Chapter 5 - The Headmaster’s Hush Money
By 4:00 AM, the investigation had expanded beyond the Mercer household into the prestigious Oakridge Preparatory Academy, where I was a senior and where Caleb had graduated two years prior.
Detective Vance and Investigator Mara Jenkins arrived at the private estate of Headmaster Arthur Sterling in the wealthy suburb of Riverdale.
Sterling, a pompous sixty-year-old administrator who wore tweed jackets and gold-rimmed spectacles, opened his mahogany front door in his silk bathrobe, looking bewildered and annoyed.
“Detective? At four in the morning? What on earth is the meaning of this disruption?”
Vance stepped past him into the marble foyer without waiting for an invitation.
“Headmaster Sterling, we are executing a court-authorized subpoena for all disciplinary records, guidance counseling notes, and internal administrative communications regarding Emma Mercer from the past four years.”
Sterling’s face paled, his throat visibly bobbing as he swallowed. “Emma? Emma is a delightful young woman, but she has a history of... behavioral instability. Her father has been extraordinarily generous to our scholarship fund, and—”
“We know all about Daniel Mercer’s generosity,” Mara Jenkins interrupted, holding up a certified bank wire record recovered from my encrypted cloud vault. “Three days after Emma visited School Counselor Miller in October with bruised wrists, Daniel Mercer wired a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar donation to your school’s new athletic pavilion.”
Sterling choked on his breath. “That... that was an unrestricted alumni gift!”
“And the next morning,” Mara continued, stepping into Sterling’s personal space, “you fired Counselor Miller for ‘administrative restructuring’ and deleted Emma’s incident report from the school’s digital portal.”
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“I have attorneys!” Sterling stammered, backing against a grandfather clock.
“You’re going to need them,” Detective Vance said coldly. “Because Counselor Miller kept a personal copy of that incident report, complete with color photographs of Emma’s injuries, and she is currently giving a sworn deposition to the State Attorney General’s Office. You are an accessory after the fact to felony child abuse, Headmaster. Get dressed.”
