Chapter 2 - The House On Mockingbird Lane
Leaving Noah under the direct protection of an armed officer outside his hospital room was the hardest thing I had ever done, but staying still felt like dying. The judge wouldn’t sign the full property warrant until eight the next morning because Margaret’s high-priced defense attorney had filed an emergency injunction claiming illegal harassment of an elderly widow. I couldn't wait fourteen hours. The thought of my father—or whatever was left of him—trapped beneath cold concrete while rain threatened to wash away the evidence made my blood boil.
I took a cab straight to Mockingbird Lane. The two-story brick colonial home looked utterly normal from the curb, flanked by manicured rosebushes and towering pecan trees. But the moment my boots crunched against the gravel driveway, a dreadful chill crept up my spine. The house felt less like a childhood home and more like a mausoleum constructed around an unspeakable crime.
The yellow police tape from earlier in the day flapped in the autumn breeze around the perimeter of the backyard. The officers had cataloged the surface, found the blood, and were forced to back off until the warrant arrived. I slipped around the side gate, my heart hammering against my ribs like a caged bird.
In the back corner of the lot, shrouded by weeping willow branches and overgrown ivy, stood Dad’s old tool shed. It had been built with cedar planks on top of an oversized poured-concrete foundation. A heavy padlock hung from the hasp, but it had already been cut by the police and replaced with an evidence seal, which fluttered loosely.
I didn't go into the shed yet; Noah’s words echoed in my ears: Look in the bible with the gold lock in his closet.
Using the spare key hidden beneath the ceramic turtle on the back porch, I unlocked the kitchen door. The air inside smelled of lavender wax, old paper, and my mother’s peppermint candies. It was the scent of my childhood, entirely corrupted. I moved swiftly up the stairs, avoiding the creaky third step by instinct, and reached the master bedroom.
Margaret had preserved the room like a museum piece. Dad’s side of the walk-in closet still held his flannel shirts, pressed and wrapped in plastic dry-cleaning bags. High on the top shelf, buried behind a stack of dusty hatboxes, my fingers brushed against cold metal. I pulled down a heavy, leather-bound family heirloom Bible equipped with a brass clasp and a three-digit combination wheel.
*His birthday.*
October 14. 1-0-1-4.
I spun the brass wheels with trembling thumbs. Click. Click. Click.
The clasp popped open with a hollow snap. The center of the pages had been hollowed out with meticulous razor cuts. Nestled inside wasn't scripture, but a worn spiral notebook, a cassette tape labeled March 18, 2014, and an official bank certificate for a safety deposit box in downtown Dallas.
My hands shook violently as I opened the spiral notebook to the last written page. The handwriting was unmistakably my father's—bold, slanted, and deliberate:
*If anyone finds this, it means Margaret followed through on her threat. She discovered that I knew about Madison’s real trust fund, and she realized I was going to the district attorney about the offshore accounts she siphoned from her father's estate. She warned me that if I spoke a single word, she would make sure Emily and Madison never saw a dime, and that she would destroy this family from the inside out. She introduced me to Silas Vance yesterday. She called him her insurance policy. God forgive me, I think they plan to kill me tonight. But if I don't survive, remember the drainage trench beneath the workbench. Look for the intake valve.*
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My breath hitched in my throat. My little sister Madison had died of leukemia when she was nine years old. Margaret had always claimed the medical treatments had completely bankrupted us, forcing us to live on modest teacher pensions. It was all a monstrous lie. Everything had been about money, control, and a psychopathic greed masked by Sunday sermons.
Suddenly, a floorboard groaned downstairs.
