Chương 4
“Are Margaret and Ethan being arrested?”
“Not at this time.”
“They were named.”
“On a recording we have not authenticated, regarding a death that has not yet been classified as a homicide.”
“They tried to take it.”
“Mr. Vale dropped a glass. Mrs. Vale reached toward the device. We will include both actions in the investigation.”
“They’ll destroy evidence.”
“We’re taking steps.”
“What steps?”
“The ones I can legally take.”
Daniel moved closer. “Detective, Elena’s phone is missing.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t know two hours ago.”
“I do now.”
“She told me they were dangerous.”
Ortiz’s face did not change. “Then help us by not warning them about anything else you remember, find, or suspect. Don’t contact them. Don’t search their property. Don’t announce accusations online. Give us room to establish what happened.”
“I can’t promise I won’t ask questions.”
“Then promise you won’t make the investigation harder because anger feels like progress.”
Daniel looked at her.
She held his gaze without challenge.
“I’ll call you tonight after we review the recorder,” she said.
Paul waited outside the consultation room. The funeral home had cleared. The flower arrangements remained, but the quiet had changed from respectful to abandoned.
Daniel asked, “Who put the recorder in her hand?”
Paul’s face folded inward.
“I did.”
The answer was so simple that Daniel did not understand it at first.
“Why?”
“Your wife left instructions.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
Daniel stared at him.
Paul gestured toward his office. “I have the letter. The police took the original.”
“Tell me.”
Paul led him to a desk crowded with funeral invoices and sympathy cards. He sat, then immediately stood again.
“Mrs. Hayes came here alone. She said she was updating arrangements because her mother had prepaid for a family plan years ago. That wasn’t unusual. People sometimes want control over details.”
“Elena was twenty-nine.”
“I know.”
“She walked into a funeral home and planned her own viewing, and you didn’t call me?”
“She specifically instructed me not to. She was calm. She paid for an amendment and left a sealed envelope with your name. She said if she died unexpectedly within sixty days, I was to place the enclosed object in her right hand before your private viewing.”
“You opened the envelope?”
“Only this morning. There was a second sealed pouch inside, along with written instructions. I did not listen to the recording.”
“Did Margaret know?”
“No.”
“Then why was she asking about objects in the coffin?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel gripped the back of a chair.
“What else did Elena leave?”
“A letter for you. The police took it because it was stored with the recorder.”
“Did you read it?”
“No.”
“You didn’t think the police should have been told when a young woman who planned her own funeral died in her mother’s house?”
Paul looked ashamed. “I told the first officer who contacted us that Mrs. Hayes had amended her arrangements. He asked whether the amendments affected the death investigation. I said I didn’t know. I should have insisted.”
Daniel wanted to blame him. It would have been easy. Paul was present, apologetic, and weaker than the people Daniel truly wanted to hurt.
Instead he asked, “Did Elena seem afraid?”
Paul considered the question.
“She seemed embarrassed.”
“About what?”
“About being here. She kept saying she knew how it looked. She joked that she was probably wasting the administrative fee. Then she asked me whether a body’s hands were ever opened after dressing.”
Daniel sat down.
Paul continued quietly. “I told her they could be positioned, depending on the family’s request. She said her mother would choose folded hands. She was certain of that.”
The detail struck harder than the accusation.
Elena had known the dress would be chosen for her. She had known how Margaret would arrange her body. She had built a message into that certainty.
Daniel pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
Paul placed a glass of water on the desk without speaking.
After a while, Daniel drank it.
Outside, workers moved the hearse to a side entrance for Elena’s return to the medical examiner. Daniel watched through the office blinds as the coffin was rolled beneath the portico. The same coffin Margaret had selected. The same polished lid Daniel had closed.
He went outside before they loaded it.
Ortiz stood beside the vehicle. She did not ask him to step back.
Daniel placed one hand on the mahogany.
“I should go with her.”
“You can follow, but they won’t let you into the secure area.”
“I don’t want her alone.”
“She won’t be alone.”
He almost told Ortiz that this was a useless thing to say. Instead he nodded.
When the hearse pulled away, Daniel remained beneath the portico. His ceremonial uniform felt too tight across the shoulders. The medals on his chest, polished that morning, seemed to belong to somebody who had understood the day ahead.
Ortiz approached with a clear evidence bag.
Inside it was the recorder.
“We found three audio files,” she said. “The accusation is the first. The second is longer. We’ll need to authenticate her voice, but you should hear it before we discuss the rest.”
She held out a pair of disposable headphones attached to an evidence playback device.
Daniel put them on.
Elena inhaled near the microphone.
The sound was intimate and unsteady.
“Daniel, I’m sorry this is how I chose to make you listen.”
A pause followed. In the background, a refrigerator hummed. Daniel recognized the kitchen at home.
“If I die at my mother’s house, or if they tell you I was drinking, or if anyone says I fell because I was medicated, don’t accept it. Ethan has been taking money from the Vale Foundation. My mother helped hide it. I helped too, at first. Not because I took anything. Because I signed reports I knew were incomplete.”
May you like
Daniel closed his eyes.
“I thought I could force them to put it back. I thought keeping the family out of court was the same as protecting people. It wasn’t. Ethan threatened me. My mother said if I spoke, she would prove I was unstable and destroy my credibility. They have copies of my medical records. They’ve used my prescriptions before.”
