Chapter 4
Gerald had been my attorney for nineteen years, since before Evelyn's patents had become what they became, and he answered on the second ring because Gerald always answered on the second ring. I told him what had happened in the order it had happened, without editorializing, and he was quiet for the duration of the telling with the focused silence of a man whose mind is already several steps ahead of the narrative.
When I finished, he said: "The forgery is federal. Document fraud, identity fraud, and if they've already begun a sale, wire fraud depending on how the funds moved. This isn't a civil matter, Harrison. This is criminal."
"I know," I said.
"I'm going to need the envelope. Don't touch the pages more than you already have. I'm also going to need you to not contact Lucas or Monica before I tell you to."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Good." He paused. "How are you?"
"I'm fine," I said, which was true in the way that fine is true when the shock has passed and what's left is clarity. "Get the document examiner first. I want the forgery established independently before we move."
"Agreed," Gerald said. "I'll have someone at your door in three hours."
He was there in two and a half.
What Gerald assembled in the following six days was the kind of case that does not leave room for negotiation. The document examiner established the forgery in four hours, comparing the signature on the power of attorney against authenticated samples from my bank records and tax filings across a twenty-year span, identifying seventeen specific characteristics of my handwriting that the forger had replicated from a traced source and three that they had gotten wrong in ways that were not visible to the naked eye but were unambiguous under magnification. The forensic accountant Gerald retained traced the transfer of funds from the fraudulent sale agreement to an account opened six weeks before the wedding in Monica's maiden name. Lucas's digital footprint in the filing cabinet room, established through the home security camera I had installed two years ago for reasons unrelated to this situation, placed him in my study for eleven minutes on the afternoon in question.
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The camera was not something Lucas knew about. Evelyn had asked me to install it after a neighbor's break-in, and I had done it and forgotten to mention it because there was nothing in the house worth stealing that I cared about losing.
There was, as it turned out, something worth stealing.
