Chương 7
“Am I fired?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m telling you because I don’t want you blindsided when you come back.”
“Are people canceling?”
A pause.
“Two.”
Emily stared at Claire’s wall.
“Because of me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did they say?”
“One did.”
“What did they say?”
“Emily.”
“What?”
The office manager exhaled.
“She said she didn’t feel comfortable.”
Emily laughed.
“Having her teeth cleaned by a child killer.”
“She did not say that.”
“She didn’t have to.”
After the call, Emily sat on Claire’s stairs for almost an hour.
She was not crying.
She was thinking about rent.
Mortgage.
Health insurance.
The funeral costs.
The small blue coffins.
The house was insured, but the claim had become complicated because investigators had not finished determining responsibility. Daniel controlled one of the joint accounts and had stopped responding to Claire’s messages about expenses.
Grief did not suspend automatic payments.
Noah and Liam were dead, and a streaming subscription still charged the family card for cartoons they would never watch.
Emily canceled it at three in the morning and cried harder than she had at the cemetery.
A week later Hayes called.
“We need to ask you about your home security account.”
Emily sat up in bed.
“What account?”
“The door and alarm system.”
“We didn’t have security cameras.”
“I know. I’m asking about the entry system.”
Emily remembered the app.
Electronic locks on the front and garage doors. A basic alarm panel they almost never armed because the boys liked pressing buttons.
“I haven’t opened it in months.”
“Do you still have access?”
“I think so.”
“Don’t log in yet.”
“Why?”
“We may want to preserve the account in a specific way.”
“You think it recorded something?”
“Possibly access activity.”
Emily almost asked what.
Then she understood.
Codes.
Daniel used a separate code from hers.
So did Margaret.
The system might show who entered and when.
“Hayes.”
“Yes?”
“I left through the front door.”
“I know.”
“My code will be there.”
“If the system kept that record, yes.”
For a moment old fear returned.
The fear that evidence did not care what she meant.
Only what she did.
She had left.
At 8:13, perhaps.
Four-year-old twins upstairs.
A husband downstairs nobody believed had been there.
“You need all of it,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Even if it makes me look bad.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Emily looked toward the cereal box still sitting on Claire’s dresser.
“Then take it.”
The account did keep logs.
Not everything.
Enough.
Emily’s code unlocked the front door at 8:14 p.m.
Daniel’s code locked it from inside at 8:16.
At 10:38, the system registered the rear smoke sensor.
At 10:39, the alarm was silenced from the wall panel.
At 10:41, the rear door opened using manual hardware.
No code.
No electronic record identified who opened it.
The rear door closed again at 10:43.
The system lost connection at 10:47.
Hayes explained the timeline to Emily in a conference room.
She stared at one line.
10:39. Alarm silenced.
“Why would he silence it?”
“We don’t know that he did.”
“Who else was there?”
“We have to prove who was there.”
“The boys couldn’t reach the panel.”
“That’s relevant.”
“Margaret wasn’t there.”
“Video does not show her vehicle.”
“So Daniel silenced it.”
Hayes folded his hands.
“Likely is not the same as proven.”
Emily hated the words.
Then she remembered how easily everyone had treated likely as proven when she was the one being blamed.
She stopped arguing.
“What happens now?”
“We continue.”
Daniel contacted her that evening.
Not by text.
He came to Claire’s house.
Emily saw him through the front window.
For a second she was afraid.
Then she was angry at herself for being afraid of a man she had once watched fall asleep with two toddlers lying across his chest.
Claire called the police before opening the door.
Daniel remained on the porch.
Emily stepped outside but kept the door open behind her.
He looked thinner.
His suit had been replaced by jeans and a gray jacket. His hair needed cutting.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Emily said.
“I need five minutes.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“You have a lawyer.”
“This isn’t about the case.”
She almost smiled.
“What else do we have?”
Daniel looked toward the street.
A neighbor was pretending to retrieve mail.
“Can we go inside?”
“No.”
His face tightened.
“Claire hates me.”
“She’s not special.”
He looked at Emily then.
The line had hurt him.
Emily felt a brief, ugly satisfaction.
She did not apologize.
Daniel rubbed his palms together.
“I lied.”
“Yes.”
“I panicked.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know how bad it was at first.”
Emily said nothing.
“I smelled smoke.”
She waited.
“I went upstairs.”
Her chest tightened.
“How far?”
“What?”
“How far upstairs?”
Daniel glanced away.
“Far enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“The hallway was black.”
“Did you hear them?”
He closed his eyes.
Emily became absolutely still.
“Daniel.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you hear them?”
“I heard something.”
The porch seemed to tilt.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“One of them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Crying?”
“Emily.”
“Was one of our sons calling you?”
Daniel put both hands over his face.
That was an answer.
Emily stepped backward.
“Which one?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“Which one?”
“I couldn’t tell!”
He lowered his hands.
His eyes were wet.
“I couldn’t breathe.”
“So you went outside.”
“Yes.”
“And called your mother.”
“I was confused.”
“You called your mother.”
“I’ve told police—”
“I don’t care what you told them. You’re telling me.”
Daniel looked toward the open door behind her.
“I thought she’d know what to do.”
Emily stared.
“You were forty-six years old.”
His face hardened briefly.
There he was.
The man who became angry when shame got too close.
“I was choking on smoke.”
“You had a phone.”
“I know.”
“You knew 911.”
“I know.”
“You left.”
“I went to move the car.”
Emily blinked.
“What?”
“The garage was getting hot. I thought if the gas tank—”
May you like
“You moved the car?”
“I thought it could make the fire worse.”
