Detective Webb's initial background check on Cornelius Marsh took four days to yield anything substantial, and when it finally did, the results only deepened the mystery rather than resolving it.
"He's real," Webb reported, joining Desmond, Cruz, and Wren at the compound's conference table, his expression carrying the particular unease of an investigator confronting something genuinely unprecedented. "Eighty-one years old, terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis confirmed by his hospice care provider, currently residing in a small town in West Virginia. No criminal record whatsoever — which is itself unusual, given his letter's claims about decades of involvement with a criminal network."
"That fits the profile of someone who stayed deliberately invisible," Desmond said, studying the file W
