Chapter 12 - THE MENTOR WHO CHOSE MY REPLACEMENT
Catherine Doyle had been kind when I joined Mercer Pediatric Systems.
She defended me when senior executives dismissed my audit questions. She brought meals after Lily’s premature birth and repeatedly told me the company would welcome me back when motherhood became less overwhelming.
Then she began suggesting that Lily needed me at home.
I believed she cared.
In reality, Catherine needed me away from the accounts Anna once audited.
When investigators searched Catherine’s home, they found no financial ledgers.
They found hundreds of photographs.
Anna entering stores.
Anna boarding buses.
Anna outside shelters and legal clinics.
For nearly nine years, Catherine had tracked her.
One photograph showed Anna slipping the memory card inside a stuffed rabbit at a Mercer charity warehouse.
Catherine witnessed it.
She left the card there.
“Why didn’t she destroy it?” I asked Rosa.
“Insurance.”
Catherine preserved evidence against Beatrice in case the family ever blamed her.
When Grant selected a rabbit from the warehouse for Lily, Catherine realized where the card had gone.
She waited through the divorce, trial and corporate investigation without telling anyone.
Rosa arrested her for obstruction and conspiracy involving the defective equipment scheme.
Catherine asked to speak with me before accepting an attorney.
“I protected your daughter,” she said.
“You kept silent about a defective monitor beside her crib.”
“I changed the unit before anything happened.”
The company records showed a technician visited our house when Lily was seven weeks old. I remembered Catherine arranging the appointment.
She had secretly replaced the dangerous monitor.
“You saved Lily and left the others exposed.”
“I couldn’t save everyone.”
“You could have reported the defect.”
“William Mercer would have destroyed me.”
Every adult in the Mercer family’s orbit possessed a reason for choosing silence.
Money.
Fear.
Employment.
A sick child.
A powerful father.
None of their reasons had protected the families using those machines.
Catherine offered the location of Anna’s latest safe house in exchange for prosecutorial consideration.
Rosa found it empty.
On the kitchen wall, Anna had pinned maps connecting Mercer warehouses, courts and medical facilities.
A photograph of Lily remained at the center.
Beside it was a recent photograph of another girl.
She appeared about ten years old and had Anna’s dark eyes.
Emily.
On the back, Anna had written:
Found her. William gave her to the family whose child the monitor injured.
The settlement family had not only received money.
They had received Anna’s daughter through a private adoption arranged to purchase their silence.
The adoptive family lived in Richmond.
When investigators reached the address, the house was empty.
A neighbor said they had left suddenly the previous evening.
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They took Emily with them.
Someone had warned them.
