Chương 9
"And if I'm telling the truth?"
"Then somebody else may want you where they can see you."
The security officer escorted them through a service corridor that smelled of disinfectant and reheated food.
A housekeeper pushed a cart past them and apologized although nobody had been in her way.
At the freight elevator, Daniel suddenly stopped.
His crutch struck the wall.
Claire caught his elbow.
"What is it?"
Daniel was staring at the illuminated number above the elevator doors.
Six.
His lips parted.
"Mom."
Claire followed his gaze.
The elevator arrived with a soft bell.
Daniel did not move.
"He didn't die in the car first."
Claire felt her fingers tighten around his arm.
"What?"
Daniel's eyes remained fixed on the open elevator.
"Dad was bleeding before he left the hospital."
Claire stared at him.
"What do you mean, before he left?"
Daniel's face had gone pale under the fluorescent lights.
The elevator doors began to close, struck Claire's shoulder, and slid open again.
"I saw blood on his shirt."
Megan reached for the button panel and held the doors.
"Where?"
Daniel touched his own ribs, just below the left side of his chest.
"Here."
Samir stood very still.
Claire looked at him.
"You knew."
"No."
"Don't."
"I didn't know he was bleeding."
"You were a doctor standing in a hospital garage with him."
"I never saw blood."
Daniel shook his head.
"You did."
Samir's eyes moved to him.
"You put your hand on Dad."
"Daniel—"
"You pushed him against the wall."
Claire stepped between them.
The security officer glanced down the corridor, visibly trying to decide whether his job description covered resurrected memories of a dead man's last night.
Claire said, "We're not taking this elevator."
Nobody argued.
They followed the officer through another corridor toward a stairwell, moving slowly because of Daniel's crutch.
On the first landing, Daniel stopped to breathe.
Claire crouched in front of him.
"Do you need to sit?"
"I'm okay."
"That wasn't the question."
He lowered himself onto the concrete step.
Megan sat beside him and immediately complained that the floor had ruined her dress.
Daniel looked at the back of her skirt.
"It's already ruined."
"Thank you."
"There's blood on it."
Megan twisted around.
"Whose?"
"Probably mine," Samir said.
They all looked at him.
He raised his injured hand.
"I grabbed your shoulder earlier."
Megan stared at the smear and sighed.
"Great."
For ten seconds, they were four exhausted people sitting in an ugly stairwell while somebody's phone rang two floors below.
Then Claire asked, "What happened on six?"
Samir leaned against the railing.
"Evan called me at nine seventeen."
"You remember the exact time?"
"I remember because I looked at the call log about a hundred times afterward."
"What did he say?"
"That he had something I needed to see."
"The folder?"
"I assumed so."
"You'd already told Richard."
"Yes."
"When?"
"About twenty minutes earlier."
Megan looked at him.
"So Richard was already coming."
"I didn't know that."
"Please stop saying things you didn't know."
Samir's jaw tightened.
"I am trying to distinguish what I knew then from what I learned later."
Claire almost told him that sounded like testimony.
She suspected he had spent four years rehearsing testimony nobody had asked him to give.
"What did Evan do when you got there?"
"He accused me of betraying him."
"Correctly."
"Yes."
"Then?"
"We argued."
Daniel stared at the stair below his shoes.
"You shoved him."
Samir nodded.
"I shoved him."
Claire waited for him to soften it.
He did not.
"Hard?"
"Hard enough that he hit the wall."
Daniel whispered, "He made a noise."
Samir closed his eyes.
Claire's stomach tightened.
"Was that when he started bleeding?"
"No."
"How can you know?"
"Because he was wearing a dark jacket and I didn't see anything."
"That's not knowing."
"No."
Samir opened his eyes again.
"It's not."
Daniel's fingers tightened around the crutch handle.
"He already had the blood."
Everyone turned toward him.
"It was on his hand before Dr. Samir came."
Claire sat beside her son.
"Why didn't you tell us this before?"
"I didn't remember before."
His voice sharpened.
"I keep telling you that."
"I know."
"No, you keep asking like I'm hiding it."
Claire felt the rebuke land exactly where it belonged.
"You're right."
Daniel looked away.
Megan rested two fingers against the back of his wrist.
He did not pull away.
Claire said, "What was Evan doing when you first saw the blood?"
Daniel stared at the cinder-block wall.
"He was holding his side."
"Was anyone with him?"
"I don't think so."
"Think, sweetheart."
"Mom."
She stopped.
He took a breath.
"There was a car."
Samir's head lifted.
"What car?"
"A black one."
Megan said, "Half the cars in that garage were black."
"It was running."
"Did you see who was inside?"
Daniel shook his head.
Claire watched his face rather than listening only to his words.
He was not reaching for an answer.
He was trying not to.
"What else?"
she asked.
Daniel swallowed.
"Dad told Aunt Megan to take me behind the pillar."
Megan nodded slowly.
"Yes."
"Then he gave me the laptop."
Claire said, "Before Samir arrived?"
"Before."
Samir looked at Megan.
"You said I was already there."
"I said I saw you before Evan gave Daniel the laptop."
"No, you said—"
"I was wrong."
The admission seemed to irritate Megan more than defending herself had.
She stood and brushed uselessly at her dress.
"I saw your car come up the ramp."
Samir frowned.
"I wasn't driving."
Megan stopped brushing.
"What?"
"I took a cab."
Claire felt the stairwell become smaller.
Megan stared at him.
"No."
"My car was at home."
"I saw your silver Audi."
"I sold that Audi six months before Evan died."
Nobody spoke.
Daniel looked at Claire.
She had the sensation of standing beside a hole that had been covered with boards for years and hearing one of them crack.
"Who bought it?"
she asked.
May you like
Samir's expression changed.
He knew before he answered that the answer mattered.
