Chapter 6: The Doctor’s Signature
The diner’s kitchen smelled of burnt toast and bleach. Diane followed Naomi past a rack of clean plates, each step quick and quiet, while the cook stared at them over a steaming pot.
At the back door, Detective Cho was waiting. Beyond her, Christopher stood by his car with one hand lifted, as if he’d meant to wave them over. His smile disappeared when he saw the detective.
“Naomi, come with me,” Cho said. “Diane, stay here a moment.”
Christopher started toward them.
Cho stepped between him and the door. “You need to leave.”
“I’m trying to find my daughter.”
“Then call your attorney and arrange a proper time to see her. You don’t get to follow witnesses around town.”
His gaze slipped past Cho to Diane. She saw no grief in it now, only the cold calculation of a man deciding which threat might work best.
Naomi caught Diane’s sleeve. “Don’t go alone.”
“I won’t,” Diane said, though she had not yet decided what she would do.
Cho took Naomi toward an unmarked car. Diane watched them go, then looked back at the clinic’s name on the photograph Naomi had shown her. The letters had blurred in her mind, but she could still picture Reed carrying that package to Christopher’s house.
Her phone rang.
The number was unfamiliar. Diane answered without speaking.
“Mrs. Lawson,” Dr. Reed said. His voice was low, strained. “I need to talk to you about Bertha’s death report.”
The traffic beyond the diner hissed through the wet street.
“What about it?”
“I shouldn’t have signed it.”
Diane tightened her grip on the phone. “You told the authorities she died of cardiac arrest.”
“I was told what to write.”
“By Christopher?”
A pause.
“He forced my hand. I can explain, but not on the phone.”
Diane glanced toward Cho’s car. Christopher remained beside his own, watching her.
“Where?”
“My clinic. Come through the rear entrance. I’ll meet you there.”
Diane didn’t answer immediately. Reed had accused her of breaking into his clinic and stealing files. Now he wanted her inside it, away from Cho.
“If this is a trap—”
“It isn’t.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I know.” His breath caught, then steadied. “But you deserve to see what’s in her file.”
He hung up.
Cho was still dealing with Christopher. Diane could wait for her, explain the call, and lose the chance to learn what Reed was afraid to say. Or she could go and give him the chance to explain himself before he changed his mind.
She chose the clinic.
Inside, the air smelled of floor polish and old coffee. The waiting room was empty, chairs lined up beneath a poster of a smiling family. A clock ticked above the reception desk, its second hand shuddering at every mark.
Reed stood in the hallway with his sleeves rolled to the elbows. He looked less like a doctor than a man who hadn’t slept. When Diane approached, he held out several pages.
“I printed these before I understood how bad this would look.”
“Bad to whom?”
His eyes flicked toward the front windows. “Everyone.”
The top sheet bore his signature beneath a short statement about Bertha’s death. Diane read it twice. It used the same careful language she’d heard at the funeral: cardiac arrest, no obvious signs of trauma, no further examination required.
Her nursing instincts caught on the wording. The next page carried the same date but a different time, handwritten in a narrow blue script. One entry said Reed had received a call about Bertha after she had collapsed. Another placed the call earlier. The notes didn’t fit together.
“Which time is correct?”
“I don’t know.”
“You signed this.”
“I did.”
“And you can’t tell me when you spoke with her?”
Reed’s jaw moved as if he were grinding down an answer. “I’m saying the file was changed.”
“By you?”
He stared at the pages instead of at her.
That silence hurt more than a denial. Bertha had spent her life learning to ask her mother for help, then apparently stopped. Diane had worked nights in an ER, soothed strangers through terror, and somehow missed her own daughter’s fear.
“What was she doing at your clinic?” Diane asked.
Reed’s face went still.
Diane took the papers from him. “Her name is in your records. Why?”
“I can’t discuss that.”
“You called me here to discuss her.”
“I called because I thought you should know the paperwork doesn’t match.”
“Then tell me what does.”
He looked down the hallway. At its end, a door stood ajar, revealing shelves of binders and a computer monitor gone dark. The clinic was quiet enough for Diane to hear the clock’s uneven tick from the waiting room.
“Bertha was listed as a patient,” she said. “I knew my daughter. She had no heart condition. She wasn’t seeing a doctor for anything serious.”
Reed’s expression tightened at the word daughter.
“You don’t know everything she was dealing with,” he said.
Diane felt the words land where he meant them to. “Neither did you.”
For a beat, neither spoke. Then Reed’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He glanced at the screen and went pale.
“Who is it?”
“No one.”
“Then why are you afraid?”
He pocketed the phone without answering. Diane’s own buzzed a second later. A text from an unknown number appeared, followed by a photograph of a clinic file. Bertha’s name was printed clearly across its tab.
May you like
The next message came before Diane could enlarge the image.
Christopher knows you are coming.
