ASHES ON THE HIGHWAY

Chapter 87

Summer arrived heavy and dry, and with it came Okafor’s renewed focus on the final unsolved entry from Cornelius’s journal — a death described in frustratingly sparse detail, the victim identified only by a single cryptic notation: the accountant who asked too many questions.

"No name," Okafor said during a briefing at the compound, spreading the journal photocopies across the chapel table with visible frustration. "No date beyond a rough decade estimate. Cornelius was considerably more careful documenting this one than any of the others, which itself suggests something worth understanding."

"Why would he be more careful about this specific death?" Reaper asked.

"That’s what I keep wondering," Okafor admitted. "Every other entry includes at least a first name, a rough location, some detail that eventually helped us identify victims and, in Colleen Marsh’s case, recover remains. This entry reads almost like he was deliberately obscuring information, even in his own private confession."

Sandra, who’d taken to cross-referencing every scrap of available information against historical business records dating back to the club’s earliest, most openly criminal decades, looked up from her laptop with cautious excitement.

"I might have something," she said. "If Cornelius was worried enough about this particular death to obscure even his own private journal entry, it suggests the victim’s identity carried some risk he wanted to minimize, even decades later."

"Risk how?" Rowe asked.

"I’m not certain yet," Sandra admitted. "But I found reference to an accountant named Walter Preston who worked briefly for the club’s legitimate business operations, disappeared abruptly forty-two years ago. His disappearance was never formally investigated as suspicious — official records show he simply resigned and moved out of state."

"That fits the general timeframe," Okafor said, studying the reference with fresh interest. "Do we know anything else about him?"

"Married, no children," Sandra reported. "Wife passed away eleven years ago. But—"

She pulled up a final document.

"There’s a nephew. Still living in the area, actually. Runs a small accounting practice in town."

They found Walter Preston’s nephew, a careful, precise man named Gerald who ran his accounting practice from a modest storefront downtown, considerably more receptive to their inquiry than Rowe had initially expected given the family’s complicated reputation.

"I always wondered about Uncle Walter," Gerald admitted, settling into his own office with visible curiosity once Reaper and Rowe had explained their purpose. "Family story was always that he simply moved away, started fresh somewhere else. But he never once contacted anyone afterward. No letters, no calls, nothing. That never sat right with me."

"Do you know what he actually did for the club?" Reaper asked.

"Bookkeeping, mostly," Gerald said. "Though I remember my aunt mentioning, years later, that he’d found something troubling in the accounts shortly before he disappeared. Discrepancies he wasn’t supposed to notice, apparently."

"Did she elaborate?" Okafor asked.

"Not much," Gerald admitted. "She was frightened, even decades later, whenever the subject came up. I stopped asking eventually, once I realized it upset her too much to discuss."

Sandra’s subsequent investigation, cross-referencing decades-old business records with the club’s known criminal activities during that particular era, eventually revealed what Walter Preston had likely discovered — evidence of the club’s early drug trafficking operations disguised as legitimate business transactions, discrepancies that would have exposed Cornelius’s criminal enterprise to federal investigation had they surfaced properly.

"He found the same kind of evidence that eventually got the private investigator killed," Reaper said grimly, reviewing Sandra’s findings. "Just from the inside instead of the outside."

"Which explains why Cornelius was so careful obscuring the entry," Okafor said. "An accountant with direct access to the actual financial records posed a considerably more dangerous threat than an outside investigator working from incomplete information."

The search for Walter Preston’s remains proved considerably more difficult than the previous investigation, decades of development having transformed whatever location Cornelius might have originally chosen into unrecognizable modern infrastructure.

"We’re looking at old club properties from that specific era," Okafor explained during a difficult briefing three weeks into the renewed investigation. "Several have been sold, redeveloped, built over entirely. This search could take considerably longer than Colleen Marsh’s case, assuming we’re even able to identify a viable location at all."

Gerald, despite the difficulty, remained steadily committed to the process, visiting the compound periodically for updates with the same quiet dignity Colleen Marsh had shown throughout her own family’s resolution.

"I appreciate you continuing to search," he told Reaper during one such visit, "even though it’s proving considerably harder than the other case. Most families, I imagine, would have given up by now, especially given how little concrete evidence remains."

"We don’t give up on these," Reaper said firmly. "Whatever it takes, however long the search requires — Walter Preston deserves the same resolution every other victim of my grandfather’s crimes has received."

The breakthrough came unexpectedly, four months into the search, when Sandra discovered property records indicating one specific parcel — now part of a residential development built fifteen years earlier — had briefly served as an unofficial club storage facility during exactly the era matching Walter Preston’s disappearance.

"It’s a long shot," Okafor cautioned, studying the property records with careful assessment. "The area’s been extensively developed since then. If remains were originally deposited there, construction work may have already disturbed or destroyed them entirely."

Despite the caution, ground-penetrating radar survey of the property’s original undeveloped sections revealed anomalies worth investigating, and careful excavation over the following weeks eventually yielded results that finally, definitively closed this family’s darkest inherited mystery.

"We found him," Okafor reported to the gathered family and Gerald alike, her expression carrying the particular solemn satisfaction of a difficult case finally, genuinely resolved. "DNA confirmation came back this morning. Walter Preston, forty-two years after his disappearance, finally accounted for."

Gerald’s composed exterior cracked with visible emotion, decades of family uncertainty finally giving way to genuine, hard-won closure.

"Thank you," he said softly. "For not giving up, even when the search grew considerably more difficult than you probably anticipated."

"Every victim deserves this resolution," Reaper said. "However long it takes to achieve it."

That evening, watching the compound settle into its familiar rhythm while Cadence, now nearly three, chased fireflies across the main lot with Ghost’s exaggerated assistance, Rowe found herself reflecting on the particular, hard-won significance of finally closing every Chapter of Cornelius Kane’s documented darkness.

"Seven confirmed victims," she said softly to Reaper, both of them watching their daughter’s delighted laughter carry across the warm summer evening. "All finally, completely accounted for. Every family who suffered because of your grandfather’s crimes finally has the closure they deserved."

"It took two years," Reaper said, wonder evident in his voice. "Two years of careful investigation, painful revelations, and genuine commitment to seeing this through no matter how difficult it became."

"Was it worth it?" Rowe asked. "All the difficult truth we’ve uncovered, all the grief this family’s had to sit with alongside our own healing?"

Reaper considered the question with the same careful thoughtfulness he brought to everything significant.

"I think," he said finally, "that watching Colleen Marsh finally grieve properly, watching Gerald finally understand what happened to his uncle — yes, absolutely worth it. This family’s darkest inheritance finally, completely brought into the light, every victim finally honored with truth instead of permanent uncertainty."

Rowe leaned into him, drawing comfort from the particular satisfaction of watching this family complete something genuinely significant — not just surviving their own complicated history, but actively working to heal the wounds that history had inflicted on others.

"What happens now," she asked. "Now that Cornelius’s crimes are finally, completely resolved?"

"Now," Reaper said, watching Cadence’s fireflies dance golden against the darkening sky, "I think we simply get to live. Genuinely, completely, without one more buried secret waiting to resurface and test everything we’ve built."

Rowe let herself believe it, drawing strength from years of accumulated evidence that this family had transformed itself completely — not just surviving murder and buried secrets, but actively choosing, over and over, to bring genuine healing wherever their difficult history had left lasting damage.

Whatever ordinary joys and challenges still waited in their future, Rowe found herself confident, completely and without reservation, that this family now possessed exactly the wisdom and strength required to meet them.

Together. Honestly. And finally, genuinely, free from the shadow of Cornelius Kane’s accumulated darkness.

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