Chapter 11
Celia’s fate was confirmed two months later.
Not through a dramatic confession.
Through a cold-case DNA match.
A woman found four years earlier after a single-car crash in another county had been buried as an unidentified decedent.
The crash occurred the night Celia vanished.
New DNA comparison confirmed the woman was Celia Bellacourt.
The medical examiner could not prove whether the crash was accidental, forced, or the result of panic and pursuit.
No evidence tied Althea directly to causing the crash.
That was brutal.
But it was the truth.
The cause of death remained consistent with a crash under unresolved circumstances.
The manner was amended to undetermined.
Rourke wanted murder charges.
Mara said:
“Not unless evidence proves it.”
He almost exploded.
Then did not.
Celia deserved truth, not a charge built from grief.
What prosecutors could prove was still serious.
Althea was charged with child endangerment, unlawful restraint, obstruction, evidence fabrication, false insurance documentation, witness intimidation, and financial crimes tied to the foundation.
Additional charges connected to Celia’s disappearance focused on obstruction and staging evidence, not homicide.
Rourke hated the limits of law.
Then realized his family had spent generations exploiting the absence of limits.
Now limits were the only thing keeping the case clean enough to hold.
Posie learned one sentence first:
“Mommy did not put you in the kennel.”
She asked it again the next day.
And the next.
And the next.
May you like
Every time, Rourke answered the same way.
“No. Mommy opened it.”
