Chapter 4 - WHAT ANNA DISCOVERED
The flash drive contained financial statements from Lily’s trust.
Anna’s father had created the trust after selling his medical technology company.
When Anna died, the trust passed to Lily.
I became the acting trustee until Lily turned twenty-five.
The principal balance should have been nearly three million dollars.
According to the official statements, the money remained untouched.
Anna’s files showed otherwise.
Six months before her death, small payments began leaving the trust.
The withdrawals were disguised as legal fees, educational planning, medical consultations, and property management expenses.
Most were below fifty thousand dollars.
Individually, they appeared reasonable.
Together, they totaled more than six hundred thousand dollars.
The money moved through companies connected to Evelyn’s charity foundation.
Several payments ended in an account controlled by Michael.
I felt physically sick.
Anna had uncovered the theft two weeks before she died.
She scheduled a meeting with the court-appointed trust supervisor.
That meeting was supposed to happen on the morning of the crash.
The blue folder likely contained proof.
Detective Collins examined the metadata on the files.
Someone accessed the flash drive remotely three days after Anna’s death.
The login came from my home internet connection.
Michael had been living with us.
He knew Anna created a backup.
He simply did not know where she mailed it.
The drive also contained a draft letter to Evelyn.
Anna accused her mother of using charitable donations to hide stolen trust money.
She threatened to report everyone involved.
Near the bottom, Anna wrote that Michael had confessed.
The confession file itself was missing.
Collins believed Michael removed it before Anna mailed the drive.
That explained why he recorded later conversations with Evelyn.
He had been creating insurance for himself.
“He helped steal from Lily,” I said.
“He may also have tried to stop,” Collins replied.
“He replaced her medication with insulin.”
“I am not defending him.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I am saying frightened conspirators sometimes preserve evidence because they expect their partners to betray them.”
Michael had been trapped between guilt and greed.
That did not make him innocent.
It made him unpredictable.
At noon, police received a tip from a motel clerk outside the city.
A man matching Michael’s description had rented a room using cash.
By the time officers arrived, the room was empty.
They found bloody bandages in the sink.
A bullet had grazed Michael’s left shoulder.
Someone had shot at him near his abandoned car.
On the bathroom mirror, he had written a message using soap.
SLOAN HAS THE BLUE FOLDER.
Jonathan Sloan denied everything.
His office had no record of receiving documents from Anna.
His assistant claimed he had spent the afternoon in court.
Then Collins showed me footage from the hospital’s parking garage.
Sloan’s car entered less than an hour after Evelyn was arrested.
He never visited Evelyn.
He never contacted hospital administration.
He remained inside the garage for eleven minutes.
During that same period, someone wearing a maintenance uniform entered Lily’s treatment floor and attempted to access the locked evidence room.
The man left before officers stopped him.
May you like
Security cameras captured part of his face.
It was the server who had carried the peanut-covered dessert to Lily.
