Chapter 8 - THE ASSISTANT WHO RAN
Colin Reeves was found four states away.
Not hiding under a fake name.
Staying with his brother.
He hired a lawyer immediately.
Then told police:
Rachel ordered the fake coffin.
Rachel denied.
Colin produced emails.
RACHEL:
There cannot be a viewing.
COLIN:
Funeral home wants confirmation.
RACHEL:
Handle it.
Then:
RACHEL:
Eulalia needs to believe this completely.
That was ugly.
Rachel’s defense said those messages referred to protecting Eulalia from Neftali’s voluntary disappearance.
Then Colin said Rachel also ordered him to remove Eulalia from the family house as soon as the funeral ended.
Why?
Because North Peak closing required clean possession representations around the homestead and cedar tract.
Eulalia’s occupancy right was a problem.
Then the forged trust amendment became central.
Who created it?
Colin said Rachel gave it to him.
Rachel said Neftali did.
Forensic metadata:
document drafted on Colin’s workstation.
Author field:
R.CARTER.
Could mean Rachel.
Could be template.
Then an older version surfaced in Rachel’s personal cloud storage.
It had comments.
RACHEL:
Need removal of occupancy language before closing.
COLIN:
Neftali won’t agree.
RACHEL:
Then use prior draft and mark as restatement.
Colin:
That’s not what it is.
Rachel:
It’s what it should have been.
That sentence became central later.
Not:
what Neftali wanted.
What it should have been.
Rachel believed the trust structure was defective because it allowed Eulalia to block a lucrative transaction.
She saw forgery less as theft than correction.
A good antagonist rarely thinks:
I am committing fraud.
Rachel thought:
I am fixing an irrational document written by a dead man.
The law disagreed.
Then an older version surfaced in Rachel’s personal cloud storage.
Harder.
May you like
Rachel had at least possessed the draft before Neftali’s disappearance.
Now her story weakened.
