Chương 16
At a red light, Harris drummed his fingers against the steering wheel.
Ruiz noticed.
“So did Mendez confirm your location during the outage?”
Harris looked at her in the mirror.
“Yes.”
“Body camera?”
“Active.”
“Good.”
He gave a humorless laugh.
“Nice to be cleared.”
“Temporarily.”
“Comforting.”
Daniel looked at me.
“You like her because she trusts nobody.”
“I used to.”
“Used to?”
“I’m reconsidering all my preferences.”
That shut him up.
Our house looked almost untouched from the street.
The front door was open, and crime-scene tape crossed the porch.
Inside, it felt violated in smaller ways.
A drawer hung open in the foyer.
One lamp had been knocked sideways.
A framed photograph of Daniel and me at Cape Cod lay face down beneath the console.
I bent to pick it up.
Ruiz stopped me.
“Leave it.”
I straightened.
The office was worse.
The blue document box sat open on the floor.
The wall above Daniel’s desk had been marked in thick black paint.
FRANK CHOSE RACHEL.
The letters were uneven.
Not theatrical.
Rushed.
Angry.
Daniel stood in the doorway.
“That’s not Beckett.”
Ruiz looked at him.
“How do you know?”
“He would never do that.”
“Because?”
“He likes clean hands.”
I studied the paint.
A drop had landed on the baseboard.
Another had smeared across the edge of a framed incorporation certificate.
“Rachel.”
I said it before I meant to.
Daniel looked at me.
Ruiz did not react.
“Why?”
he asked.
“Because that isn’t a threat.”
I pointed at the wall.
“It’s an accusation.”
Ruiz nodded slowly.
“Against whom?”
I looked at Daniel.
“Against him.”
His face tightened.
The truth arrived before the explanation.
Rachel was not telling us Frank chose her.
She was telling Daniel that Frank had chosen her instead of him.
Chosen her to receive the evidence.
Chosen her to know the truth.
Maybe chosen her to decide what happened next.
Daniel walked to the doorway but did not enter the room.
“Then why steal the drive?”
I asked.
“Because she didn’t trust us with it.”
Ruiz said, “Or because she wanted Beckett to believe Margaret had it.”
I turned.
“The storage unit.”
“Yes.”
Daniel frowned.
“She planted it to frame my mother?”
Ruiz shook her head.
“Maybe to redirect Beckett.”
That made more sense.
If Rachel believed Beckett was hunting the evidence, putting a copy somewhere police were guaranteed to find it would move it into custody.
Not elegant.
Not legal.
But protected.
A technician emerged from the hallway.
“Detective.”
Ruiz turned.
“What?”
“We found a listening device.”
“Where?”
“Kitchen.”
Daniel and I exchanged a look.
The threat.
The soup.
The phone calls.
Our home had been watched.
“How long has it been there?”
Ruiz asked.
“Can’t tell yet.”
“Recent installation?”
“Maybe weeks.”
The technician held up a photograph.
A tiny device had been hidden behind an outlet plate.
Daniel looked sick.
Ruiz said, “Sweep the whole house again.”
The technician nodded and left.
I walked to the kitchen doorway.
There were two mugs in the sink.
Mine from the morning Daniel “died.”
His from the night before.
I had not washed either.
For some reason, that nearly broke me.
Daniel came up behind me.
“I’m sorry.”
I stared at the mugs.
“Not yet.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean I can’t hear it yet.”
He stayed quiet.
That helped more.
Ruiz’s phone rang.
She answered.
“Yes.”
Her expression shifted.
“Where is she?”
Daniel straightened.
Ruiz listened.
“Alive?”
Another pause.
“Bring her in.”
She ended the call.
“They found Rachel.”
Daniel’s face changed.
“Where?”
“At the service road address.”
I stared at her.
“She was there?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“No.”
Ruiz slipped her phone into her pocket.
“Beckett was with her.”
The kitchen went silent.
“Voluntarily?”
Daniel asked.
“No.”
My stomach dropped.
“What happened?”
“Rachel called nine-one-one twenty minutes ago from a second phone.”
“And Beckett?”
“Arrested.”
“For what?”
“Kidnapping, assault, obstruction, several weapons charges pending review.”
Daniel leaned against the counter.
“Rachel?”
“Minor injuries.”
“Did she say why she attacked Keene?”
Ruiz looked at us.
“She says she didn’t.”
I frowned.
“Keene identified her.”
“He identified the woman he saw.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
Daniel said, “Then who was wearing the jacket?”
Ruiz’s phone vibrated again.
She read the message and swore softly.
“What?”
I asked.
“The funeral home sent employee photographs.”
She turned the screen toward us.
A woman in her early thirties smiled from an ID photo.
Dark hair.
Gray uniform.
Daniel stared.
I did not recognize her.
Ruiz said, “Name is Melissa Beckett.”
My pulse jumped.
“Beckett’s daughter.”
“Yes.”
Daniel whispered, “Charles has a daughter?”
“Apparently.”
“Why have I never met her?”
“Different last name until last year.”
Ruiz scrolled.
“She worked temporary compliance contracts for Vale Biotech twice.”
Daniel looked at me.
“That explains Keene seeing her.”
“And the building access.”
Ruiz nodded.
“And potentially the funeral-home badge.”
“What was she doing for Beckett?”
“We’ll find out.”
The answer came sooner than expected.
Melissa was stopped thirty minutes later at a bus station with forty-three thousand dollars in cash, two prepaid phones, and a flash drive containing photographs of Frank Vale’s notebooks.
Not the notebooks themselves.
Photographs.
Enough to prove they existed.
Enough to prove someone besides Daniel had seen them.
By evening, Beckett had asked for an attorney.
Margaret had already hired three.
Victor had stopped speaking entirely.
Rachel agreed to talk.
Ruiz took Daniel and me to a secure interview room at the station.
Rachel arrived wearing borrowed clothes and a bandage near her hairline.
She was fifty now, not the young woman Daniel remembered.
Her face was thinner than the old employee photograph Ruiz had shown us.
Her eyes were not.
They were direct and unsettling.
Daniel stood when she entered.
Rachel looked at him for a long time.
Then she said, “You look like Frank.”
Daniel sat back down.
“Everyone says that.”
“I’m not complimenting you.”
“I assumed.”
She looked at me.
May you like
“Claire.”
I did not like hearing my name from someone I had never met.
