Chapter 7 - THE PATIENT WHO VANISHED
By morning, Maya had arranged a secure meeting with Evan Reed, the chief compliance officer for Meridian Memorial Hospital.
Evan had worked with me during previous financial reviews.
He was careful, quiet, and almost impossible to intimidate.
When I showed him the messages, he stopped taking notes.
“March surgery,” he said.
“That could be Thomas Avery.”
“Who was he?”
“A fifty-eight-year-old teacher.”
Daniel had performed a cardiac procedure using an experimental valve supplied by a company called Vantage Surgical Technologies.
Thomas died two days later.
The official report blamed an unpredictable clot.
“What does Northstar have to do with it?” I asked.
Evan opened a folder.
“Vantage paid Northstar six hundred thousand dollars for consulting services.”
“Did Northstar perform any work?”
“None that we can find.”
The money arrived one week after Thomas Avery died.
Three days later, Richard transferred part of it into the account used to purchase Daniel and Claire’s lake house.
The affair and the fraud were no longer separate betrayals.
Claire’s vacations had been financed by a dead man.
Evan showed me another report.
Thomas Avery’s original device had been preserved for investigation.
Then it disappeared.
Security logs showed Lauren entering the records facility at 2:13 in the morning.
Her access badge had been authorized by Daniel.
“Why hasn’t the hospital acted?” I asked.
“The evidence was incomplete.”
“And now?”
“Now we have messages discussing a payment.”
Maya leaned forward.
“Can you protect Rachel if Daniel accuses her of stealing medical records?”
Evan looked at me.
“Rachel helped build the practice’s compliance system.”
“She has lawful access to its financial accounts.”
“But Daniel may still try to make her the problem.”
“He already planned to.”
Evan closed the folder.
“We need the original surgical report.”
“Where is it?”
“We believe Daniel kept a private copy.”
I remembered the flash drives from the safe.
Elias had delivered them to a forensic technician.
We called him.
Two drives contained financial spreadsheets.
One contained photographs.
The last was encrypted.
The technician sent us the file names without opening them.
One was labeled AVERY ORIGINAL.
Another was labeled RACHEL TRANSFER.
A third carried only a date.
It was the date of my mother’s death.
I stared at the screen.
My mother had died after what doctors described as a sudden stroke.
Daniel had been the physician who recommended the final procedure.
I looked at Maya.
“What does my mother have to do with this?”
Before she could answer, Evan’s phone rang.
He listened silently.
Then he stood.
“Daniel just reported the flash drives stolen.”
“Stolen by whom?” I asked.
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Evan’s expression hardened.
“By you.”
