The Burned Van

Roslyn Meyers did not put Elise in cuffs. That was the first decent thing anyone official had done all day.

She also did not let Elise sit in the front seat.

"Am I a suspect or evidence?" Elise asked through the metal screen.

"Both, until one stops being useful."

Roslyn drove without sirens. Her hair was clipped back so tightly it made her expression look sharper than it was. She had the tired calm of a woman who had seen too many families lie beside flowers.

"St. Agnes reported a deceased female under your identity at 7:42 this morning," Roslyn said. "By 9:10, the body was released to a contracted funeral transport. By 9:38, the funeral home said no such transport arrived."

"So someone took her."

"Or someone invented her."

"I saw a photo."

"Photos are cheap."

Elise leaned forward. "Not with a medical bracelet tied to a live claim feed."

Roslyn glanced at her in the mirror. "You work claims."

"Fraud review."

"Then you know the problem. A fake death with a real payment path is either sloppy or protected."

"This one is protected."

"By whom?"

Elise thought of Martin's soft voice, Claire's fear, Adam's vanishing act, Vivian on June's video saying every policy.

"My stepfather," Elise said. "Maybe my family."

Roslyn did not react. "People say that often."

"Are they often right?"

"More than families admit."

At the station, Roslyn led Elise through a back door instead of the lobby. Theo waited in an interview room with June's cracked phone sealed in a plastic bag. June sat beside him, pale but stubborn. Claire stood in the corner, crying silently into one hand.

Elise looked at Theo. "You called her."

"Three minutes," he said.

Roslyn placed another evidence bag on the table. Inside was a charred paper tag from a funeral transport van.

"We found this near the harbor access road," she said. "The van burned ten minutes after it left hospice."

Elise read the printed destination.

HartLine Trust Services.