Chapter 9 - The Living Dead
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By midnight, the hospital floor was under total armed lockdown.
Two tactical officers guarded my door, while Detective Mason sat at the small table in my room, his laptop connected to the county forensic database.
Ethan had been taken to the central precinct under heavy guard, where he was currently babbling hysterically in an interrogation room, repeating the name "Emily" over and over again like a broken record.
"It's impossible," I whispered, staring at the ceiling tiles as a nurse adjusted my IV drip. "Emily died four years ago. You showed me the autopsy photos, Mason."
Mason didn't look up from his screen. "I spent the last two hours going over Emily Morgan's original autopsy file from 2022, Claire. And I just found something that made my blood run cold."
"What?"
"The coroner who signed Emily's death certificate four years ago," Mason revealed, turning his laptop screen toward me, "was Dr. Harold Vance. He was the chief medical examiner for Fulton County."
"And?"
"Dr. Vance resigned six months after Emily's death," Mason continued, his fingers tapping rapidly against the keyboard. "He bought a five-million-dollar estate in the Bahamas through a shell company registered in Delaware. The primary investor behind that shell company was Margaret Morgan."
My jaw dropped in complete horror. "Margaret paid the coroner to fake Emily's death certificate?"
"Not just the certificate," Mason said, pulling up a series of high-resolution crime scene photos on his monitor. "Look at the face in the 2022 autopsy photos, Claire. Really look at it."
I forced myself to look at the gruesome image on the screen. The body on the cobblestones had long dark hair and wore Emily's clothes, but the face was completely disfigured from the fall, crushed beyond recognition.
"They didn't identify the body through dental records or DNA," Mason whispered, a chilling look of realization washing over his face. "Margaret identified the body visually at the scene. She told the police officers on site, 'That is my daughter-in-law, Emily.' And because Dr. Vance was on her payroll, he signed off on the paperwork without running a single DNA match."
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"So who died on that patio four years ago?!" I cried out.
"I don't know yet," Mason said darkly. "But Emily Morgan didn't die four years ago. She was buried alive in a secret... and now she's come back to burn down the family that destroyed her."
