Chapter 6 - The Photograph in the Black Envelope
The blood wasn't Kayla's.
That was the first good news.
The second was that nobody had been found inside the apartment.
The bad news was everywhere else.
Drawers had been emptied.
Mattresses cut open.
Floorboards pulled apart.
Mrs. Gable had been searching for something.
Kayla stood amid the destruction.
“She thinks Mom left me something.”
Gunther agreed.
“What?”
“I don't know.”
Sam looked toward an old family photograph on the floor.
Their mother stood between them.
Kayla was twelve.
Sam was seven.
The frame was cracked.
Sam picked it up.
Something rattled.
They opened the backing.
A storage receipt fell out.
Locker 317.
Central Station.
Kayla looked at Gunther.
Mrs. Gable had missed it.
They went immediately.
Gunther insisted on security.
Inside locker 317 was a single black envelope.
It contained a photograph.
Kayla's father.
Gunther's father.
Mrs. Gable.
And Victor.
All four stood outside Woods Maritime headquarters twenty years earlier.
Gunther turned toward Victor.
“You knew her father.”
Victor stared at the photograph.
“I was nineteen.”
“You knew him.”
“Yes.”
Kayla stepped forward.
“Tell me.”
Victor closed his eyes.
“Thomas Hughes saved Gunther's life.”
Gunther froze.
Victor explained.
Gunther had been thirteen when rival criminals attempted to abduct him.
Thomas, a Woods Maritime mechanic, saw the men and intervened.
He was shot.
He survived.
Gunther's father rewarded him by giving him a management position.
Years later, Thomas discovered the company was being used for illegal shipments.
He threatened to expose it.
Then he vanished.
Kayla's mother was told he had abandoned the family.
“He didn't,” Victor said.
Kayla's eyes filled.
“No.”
Victor shook his head.
“He died protecting you.”
Gunther looked at the photograph again.
His father had built his empire partly on the death of the man whose daughter had spent three years cleaning his floors.
The irony made him sick.
There was something else inside the envelope.
A handwritten list of bank accounts.
And one name.
Eleanor Gable.
Kayla whispered:
“She killed my father.”
“We don't know that yet.”
“I do.”
Gunther looked at her.
“I need evidence.”
“I need justice.”
Their eyes met.
For the first time, Gunther understood how similar they were.
His phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
Mrs. Gable spoke.
“You found the photograph.”
Gunther's expression hardened.
“Where are you?”
“Close.”
“What do you want?”
“The ledgers.”
“No.”
She laughed.
“You'll reconsider.”
Gunther heard a sound behind her.
A familiar voice.
Victor's wife.
Crying.
Victor went white.
Mrs. Gable said:
“Midnight. Pier Fourteen.”
Then another voice came through the phone.
And this time, it was someone Gunther had believed dead for twenty years.
“Son?”
May you like
Gunther stopped breathing.
His father had just spoken his name.
