The next two weeks were the longest of my life.
On Monday, Carol filed the quiet title lawsuit and recorded the lis pendens with the Franklin County Recorder. On Wednesday, the title company handling the sale of my house called Monica’s real estate agent and told her they could not insure the transaction.
The sale fell apart on Thursday.
On Friday morning, Opal handed me the phone at breakfast.
“It’s your sister,” she said. “She called the house line. I told her you’d decide whether to talk to her.”
I took the phone.
“You’re making a huge mistake, Becca,” Monica hissed. “That house is mine now. I’ve got paperwork. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I know you forged my signature on a deed while I was in prison,” I said. “On September 10th, 2021. I was in Harmon Hall, unit 4B. There’s a visitor log. There’s a count sheet. I was counted at 6 a.m., noon, 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. that day. I never left.”
Silence on the other end.
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody told me, Monica. I was there.”
She hung up.
That afternoon, Russell got a call from a friend at the Columbus Police Department. A detective named Frank Delgado in the Financial Crimes Bureau.
The gray sedan, license plate GKT-4719, was registered to a private investigator named Wayne Coburn. Russell knew him. Coburn had lost his license in Kentucky for illegal surveillance and moved to Ohio.
Russell called Coburn himself.
“Wayne,” he said. “Who’s paying you to photograph a woman on a porch in Worthington?”
Coburn didn’t want to say. Until Russell mentioned the word “subpoena.”
Then he said Trevor Mallory had hired him in April. $250 a day. To follow me and document anything that might “violate her conditions of release.” Any contact with Trevor or Monica. Anything that looked like harassment. So they could report it to my parole officer and have me sent back.
“Trevor told me she was dangerous,” Coburn said. “Told me she’d threatened his life. I got a whole folder of pictures of her sweeping a porch and carrying groceries for an old lady.”
“Keep that folder, Wayne,” Russell said. “You’re going to need it.”
The bank records came three weeks later.
Carol had filed a motion with the federal court asking for the IP address logs from Huntington National Bank for the Buckeye Medical Supply account. October to December 2019. Every single login.
The judge granted it.
Russell spread the printouts across his desk. Fourteen fraudulent transfers. Fourteen logins.
Every single one of them came from the same IP address.
It wasn’t my phone. It wasn’t the hospital.
Russell traced it through a subpoena to the internet provider, Spectrum. The IP address was assigned to a residential account at a condo on Riverside Drive in Upper Arlington.
The account holder was Monica Hale.
And seven of those fourteen logins happened between eleven at night and two in the morning.
When I was asleep in a hospital recliner beside a dying woman, holding her hand.
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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