Chapter 42 - The Room on the Seventh Floor
The cardiac intensive care unit at Vanderbilt smelled of sterile ozone, floor wax, and the quiet, rhythmic hum of life support machinery. A pair of armed Davidson County deputies sat on plastic chairs outside Room 714, their duty belts squeaking whenever they shifted their weight.
"Family only, sir," the younger deputy said, stepping into my path as I approached the double doors. His hand rested casually on his sidearm. "Mr. Keaton is in federal custody pending formal arraignment on wire fraud and corporate conspiracy charges. Visiting list is restricted."
"I'm Grant Miller," I said, keeping my hands visible, my voice level. "I'm his son-in-law. Corinne Vance's husband. Check the docket on the Franklin Road injunction from this morning. My name is on the joint defense release."
The deputy frowned, pulling out a laminated clipboard. He ran a thick thumb down the sheet. "Miller... yeah. You're listed as an emergency contact from before the state indictment came down. Five minutes. No phones, no recording devices. He's barely conscious anyway."
"Understood."
I unclipped my phone, dropped it into the plastic tray on the nurses' counter, and stepped through the heavy door.
Harrison Keaton looked like an empty shell carved out of yellowed wax. The booming, terrifying patriarch who had ruled Keaton Land & Development with an iron fist, who had sneered at me across walnut boardroom tables while holding my infidelity like a blade against my neck, was shrunken beneath a white thermal blanket. Wires taped to his sunken chest led to an array of monitors tracing a sluggish, irregular heartbeat. A clear plastic mask covered his nose and mouth, his breath misting the plastic with an uneven, wet rattle.
I walked to the side of the bed. The plastic railing was cold under my fingers.
"Harrison," I said softly.
His eyelids twitched. The gray, rheumy eyes beneath cracked open, struggling to focus on the fluorescent fixture before drifting slowly toward my face. A faint, bitter tremor crossed his mouth behind the mask.
"Grant..." The word was barely a rasp, expelled with a shudder of effort. "Come to... watch the state... finish it?"
"Vance is in custody," I said. "They took him off Tract Forty-Two forty minutes ago. The underground vault in Cavern Four is sealed under state evidentiary lock. The land is going into Clara's trust."
Harrison didn't flinch. A horrific, ruined smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "Clara's... trust. You think... she won. Corinne thinks... she won."
"She didn't win," I said, leaning closer until my face was six inches from his mask. "Because Clara had two daughters."
The heart monitor beside the bed spiked instantly, its slow metronome jumping into an erratic, rapid staccato. Harrison’s chest heaved. His claw-like left hand, taped with IV needles, twitched against the sheet, trying to find purchase.
"St. Jude’s Hospital," I whispered. "October fourteenth, nineteen-eighty-two. Child B. Marked deceased. But she didn't die, Harrison. You moved her. You paid to have her erased from the Tennessee birth records, and you set her up in Dallas under the name Caroline. You raised her in the dark."
Harrison’s eyes widened, the yellowed sclera shot through with red broken vessels. He tried to shake his head, but his neck had no strength.
"Not... me," he wheezed. The monitor shrieked a warning tone, and his oxygen saturation numbers on the upper screen began to flash yellow. "Not... me, Grant."
"Don't lie to me! Not now!" I gripped the cold steel of the bed rail. "You put Caroline in my office! You arranged that hotel conference in Austin two years ago! You watched me destroy my marriage with her, knowing she was Corinne's sister!"
"Clara..." Harrison gasped, his fingernails digging into the mattress. "Clara did it."
The air left my lungs as if I'd been struck in the ribs with an iron bar. "What?"
"Clara... didn't trust me," Harrison whispered, his voice failing as a nurse’s footsteps hurried toward the door outside. "She didn't trust Vance. She hid... the second girl... to save her... from us. Caroline... was the insurance policy. If Corinne... failed... Caroline takes... everything."
The door flew open. "Sir, step back!" the charge nurse snapped, rushing to the IV stand as alarms began sounding in sequence. "His blood pressure is bottoming out! Deputies, get him out of here!"
Before the younger deputy could grab my shoulder, Harrison’s fingers locked onto the cuff of my jacket with shocking, dying strength. He pulled me down until his breath burned against my ear, sour and cold.
May you like
"Look in... the safety deposit box... First National... in Tullahoma," he hissed through the mask, saliva flecking the plastic. "Key... is in the foundation... of the old barn. Before Caroline... finds it."
***
