Chapter 9 - Baby Forty-Seven
There are truths people imagine wanting until they hear them.
Zayden had wanted certainty.
Instead he received a number.
Baby Forty-Seven.
Susan Bellamy explained that New Horizons tracked sensitive cases using internal numbers rather than names.
Case Forty-Seven involved a newborn boy whose mother wanted the biological father excluded.
The file listed Carmen under a maiden variation of her name.
Zayden’s throat tightened.
“Who was my biological father?”
“I never saw the original page.”
“Did Rachel?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why was my father excluded?”
Susan hesitated.
“Because he was dangerous.”
Zayden sat still.
“What does that mean?”
“Those were Rachel’s words.”
Jessica reached for his hand.
Susan continued.
“Raymond agreed to be listed as the father.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was he involved with Carmen then?”
“Yes.”
“Did he know I wasn’t his?”
“I believe he did.”
That matched Raymond’s later records.
Maybe Raymond had not discovered the truth when Zayden was two.
Maybe he had always known.
The DNA test might only have confirmed it.
“What made Case Forty-Seven important?”
Susan’s expression tightened.
“The father came back.”
“When?”
“When you were around seventeen.”
Zayden thought of the fundraiser photograph.
The young man beside Raymond could not have been his biological father unless the image timeline was wrong.
“Who came back?”
“I never knew his real name.”
“Then how did you know?”
“Carmen panicked.”
Susan remembered a week when old records were suddenly removed.
Richard Vale visited the office.
Dr. Sloan was called.
Rachel copied files.
Then New Horizons began collapsing.
“Was that why the foundation shut down?”
“Partly.”
“What else happened?”
Susan looked toward something off camera.
“I’ve already said too much.”
Vargas leaned forward.
“Ms. Bellamy, people may currently be in danger.”
“I know.”
“Rachel Holloway is missing.”
Susan froze.
“Since when?”
“Three years.”
Susan closed her eyes.
When she opened them, she looked frightened.
“Then Carmen found her.”
Jessica stiffened.
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
Susan shook her head.
“But Carmen never forgot a threat.”
After the call, Zayden walked outside alone.
The desert heat pressed against him.
He thought about Raymond.
Not his biological father.
Still his father.
He had no confusion about that.
The confusion belonged to the stranger whose DNA he carried.
Dangerous.
That was all he had.
Jessica followed.
“You don’t need to figure out how you feel immediately.”
“I know how I feel.”
She waited.
“I feel like my mother has been editing my entire life.”
Jessica understood too well.
“Mine too, maybe.”
He looked at her.
“What do you mean?”
“My mother knew Rachel.”
“Yes.”
“She told me Rachel was crazy immediately after Rachel discovered records at New Horizons.”
Jessica swallowed.
“What if my mother knew more?”
Her mother, Diane Holloway, had been dead thirteen years.
Another person unable to answer.
They searched Diane’s remaining belongings.
Jessica’s brother had stored several boxes in Tucson.
He brought them that night.
Old tax records.
Photographs.
Jewelry.
A recipe book.
Then Olivia, who was supposed to be coloring at the dining table, picked up an old photograph.
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“Grandma has that lady.”
Jessica looked.
The photograph showed Diane and Rachel as young women.
“What do you mean Grandma has her?”
“In the drawer.”
Everyone froze.
“What?”
Olivia pointed at Diane.
“Grandma has a picture of her.”
Carmen’s locked drawer had already been seized.
Investigators catalogued dozens of photographs, but Jessica had focused mostly on images of herself.
Vargas reviewed the evidence database.
Olivia was right.
There was a photograph of Diane.
Taken outside a hospital.
On the back, a date.
Three days after Zayden’s birth.
And a note.
D knows truth.
Zayden stared.
Jessica whispered, “My mother knew what happened with you.”
Then another seized photo surfaced.
Rachel.
On the back:
R kept copy.
One more.
Raymond.
R refuses cleanup.
Carmen had documented enemies like pieces on a board.
Then Vargas found an item investigators initially categorized as miscellaneous paper.
A handwritten address.
Denver.
Jessica recognized it immediately.
Rachel’s old house.
Below it Carmen had written:
47 connects to J.
Zayden stared.
“What is J?”
Jessica answered slowly.
“Me?”
Possibly.
But another interpretation emerged that evening.
A forensic review of Carmen’s second phone found an encrypted contact.
Not R.
J.
The number had sent Carmen only one message.
It was dated the morning Zayden came home early.
Your son cannot find Forty-Seven.
May you like
Carmen replied:
He never will.
