarah said. “I’m the lawyer trying to keep every word he says from becoming useless.”
Derek heard enough to panic.
“I want a deal.”
Sarah looked down at him with cold precision.
“You want oxygen and a lawyer. If you want consideration later, you give specific facts they can test without relying on your word. Names. Dates. Locations. Objects. Things buried, moved, signed, burned, paid, or stored.”
Derek blinked at her.
She leaned closer.
“And if you lie once, the lie becomes another brick on your chest.”
The paramedics loaded him into the ambulance. Morales pointed at me.
“You ride separately. Hospital, then statement. Do not talk to him without us.”
I almost laughed, but smoke turned it into a cough.
“Talking to Derek Kane is pretty low on my bucket list.”
Natalie heard me and gave a weak, cracked sound that might have been a laugh if she had not been shaking.
I walked to her ambulance. Her face was gray under the emergency lights, but her eyes were clear.
“You okay?” I asked.
She looked past me toward South Valley Holdings.
“My father was in a trunk?”
I had no answer that would not hurt her.
So I told her the truth.
“We’re going to make him say exactly what he knows.”
Natalie nodded, but tears slipped down her cheeks without drama, without sound.
That was the thing about real grief. It did not always scream. Sometimes it just sat upright under a foil blanket while strangers checked your pulse.
An agent approached Morales at a run.
“Sir, two security detained. One with burns. Fire team recovered the duffel near the interior office wall. Wet, smoke-damaged, but intact. Tracker confirmed. Evidence tech is filming recovery now.”
Sarah exhaled like she had been holding that breath since the cash first crossed into the warehouse.
“And Richard?” Morales asked.
The agent’s face hardened.
“Not located.”
The rain hit the pavement between us.
Not located.
Not arrested.
Not finished.
Three hours later, Derek Kane gave his first proffer statement from a hospital bed with both wrists cuffed to the rails and a federal public defender sitting stiffly beside him.
The room smelled like antiseptic, smoke, and burned pride.
I was behind the glass in a small observation room with Sarah, Morales, and a prosecutor named Ellen Pryce who looked like she had not slept since the Carter administration. Claire sat beside me, pale but steady, her hands wrapped around a paper cup of coffee she had not touched.
Natalie had been taken for further evaluation down the hall under guard. Mr. Alvarez, stubborn as a mule and twice as durable, had refused admission after getting stitches near his cheekbone. He was somewhere in the same hospital giving a statement and complaining about the coffee.
On the monitor, Derek turned his head toward the recorder.
“My name is Derek Michael Kane.”
His voice was hoarse.
The prosecutor said, “You understand this is a proffer session, not an immunity agreement?”
Derek’s lawyer touched his arm.
“Answer verbally.”
“Yes.”
“You understand no promise has been made that you will not be prosecuted?”
“Yes.”
“You understand that if you provide false information, omit material facts, or attempt to mislead investigators, this session can be used against you?”
Derek closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
Morales stood at the foot of the bed.
“Start with Thomas Bell.”
Derek breathed through his nose, slow and pained.
“I didn’t know they were going to kill him.”
Morales said nothing.
Derek opened his eyes.
“I thought it was going to be like Evan.”
My stomach tightened.
Claire looked down.
“Explain that,” Morales said.
Derek’s lips trembled, and I hated myself for noticing how young he suddenly looked. Not innocent. Never that. Just young enough to have made cowardice into a personality before he understood it could become a life sentence.
“My father said Bell was stealing files. He said Bell was sick, paranoid, trying to hurt the company before retirement. Harlan was there. Linda had already signed off on the payroll corrections. Dad said we needed Bell to return company property and scare him into leaving.”
Sarah’s eyes snapped toward Morales at the name.
Linda.
Morales said, “Linda who?”
“Linda Voss. Payroll director. She handled employee vendor reimbursements, backdated forms, contractor onboarding. She could make a document look like it always existed.”
The prosecutor wrote fast.
Derek swallowed.
“That night, Dad had Bell brought to Kane South.”
Every muscle in my body went still.
Old Kane South.
The shuttered dealership across from the county terminal. The one Thomas had used as a landmark in his delayed email. The one with the faded sign Natalie had stood near when we found her.
Morales kept his voice flat.
“Date.”
Derek gave it.
It was eight months and three days earlier.
“Who brought him?”
