The Phantom Heist

Chapter 6: Personal Entanglement

The county records office was nearly empty at 4:30 PM on a Friday. Most employees had already left for the weekend, leaving only a bored clerk who barely glanced at Sarah's badge before granting her access to the vital records archive.

Following the clues from Dr. Westlake's journal, Sarah had requested personnel files from Westlake Memorial Hospital. She needed to understand the connections—between Porter and the hospital, between the past crimes and present ones, between the ghostly figure and herself.

The files arrived in three cardboard boxes, musty and yellowed with age. Sarah donned cotton gloves and began methodically sorting through employment records, medical staff credentials, and administrative correspondence from 1940-1944.

In the second box, she found a staff photograph dated June 1944—just months before the fire. Doctors and nurses posed formally on the hospital steps. Sarah scanned the faces, recognizing Dr. Westlake from his journal photograph.

Then her heart stopped.

Third row, second from the right. A young nurse with Sarah's face.

Not similar. Not reminiscent. Her face, with the same slightly asymmetrical smile, the same small scar above her right eyebrow from a childhood fall.

Her hands trembling, Sarah turned the photograph over. Names were listed in neat handwriting. She found the corresponding position: "Nurse Elizabeth Hargrove."

Hargrove. The name hit her like a physical blow. The same surname as the family whose ruby necklace had been stolen twice—once by Porter in 1944 and again in the recent bank robbery.

Further digging revealed Elizabeth's personnel file. Born 1920. Graduate of City Nursing College. Hired at Westlake Memorial in 1942. Specialized in psychiatric cases. Assigned to Dr. Westlake's experimental unit in early 1944.

A handwritten note in the margin of her final evaluation read: "Nurse Hargrove expresses concerns about ethical implications of the Porter procedure. Reassignment recommended."

The file ended abruptly. No resignation letter. No termination notice. Just a death certificate. Elizabeth Hargrove had died in the hospital fire, her body found in the secure vault alongside Maxwell Porter's.

Sarah stared at the death certificate until the words blurred. Elizabeth had been twenty-four when she died. The same age Sarah was now.

That night, Sarah dreamed.

She was walking down antiseptic hallways, the tap of her sensible nurse's shoes echoing on linoleum. White uniform starched and pressed. Cap pinned precisely in her dark hair.

"Nurse Hargrove!" Dr. Westlake's voice. "Prepare the patient. We're proceeding tonight."

She felt her dream-self nod, though inside she was screaming objections. The patient wasn't ready. The procedure was untested. The ethical implications were horrifying.

The scene shifted. She was in the vault now, organizing medications on steel shelves. The heavy door stood open. Then a man's shadow fell across the threshold.

"Mr. Porter," she heard herself say. "You shouldn't be out of bed."

Maxwell Porter stood before her, hospital gown hanging loosely on his tall frame. The gunshot wound in his shoulder had been dressed, but blood seeped through the bandage. His eyes were feverish, desperate.

"They're going to kill me," he whispered. "Not heal me. Kill me and bring something else back."

"That's the morphine talking," she heard herself say, though she knew—somehow she knew—he was right.

"The necklace," Porter said, gripping her arm with surprising strength. "I need the necklace. It's the conductor. Without it, the circuit remains open."

In her dream, Sarah felt herself reach into her pocket and withdraw a ruby necklace—the same one from the evidence photos. "I took it from the lab," her dream-self whispered. "I was going to return it to Mrs. Hargrove."

"My sister," Porter hissed. "Your husband's mother."

Sarah jolted awake, gasping for breath, the smell of smoke lingering in her nostrils. She fumbled for the bedside lamp, half-expecting to see her hands in someone else's body.

The dream had felt more like a memory than a nightmare.

The call came at 6:43 AM. Detective Ramirez's voice was tight with urgency.

"You need to get to County General. Now."

James Wilson, the second bank robber in custody, had been found in his hospital room where he was recovering from a gunshot wound sustained during arrest. The attending physician had declared him dead at 4:17 AM. Cause of death: sudden cardiac arrest.

"They said his heart just stopped," Ramirez explained as they stood outside the morgue. "But before it did, he was screaming about someone in his room."

Sarah felt a chill. "What did he say exactly?"

Ramirez consulted his notes. "The nurse reported that he was yelling 'He's here!' and 'He's coming through the wall!' They thought he was having a psychotic episode."

Sarah remembered Torres, the first robber, found dead in his cell with an expression of terror frozen on his face.

"There's something else," Ramirez continued. "Wilson left a message. Written in his own blood."

He showed Sarah a photograph taken at the scene. On the wall above Wilson's bed, smeared in red: "HE WANTS THE KEY."

By afternoon, news broke that a third robber—Alicia Dominguez, who had been hiding in Mexico—had been found dead in her Cancún hotel room. Local authorities reported that hotel staff heard her screaming about a man passing through walls shortly before she died.

That left one robber unaccounted for.

Sarah returned to her apartment and spread her research across the kitchen table—the photograph of Elizabeth Hargrove, copies of Porter's case files, Dr. Westlake's journal entries, and the inventory of items taken during the recent heist.

The ruby necklace was one item. But the robbers had also taken an antique lockbox from another safe deposit box, and a set of old surgical tools from yet another.

Items connected to the experiment that had trapped Porter between worlds.

Sarah's phone rang. The caller ID showed "Unknown."

"Hello?" she answered cautiously.

Silence. Then a man's voice, distorted as if coming through old radio static:

"Find the key, Elizabeth. Before he does."

The line went dead. Sarah stared at her phone, then at the mirror across the room, where her reflection—or was it Elizabeth's?—stared back with equal confusion.

She was no longer just investigating this case.

She was part of it.