Chapter 8 - The Dossier on the Dais
The word *coroner* dropped into the opulent ballroom tent like an unexploded bomb.
"Emily, stop this!" Beatrice shrieked, finally finding her feet and stumbling toward the dais, her lavender silk skirt twisting around her knees. "You wicked, jealous little girl! You’re ruining your brother’s life! You’ve always hated Lucas because he was the chosen one! Because your father loved him more!"
Emily didn't even look at her mother. She kept her eyes locked on Richard, whose hands were now trembling so violently that the crystal glass slipped from his fingers, smashing against the wooden floorboards of the riser. Scotch splattered across the cuffs of his trousers.
"Grandfather didn't die of a heart attack, Richard," Emily continued into the microphone, her voice steady as an EKG monitor. "He died of an acute digitalis toxicity. A medication he was never prescribed. A medication that was found in his bloodstream twelve years ago, but was dismissed by a county medical examiner whose private consulting firm happened to receive a two-hundred-thousand-dollar grant from the Carter Foundation three weeks later."
A shocked cry broke out from the second table.
Aunt Marlene rose, her face pasty white, her hand flying to her throat. "That’s a lie! That’s an absolute, filthy lie!"
"It was a lie," Emily agreed, turning her head toward Marlene. "Until three weeks ago, Aunt Marlene, when the Department of Justice granted an exhumation order signed by the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia."
The tent went so quiet you could hear the ice melting in the silver buckets.
Richard looked as though he had been hit by a truck. He grabbed the edge of the podium with both hands, his knuckles turning white, his breathing coming in ragged, shallow wheezes. "You... you dug him up? You dug up your own grandfather?"
"I exhumed an officer of the United States Army who was murdered to cover up treason," Emily said coldly. "The toxicological analysis was completed on Tuesday at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. The lethal dose was confirmed."
She tapped the sealed envelope lying between them.
"Inside this envelope is not just the pathology report, Richard," Emily said. "Inside this envelope is the original carbon ledger that Grandfather kept in his private deposit box at the Riggs Bank. The box you couldn't find because Grandfather gave the key to the only person in this family he trusted before he died."
Emily reached into her collar, pulled out her dog tags, and let them fall against the gold buttons of her coat.
Hanging on the stainless-steel chain between the two stamped metal tags was a small, tarnished brass key with the number 412 stamped into the handle.
"He gave it to me on the day I graduated from medical school," Emily said, her voice dropping into a register of raw, cutting grief. "He told me, 'Emily, if anything happens to me, don't let them sell the soldiers out.' I didn't understand what he meant then. I was twenty-two years old. I thought he was just an old man who was losing his memory."
She looked down at the brass key.
"Then I deployed," Emily said. "And in 2014, in a trauma bay sixty miles south of Kandahar, I operated on a twenty-one-year-old corporal named Miller. His vehicle had taken an RKG-3 anti-tank grenade to the floorboards. The armor plate had shattered like porcelain tile instead of catching the blast. The metal shards shredded his femoral artery. I spent six hours trying to keep him alive. He died on my table, Richard. He died while you were buying Lucas his first townhouse in Georgetown."
Lucas stepped back from the head table as if the podium had caught fire. He looked at Chloe, but Chloe was already backing away from him, her eyes wide with horror as she looked at her father.
"Daddy?" Chloe whispered, her voice cracking. "Daddy, what is she saying?"
Walter Vance didn't answer his daughter. He stepped forward, his face like thunder, and raised his hand toward the back of the tent.
"Captain," Walter called out.
The side curtains of the grand pavilion were pulled back.
Four uniformed Virginia State Police troopers, accompanied by three plainclothes special agents from the Army Criminal Investigation Division, strode onto the terrace. Their heavy leather duty belts creaked in the silence; their holsters were snapped shut, but their hands rested with professional readiness at their sides.
Leading them was a federal prosecutor from the United States Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, holding a red leather folio containing an arrest warrant bearing the gold seal of the Department of Justice.
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"Richard Carter," the lead CID agent said, stepping up to the riser and pulling a pair of stainless-steel handcuffs from his belt. "By authority of the United States District Court, you are under arrest for procurement fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States government, and first-degree murder."
***
