Chapter 13 – The Chase
Chapter 13 – The Chase
For the first time since I had met Clara Monroe...
She stopped smiling.
Not gradually.
Not politely.
It vanished in an instant.
The tears remained on her cheeks, but the warmth disappeared from her eyes. What looked back at me was cold, calculating, and utterly devoid of remorse.
Her gaze locked onto the digital recorder in my hand.
"No," she whispered.
It wasn't a plea.
It was a realization.
The game had changed.
The police sergeant stepped between us.
"Mr. Carter," he said, holding out his hand. "Give me the recorder."
I didn't hesitate.
This wasn't evidence I wanted to keep hidden anymore.
It needed to be heard.
I placed the recorder in his palm.
"Play it."
He looked at the label.
"Where did you get this?"
"It belonged to Daniel Brooks."
Across the driveway, Clara took one careful step backward.
Almost no one noticed.
I did.
The sergeant pressed PLAY.
Static crackled through the tiny speaker.
Then Daniel's voice echoed across the quiet street.
"If you're hearing this..."
The officers exchanged glances.
Firefighters stopped rolling hoses.
Neighbors fell silent.
Even Harper stopped crying.
"Please believe Harper."
The words hung in the air.
"Clara doesn't always hurt with her hands..."
The recording continued exactly as Samuel and I had heard it.
When Daniel mentioned the bruises...
One officer looked toward Harper's arms.
When he mentioned fear...
Another officer looked at Clara.
When he spoke about the Blue Room...
The sergeant slowly lowered the recorder.
"Blue Room?"
I pointed toward the basement.
"Hidden behind the shelving unit."
The firefighters looked at one another.
One of them disappeared inside the house.
Clara suddenly laughed.
Softly.
Almost sympathetically.
"This is insane."
She shook her head.
"My late husband was mentally ill."
The officers didn't respond.
"He imagined things."
Still no response.
She looked directly at the sergeant.
"You can't possibly believe a recording from eight years ago over a living mother."
Before the sergeant could answer, a firefighter emerged from the house.
Breathing hard.
"Sir..."
He looked directly at the police.
"You need to see this."
Ten minutes later, the hidden room was full of investigators.
Evidence technicians photographed everything.
Video cameras.
Hard drives.
Labeled tapes.
The interrogation chair.
The hidden crawlspace where Harper had been locked.
No one spoke much.
They didn't have to.
The room spoke for itself.
An investigator carefully picked up one of the VHS tapes.
Its label read:
Harper – Age 5
Another.
Punishment
Another.
Practice
My stomach turned.
The police sergeant looked at Clara.
"Ma'am..."
She interrupted him.
"I want a lawyer."
For one brief moment...
I thought it was over.
Then everything exploded.
A detective stepped into the room carrying a plastic evidence bag.
Inside was the prepaid phone I'd found in the kitchen drawer.
"We recovered this upstairs."
Clara's eyes flickered toward it.
Only once.
But it was enough.
Suddenly she shoved the nearest detective with surprising strength.
The evidence bag flew through the air.
The overhead lights shattered as another detective stumbled into a shelving unit.
Darkness swallowed the Blue Room.
"Stop her!"
Someone shouted.
By the time emergency lights flickered on...
Clara was gone.
She burst through the back door of the house and sprinted across the backyard.
I saw her disappear through the broken fence.
An officer chased after her.
Another slipped in the mud.
Then I heard Harper scream.
"Ethan!"
I spun around.
She was pointing toward the woods behind the neighborhood.
"She knows a shortcut!"
Without thinking, I ran.
The trees swallowed the last light of day.
Branches clawed at my jacket as I followed broken twigs and fresh footprints through the undergrowth.
Ahead, I caught glimpses of Clara's white sweater between the pines.
She wasn't running blindly.
She knew exactly where she was going.
The radio clipped to an officer's shoulder crackled somewhere behind me.
"Suspect heading north..."
"...units moving..."
"...roadblock..."
The voices faded beneath the pounding of my heartbeat.
I finally caught sight of Clara near a narrow wooden bridge crossing a shallow creek.
She stopped.
Turned.
And smiled.
"You should've left."
Her breathing wasn't even heavy.
Almost as though she'd expected me to catch up.
"It ends tonight, Clara."
She laughed.
"It ended years ago."
"You killed Daniel."
"No."
She tilted her head.
"He died trying to save me."
"The evidence says otherwise."
"What evidence?"
"The recordings."
She smiled again.
"They only heard what Daniel believed."
I took another step.
"They'll hear the tapes."
Her smile faltered.
Just slightly.
"You haven't watched them."
"No."
"Then you don't know."
The certainty in her voice made me hesitate.
"What are you talking about?"
"You think those recordings help you."
She took one slow step backward onto the bridge.
"They'll destroy you."
The sound of approaching sirens echoed through the forest.
Blue lights flickered between the trees.
Clara heard them too.
Her expression changed.
Not fear.
Decision.
She reached into her coat pocket.
Pulled out a small silver lighter.
My blood ran cold.
The same kind of lighter investigators had photographed in the basement.
She flicked it open.
A tiny flame danced in the evening air.
"You know..."
She smiled sadly.
"...fire fixes everything."
Then she tossed the lighter beneath the bridge.
A loud WHOOMPH erupted beneath us.
Orange flames burst upward.
Gasoline.
She had prepared this escape route in advance.
The old wooden bridge exploded into fire.
Heat slammed into my face.
The center collapsed, separating us.
Clara stood on the opposite side.
Still smiling.
Police officers emerged from the trees behind me.
"Don't move!"
They raised their weapons.
Clara looked at all of us.
Then quietly said,
"You still don't understand."
Before anyone could react...
She stepped backward.
And disappeared into the raging flames below.
The forest fell silent.
No screams.
No splash.
Nothing.
Only the crackling roar of burning wood.
One officer grabbed my shoulder.
"Stay back!"
Firefighters were already racing toward the creek from the opposite trail.
Search teams arrived within minutes.
They searched through the night.
Divers searched downstream.
Drones scanned the surrounding forest.
They found scorched pieces of the bridge.
Fragments of Clara's sweater.
Her lighter.
But they never found her body.
Three days later, investigators began reviewing the tapes recovered from the Blue Room.
Detective Lisa Moreno called me into the evidence room.
She looked exhausted.
"There are over two hundred recordings."
I nodded.
"Have you watched them?"
"Enough."
She swallowed hard.
"They're worse than we imagined."
She handed me a sealed evidence envelope.
"We found this taped beneath the last VHS cassette."
Inside was a folded note in Daniel's handwriting.
It contained only one sentence.
The final truth isn't on the tapes. It's where the fire began.
I stared at the words.
The fire.
Again.
Everything...
May you like
Still pointed back to the basement.
End of Chapter 13
