Chapter 8 - The Paper Trail
Within two hours, the modest rental house on Cedar Street had transformed into a major crime scene. Forensic technicians in white suits moved methodically between the basement and the main floor, dusting the steel filing cabinet and bagging the dozens of surveillance logs Vance had kept on local families. Detective Sarah Morales sat with me inside my patrol car while Liam sat in the rear of an ambulance parked twenty feet away, eating a sandwich provided by the paramedics and coloring in a fresh workbook. ""You stumbled into a five-year-old federal fugitive warrant, Dunham,"" Morales said, sliding an electronic tablet toward me. On the screen was a missing child poster dated six years prior from Spokane, Washington. The infant in the picture had the exact same wide, dark eyes as the boy sitting in the ambulance. ""His name really is Liam Thomas,"" Morales explained, her voice softening. ""Vance was a non-custodial family acquaintance who vanished with the baby during a weekend dispute back in Spokane. He changed names four times, worked cash jobs under the table, and managed to slip through state background checks by using a dead brother's clean social security number to volunteer at the school. He was using the volunteer position to scout safe exit routes and keep tabs on police response times in the neighborhood."" I looked over at the ambulance. Liam was pointing at a picture in his coloring book, showing it to the young female paramedic who was smiling back at him. ""And his mother?"" I asked, my chest tightening with cautious hope. Morales smiled—a genuine, relieved expression that rarely appeared on a homicide detective's face. ""Clara Thomas. She never stopped looking for him. She still lives in Spokane, working as a middle school librarian. I spoke to her captain ten minutes ago. She's already on an emergency flight heading toward Portland right now.""
