Chapter 5 - THE BLACK BAG
The black bag was found in Marissa’s SUV.
Not by me.
Not through some miraculous chase.
By Atlantic City police acting on a warrant request coordinated with investigators back home.
Inside were prescription bottles bearing five different patient names.
Two patients were deceased.
Three were living.
There were also loose pills, medication administration records, and several envelopes containing cash.
Marissa immediately claimed she had accidentally failed to return discontinued medications to her employer.
Her employer disagreed.
Their internal logs showed repeated discrepancies involving medications assigned to patients under Marissa’s care.
The company suspended her pending investigation and referred the records to its compliance office and law enforcement.
Brian claimed he knew nothing about any of it.
Then investigators found text messages.
BRIAN: Kids asleep?
MARISSA: Mason fighting it again.
BRIAN: Double his next time.
MARISSA: Too risky.
BRIAN: Then lock him in.
I read those lines sitting in Patricia Sloan’s office.
I had to set the page down.
For most of my life, I believed the worst kind of father was an absent one.
Brian taught me another kind existed.
A father physically present and emotionally absent enough to treat frightened children like scheduling problems.
But Mason’s notebook bothered Detective Alvarez for another reason.
Some of the dates with black squares did not correspond to Brian and Marissa going away.
On three dates, both parents were supposedly home.
“What happened those nights?” Alvarez asked him.
Mason stared at the notebook.
“People came over.”
“What people?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did Mom do?”
“She took the bag downstairs.”
“Where downstairs?”
He pointed toward the bottom of the page.
There, almost invisible beneath his handwriting, was a little rectangle with stairs beside it.
The basement.
Police had photographed the basement during the first search.
Laundry.
Storage.
A treadmill.
Nothing obvious.
Alvarez requested another warrant.
May you like
This time, investigators weren’t looking for children.
They were looking for what Brian and Marissa had been doing while the children were asleep.