“Two private security guys. One was Ray Dobbins. The other was Malcolm Sneed. Harlan came later.”
“Was Thomas Bell alive when you saw him?”
Derek stared at the ceiling.
“Yes.”
Claire’s cup bent slightly in her hand.
“What condition?”
“Bleeding. Not bad. Mouth cut. Hands zip-tied. He was in the service bay office.”
Morales asked, “Who was present?”
“My father. Me. Ray. Malcolm. Harlan later. Bell.”
“Did your father strike him?”
Derek hesitated.
The prosecutor lifted her head.
Derek’s lawyer whispered, “Tell the truth.”
“Yes.”
Morales said, “Did Richard Kane kill Thomas Bell?”
Derek’s eyes filled with something that had waited years to come out and found no honorable exit.
“He locked him in the trunk.”
No one moved.
Derek went on, words spilling now, faster and uglier.
“Bell wouldn’t say where the duplicate files were. He kept saying, ‘You can bury me, Richard, but not the pattern.’ Dad lost it. He told Ray and Malcolm to put him in the trunk of an old trade-in. A gray Crown Vic. No plates. Harlan said not to do anything stupid on camera, so they killed the bay feed. Bell was yelling. Dad closed the trunk himself.”
Natalie’s father had died in the dark inside a car on a dealership lot.
For a moment, all I could hear was the distant hum of hospital lights.
Morales’ jaw worked once.
“And then?”
“They drove him out to the quarry road. I followed in Dad’s car because he told me to. Harlan met us past the service entrance. Bell wasn’t yelling anymore when they opened the trunk.”
Derek covered his eyes with his bandaged hand and cried without making a sound.
I wanted to feel triumph.
I felt sick.
Sarah whispered, “Testable facts.”
Morales heard her through the speaker and moved in.
“What happened to the vehicle?”
“Crushed.”
“Where?”
“North Pike Salvage. Cash ticket. No VIN entered. Harlan arranged it.”
“What happened to Thomas Bell’s belongings?”
“Dad kept what he wanted. Harlan took the wallet and phone. Malcolm threw Bell’s shoes into a burn barrel behind Kane South because there was mud on them.”
The prosecutor’s pen stopped.
“Behind Kane South?”
Derek nodded.
“There’s a concrete wash pad behind the old detail building. Drain doesn’t work right. Dad hated that place because redevelopment kept getting delayed, but he used it for storage.”
Morales leaned forward.
“Storage of what?”
Derek looked toward the camera, and for the first time, I understood the chapter title my life had been writing without my permission.
“The real books.”
Sarah went still beside me.
Derek continued.
“Original ledgers. Payroll correction files. Vendor binders. Stuff Linda wouldn’t keep at headquarters after Bell disappeared. Dad moved it to Kane South because everybody thought the building was empty. It’s in the old finance office wall.”
Morales said, “Be precise.”
“There’s a framed picture of Dad breaking ground in 1998. Behind it, the panel comes off. That’s the decoy. Behind the second layer, there’s a metal fire cabinet built into the wall. Combination is my mother’s birthday. Four digits. He kept paper there because he said paper couldn’t be hacked.”
I almost smiled then.
Not because it was funny.
Because Richard Kane, for all his power, had trusted the same thing every old criminal eventually trusted.
A locked box.
Morales asked, “What connects Evan Carter to the shell companies?”
Derek’s gaze shifted toward the camera again.
Even through the monitor, it felt personal.
“Linda forged his name.”
Claire made a small sound.
Derek said, “After Dad fired Evan, he had Linda build a fallback file. Consulting agreements. Reimbursement approvals. Conflict disclosures. Vendor introductions. Stuff that made it look like Evan had quietly helped set up North Pike Strategy and South Valley Holdings before he got caught asking questions.”
My hands curled into fists.
For three years, I had wondered what invisible stain followed me into every interview and every rejected application. Now it had a shape. Ink. Paper. A practiced hand.
“Why?” Morales asked.
Derek looked exhausted.
“Because if anyone unwound the payments, Dad needed a thief ready-made.”
The words landed in the room like a verdict.
Not from a judge.
From the son who had helped keep the lie breathing.
After the proffer, Morales stepped into the observation room and shut the door behind him.
“We move on Kane South tonight.”
Sarah shook her head.
“You get a warrant first.”
“We have exigency if Richard is fleeing and evidence may be destroyed.”
