Chapter 3 - The Paperwork of Death
Before we left the hospital, I made one phone call to General Bradley Vance, my father’s former chief of staff and current commander of the regional military police battalion.
"Bradley," I said when the line clicked. "I need an immediate freeze on the Serrano-Holloway Estate Trust. Fernando Holloway just attempted to cremate my daughter alive."
A heavy, breathless silence hung on the other end of the line, followed by the sound of a fist slamming onto an oak desk.
"My God, Valerie. Is Sophia..."
"She's alive. Stable in the ICU under armed guard. But the paper trail is moving fast. Fernando had connections at the probate court. Check the filings from this morning."
"Hold on," the General muttered. The clicking of a keyboard sounded over the secure line. A few seconds passed, the seconds ticking by like the timer on a bomb. Then Bradley exhaled a sharp, furious curse.
"It’s already in motion," Bradley said. "An emergency probate petition was filed at eight-fifteen this morning by Croft & Partners. Claiming Sophia Holloway suffered sudden cardiac death due to congenital cardiomyopathy. They attached a coroner’s release from Alameda County signed by a Dr. Harold Vance, followed by an expedited cremation permit issued by the county health board."
"How did they bypass the mandatory forty-eight-hour waiting period for child deaths?" I demanded, marching down the hospital stairs toward the waiting police cruiser.
"A forged waiver of parental dispute," Bradley answered, his voice trembling with controlled fury. "Bearing your electronic signature, Valerie. Stating that due to overseas military deployment, you consented to waive an autopsy to preserve the child's remains from desecration."
"He forged my deployment status," I breathed, climbing into the back of Sergeant Miller’s unmarked SUV. "I haven't been deployed in six months."
"He used old records from your tour in Jordan," Bradley confirmed. "He backdated them using an old administrative clerk who used to work in my logistics division—someone Fernando paid off three years ago during your custody fight. Valerie, this isn't just a desperate father. This is an organized syndicate. They had the paperwork, the mortician, the coroner, and the bank queued up like dominoes."
"Who was the mortician?" I asked, looking out the tinted window as the patrol cruisers swept onto the freeway, lightbars flashing silently against the torrential rain.
"A guy named Gabriel Morales," Bradley replied. "Owner of San Gabriel Funeral Home. We ran his accounts ten minutes ago. A wire transfer of five hundred thousand dollars hit his shell company in the Cayman Islands at midnight last night. The sender was an LLC registered to Natalia Rossi."
Natalia.
Fernando’s pristine, twenty-eight-year-old fiancée. The former pharmaceutical sales representative who had testified at my custody hearing with tearful eyes, swearing to the judge that she loved Sophia like her own flesh and blood, that Valerie was "too aggressive, too scarred by combat" to give the child a stable home.
"Where is Natalia now?" I asked Miller, who was listening intently over the vehicle's hands-free system.
"She wasn't at the funeral home," Miller said, his knuckles whitening on the steering wheel. "When our units hit the Holloway estate for the preliminary sweep, her Mercedes was gone. But her phone is still pinging the cell tower on Blackwood Ridge."
"Why would she leave the car and stay near the house?" I asked.
May you like
Miller glanced in the rearview mirror, his jaw tight. "Because whatever Fernando didn't want us to find... she’s still up there trying to clean it up."
***
