Chapter 4 - BENEATH THE BLUE HOUSE
A trauma specialist asked Lily to choose colors and shapes rather than answer questions. Over three sessions, she repeatedly drew the same square building in blue, three windows, a dead tree, and a circle beneath the ground.
Ortiz compared the image with Sinclair Foundation properties. None matched.
Daniel remembered a blue carriage house behind Victoria’s childhood estate in Lake Forest. The main mansion had been demolished, but the carriage house remained in photographs from an old charity brochure.
Because Daniel was recused, he gave the information to Ortiz and did not join the search.
The property now belonged to Hearthwell Behavioral Services.
Ground-penetrating radar found a metal lockbox beneath the foundation. Inside was Rachel’s half of the gold locket, sealed in plastic with a flash drive and a handwritten list of twelve children.
Lily’s name appeared first.
The drive contained Rachel’s financial research. Millions in foundation grants had been paid to therapeutic homes for children who either did not exist or had already died. Some real children were assigned those identities to prevent relatives from finding them.
Victoria’s signature appeared on several approvals.
She claimed the approvals were routine and her chief financial officer, Martin Greer, controlled placements. Greer had died in a boating accident six years earlier.
The evidence established fraud but not who held Rachel and Lily.
Then investigators found a video recorded on the drive. Rachel sat in the blue carriage house holding baby Lily.
“Victoria knows I copied the ledgers,” she whispered. “If I disappear, ask Daniel about the white sedan.”
Daniel went cold.
The night before Rachel vanished, he saw a white sedan outside her apartment. He wrote down its plate—and later gave the note to his training officer, Captain Warren Cole.
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Cole told him the vehicle belonged to a federal investigator and ordered him to forget it.
Warren Cole was now deputy chief of police.
