Page 3 of Logan’s Way

“This body has a scar in approximately the right location, but the tissue analysis suggests it’s older. And the dental records…” She’d trailed off, flipping pages. “Close. Very close. But not exact.”

Close enough that someone might accept it. Not close enough that Murphy Delaney would.

Nine months of carrying this file like a weight. Nine months of not quite believing Logan was dead but having no proof he was alive.

Until the funeral.

Angus pushed the memory aside—his mother, Moira’s casket being lowered into cold ground, rain mixing with fog, and that figure beneath the oak tree fifty yards distant. Too far to make out features. Too far to call out without making a scene. But something in the way he stood, in the stillness of his posture, had pulled at Angus with a recognition he couldn’t quite trust. The certainty was overwhelming in the moment. Now, in the cold light of his guest bedroom, he wondered if grief had made him see what he needed to see.

But if it was Logan—if his younger brother stood there watching their mother be buried—then he vanished before Angus could reach him. Again.

Scout shifted position, a soft huff of breath. The dog knew this routine by now—Angus standing at this table for hours, studying documents that never seemed to yield answers. Sometimes the dog’s patience was the only thing that kept Angus grounded.

He needed truth the way other men needed air. It wasn’t ego. Wasn’t obsession. It was simpler and more desperate than that. Logan’s disappearance had created a wound that eighteen years hadn’t closed. Every missing persons case Angus solved felt like practice for the one that mattered. Every family he reunited reminded him of his reunion that never came.

He'd joined law enforcement to find his brother. He'd ended up in Maine the way most things had happened in his adult life—following Logan's ghost. Two decades of building the skills, the access, the authority that should have made it possible. Yet here he stood, with more questions than answers and a file that raised more doubts than it settled.

Angus pulled a yellow legal pad closer and started making notes. The sheriff’s method—systematic, thorough, treating the document itself as a crime scene. What was present? What was absent? What patterns emerged when you stopped reading the words and started examining the construction?

He began with identifiers.

Height matched. Weight was within a reasonable range. Hair and eye color were correct. Blood type listed as O positive, which Angus couldn’t verify but seemed plausible. Nothing obviously wrong. Nothing that screamed falsification.

But then the scars.

“Linear scar, right lower quadrant, approximately 4cm, consistent with surgical intervention.”

Murphy was right. The description fit, but the tissue analysis didn’t. Angus underlined the phrase “consistent with surgical intervention” and wrote a question mark in the margin. Consistent. Not confirmed. Not verified against medical history. Just…consistent.

He flipped to the dental comparison. The phrase “matches available records” appeared three times.

Available records.

Not Logan’s childhood dental charts. Not his actual medical file. Just whatever records were available when someone did this comparison.

Angus circled each instance, drawing a line connecting them. Then he pulled out his own copy of Logan’s medical history—the slim folder he’d kept since his brother disappeared, documentation of every childhood illness, every vaccination, every doctor’s visit their mother had carefully preserved.

The appendectomy at age fourteen. Dr. Richard Alvarez at Sunrise Children’s Hospital in Las Vegas. Angus had the operative notes. He had the discharge summary. He had everything except the one thing that would prove definitively whether that scar on the autopsy report belonged to his brother.

He made another note:

Request original tissue samples if still available.

Then he moved to the jurisdiction details.

The death certificate listed Thornfield County as the location of death. Angus had never heard of Thornfield County. He pulled out his laptop and searched. The county existed—barely. Three hours north, population under eight thousand, budget so small they shared services with two neighboring counties. Including, Angus discovered, medical examiner services.

The ME who’d signed the autopsy: Dr. Raymond Carlisle.

Angus wrote the name carefully, underlining it twice. Then he cross-referenced it with the death certificate. The same name appeared there as the certifying official. Everything aligned.

Except.

Angus leaned closer, squinting at the photocopy. The signature line on the death certificate showed a scrawled signature above a typed name: “Dr. Raymond Carlisle, County Medical Examiner.” Standard format. Nothing unusual.

But below that, in smaller print, another line: “Witnessed and filed by J. Brennan, Registrar.”

J. Brennan.