Chapter 10 - THE MEDICAL RECORDS
First thing the next morning, I drove to the hospital where Rachel had died. I needed answers. I needed the truth. I needed to know whether the woman I had married had killed my wife.
The records department hesitated when I asked for the full autopsy and medical reports. But I was her next of kin, and I had the legal authority to request them. After hours of waiting, they handed me a thick sealed envelope.
I sat in the hospital parking lot and opened it. The official cause of death was listed as idiopathic cardiac arrest. Sudden heart failure with no identifiable cause. Natural death.
But as I read through the toxicology report, my eyes locked onto a single line buried deep in the fine print: Elevated levels of aconite alkaloids detected in tissue samples. Clinically consistent with delayed toxicity from Aconitum plant exposure.
I stared at the words until they blurred. I pulled out my phone and searched the name.
*Aconite. Also known as wolfsbane or monkshood. Highly toxic. Symptoms include dizziness, weakness, irregular heartbeat, and sudden death. Can be administered in liquid form without taste or smell. Difficult to detect unless specifically tested for.*
And at the bottom of the page, handwritten in faint pencil by the pathologist: Unusual findings. Does not align with natural causes. Recommend further investigation. Note: test results were flagged and report sealed at the request of next of kin—Vanessa Holloway.
The world tilted.
Vanessa had been the one to request the report be sealed. Within hours of Rachel’s death, before I had even been told she was gone. She had told them she was next of kin. She had hidden the evidence.
I gripped the steering wheel, my hands shaking so badly I could barely hold on. She had known. She had known exactly what she did. And she had covered it up before anyone could ask questions.
I called Eleanor immediately. “Rachel was poisoned. The autopsy report says so. Vanessa sealed it.”
Eleanor inhaled sharply. “I’m calling the police. And I’m calling the district attorney. If she sealed evidence… that is obstruction of justice. That is proof of guilt.”
“Go,” I said. “And tell them to move fast. Because if Vanessa is capable of killing her own mother… she is capable of killing anyone.”
I ended the call and looked up at the hospital building. Rachel had known. She had written it in her journal. She had suspected. And she had been right.
But she had also said there was more. And Vanessa had warned me that I hadn’t found everything.
I looked down at the report again. At the very bottom, in a section I had nearly missed, was a final note: Deceased was approximately four to six weeks pregnant at time of death. Fetal tissue detected but not viable.
I stared at the words, reading them over and over until my mind could process them.
May you like
Rachel had been pregnant. Four to six weeks.
She had been carrying another child. And she had never told me.