“You have enough for a warrant and a judge who isn’t Malver,” Sarah said. “Do it clean or Richard’s lawyers will turn that building into a constitutional circus.”
The prosecutor pointed at Sarah with her pen.
“I hate that you’re right.”
Claire finally spoke.
“I can help with motive.”
Everyone looked at her.
Her face had the fragile steadiness of someone standing on broken glass because the only way out was across.
“Richard didn’t just want Evan gone. He needed people to believe Evan was unstable before the documents surfaced. Before he could defend himself. That’s why they came to me before the firing.”
Sarah softened slightly.
“Claire, we already preserved your documents.”
“I know,” Claire said. “But I need to say it where it counts.”
So they put her in a different room with a different recorder, and Claire Weston told the federal government how Richard Kane had hollowed out my life before I even knew the knife was in.
She described the call two weeks before my termination. Richard knowing about her sister Mia’s medical debt. Her father’s job at Kane North. The insurance. The pension. The threat that if she warned me, I would be indicted and her family would go down beside me.
She described Derek calling after I was fired, telling her to stay gone if she cared whether her father kept his benefits.
She described the unsigned nondisparagement agreement.
The smear plan with my name in bold.
EVAN CARTER — INSTABILITY NARRATIVE / EXTERNAL REFERENCES.
I listened until I could not.
In the hallway, I leaned against a vending machine and stared at a row of candy bars like they belonged to another country.
Claire came out ten minutes later.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she said, “I should have told you.”
There were a hundred true responses.
Yes.
You should have.
I needed you.
You left me alone with a lie big enough to live inside.
Instead, I said the only thing that did not feel like it would break both of us further.
“You told them now.”
She wiped under one eye.
“That doesn’t fix it.”
“No,” I said. “But it matters.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Unknown number.
For one stupid second, I thought it was Derek again, calling from another dark parking lot with another threat.
Then I answered.
A woman’s voice came through, shaking so badly I could barely understand her.
“Evan Carter?”
I straightened.
“Who is this?”
“My name is Linda Voss.”
I looked through the glass wall at Sarah. She saw my face change and immediately started toward me.
Linda sobbed once, then swallowed it.
“I forged your name.”
The hallway tilted.
Sarah reached me and mouthed, Put it on speaker.
I tapped the button with a numb thumb.
Linda’s voice filled the small space between us.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. He said it was just containment. He said you were already gone and nobody would ever need the file unless Bell made trouble.”
Sarah held up one finger and pulled her recorder from her bag.
“Linda, this is attorney Sarah Cho. Are you safe right now?”
“No.”
Morales appeared from the interview room doorway as if her fear had summoned him.
Sarah asked, “Where are you?”
Linda was breathing fast.
“He knows Derek talked. Richard called me himself. He said old paper burns better than old loyalty.”
Morales took my phone carefully but kept it close enough for me to hear.
“Linda, this is Agent Miguel Morales. Tell me your location.”
“I can give you the ledgers.”
“We know about Kane South,” Morales said.
“No,” Linda whispered. “Not those. The originals before Richard cleaned them. The ones with Harlan. Malver. Campaign money. The state contract.”
Sarah’s eyes widened.
Morales said, “Linda, listen to me. We can protect you, but you have to tell us where you are.”
A thud sounded over the line.
Linda gasped.
Someone banged on a door.
Hard.
Once.
Twice.
Then a man’s muffled voice shouted something I could not make out.
Linda started crying.
“He told me if I ever talked, my son would find me first.”
Morales snapped his fingers at the prosecutor and pointed down the hall.
“Trace. Now.”
Sarah leaned toward the phone.
“Linda, focus on my voice. Give us an address.”
“I don’t have time.”
“You do,” Sarah said. “You have exactly enough time to tell the truth.”
Another crash.
Closer.
Linda whispered numbers so softly Morales had to bend over the phone.
“Say it again,” he ordered.
She did.
Sarah repeated it aloud for the recorder.
Morales was already running, shouting for agents, for dispatch, for units, for anyone with a badge that Richard Kane did not own.
I heard Linda breathing.
Then she said my name.
“Evan?”
“I’m here.”
“I didn’t know he’d ruin you that badly.”
May you like
The door on her end burst with a sound like wood splitting.
Linda whispered an address, then the call cut off under the sound of shattering glass.
