Chapter 3 - THE PRIVATE CONSULTATION
Vanessa was taken to a hospital security office while police were called.
Preston remained in a separate room.
Neither was permitted to leave.
Raymond ordered a full review of every access record connected to Emily’s medical file.
Within an hour, the results arrived.
Preston had accessed her records fourteen times.
He was not a physician.
He was not authorized to open them.
Each entry came through an executive account assigned to Whitmore Health Management.
The account should have been limited to billing data.
Someone had expanded its permissions.
Raymond called the hospital’s chief technology officer.
“Who authorized this?”
The man stared at the screen.
“Dr. Malcolm Whitmore.”
Preston’s father.
Malcolm Whitmore served as chief medical officer.
For thirty years, he had been the public face of the hospital.
He appeared at charity dinners.
He spoke about ethics.
He called Emily his daughter.
Now his credentials had been used to open her private records.
Raymond ordered Malcolm to report to the third floor.
The response came ten minutes later.
Dr. Whitmore was unavailable.
His office had been emptied.
His assistant said he left the hospital shortly before Raymond arrived.
Emily listened from the bed.
“He knew.”
Raymond looked at her.
“About the affair?”
“About something bigger.”
She removed another paper from the folder.
It was a life-insurance notice.
A new policy had been opened in Emily’s name.
The insured amount was twelve million dollars.
The beneficiary was Preston.
Emily had never applied for it.
Raymond read every line.
“When did you discover this?”
“Yesterday.”
“Why did you come alone?”
“I thought I was meeting a lawyer in the administrative wing.”
“What lawyer?”
“Someone from the hospital’s patient-rights office.”
Raymond called the office.
No meeting had been scheduled.
The email inviting Emily to the hospital had come from an internal address.
The account belonged to Dr. Natalie Brooks.
The same employee whose stolen badge Vanessa had used.
Natalie Brooks was a maternity specialist.
She had not reported to work that morning.
Her phone was turned off.
Her car remained inside the staff garage.
Security searched her office.
The door was unlocked.
Her purse sat beneath the desk.
A cup of coffee had gone cold.
A page was missing from her appointment calendar.
Blood marked the corner of the carpet.
Raymond ordered the hospital placed under internal emergency protocol.
Every exit was monitored.
Preston shouted when he heard the announcement.
“You are turning a personal dispute into a hospital crisis.”
Raymond entered the security room.
“You forged medical authority.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You accessed confidential files.”
“My father handles those systems.”
“You destroyed Emily’s revocation form.”
Preston leaned back.
“She is emotional.”
“She is eight months pregnant.”
“She has become paranoid.”
Raymond stared at him.
“That word often appears when a man needs a woman’s truth to sound like illness.”
Preston’s confidence flickered.
May you like
Then Raymond placed the insurance policy on the table.
“Why is your wife worth twelve million dollars dead?”
