Chapter 5
Leo met Dr. Hannah Reed two days after the attack.
Jackson stayed outside for most of the session.
He hated it.
He did it.
Dr. Reed later explained that Leo had not provided a coherent account of whatever happened before Chad raised the bat.
That was normal.
“He’s four.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that like you want me to accelerate him to thirty.”
Jackson almost smiled.
“What did he say?”
“He was looking for his blue car.”
“Yes.”
“He saw Chad near the poker table.”
“Yes.”
“He said Chad had ‘Daddy papers.’”
Jackson became still.
“Exact words?”
“As close as I can give you without turning the session into testimony.”
“What are Daddy papers?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he describe them?”
“He drew rectangles.”
Jackson looked at her.
Dr. Reed shrugged.
“He is four.”
Right.
Leo had also said Chad became angry when Leo picked up something from the floor.
“What?”
“A page.”
“What page?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is it?”
“Apparently Chad took it.”
Jackson forced himself not to ask more.
The forensic investigators were better suited to answer.
Printer logs produced a possible connection.
At 7:21 p.m. on the night of the attack, nineteen pages had been printed from a family-office workstation.
The file name was generic:
June_August_Reconciliation.pdf
The file itself had been deleted.
The print job used Jackson’s executive credentials.
Jackson had been inside the council dining room at the time speaking with two capos.
Claire asked whether anybody knew his password.
“No.”
“Anybody ever used your office computer?”
“My assistant.”
“Anyone else?”
He thought.
“Chad has been in there.”
“That doesn’t mean he knows the password.”
“No.”
Forensic technicians checked authentication logs.
Jackson’s password had not actually been entered.
His account session had been accessed through a delegated family-office credential.
A feature designed so senior administrators could prepare documents on behalf of executives.
Claire stared at the system diagram.
“Who has delegated authority?”
The answer came back.
Three people.
Jackson’s assistant.
The chief financial officer.
And Chad, through Bellandi Social Holdings.
Jackson looked at Claire.
“How long?”
“Six years.”
“I didn’t know.”
“That sentence is becoming a theme.”
He glared at her.
She continued.
“The ledger paper matches the paper stock in that printer.”
Not proof.
But close enough to deepen the problem.
Then Claire pointed out another flaw in the ledger.
Three pages used a company logo introduced only two months earlier.
Yet those pages purported to document betting activity from the previous year.
Jackson stared.
“So it was created recently.”
“At least those pages were.”
“Can we prove when?”
“We’re working on it.”
The ledger increasingly looked fabricated.
May you like
The real question was no longer whether Chad had been hiding illegal gambling records.
It was why somebody would create illegal gambling records and hide them under Jackson’s own poker table.
