Chương 8
“That’s the true one.”
She rubbed her thumb along the paper seam.
“I walked in and saw him with the line. He had something in his hand. I told him to move away. He said you’d asked him to stay with Ben.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know that now.”
“He shoved you?”
“I grabbed his wrist first.”
Nate said nothing.
Celia glanced at him.
“That part gets left out when people tell the story.”
“Why did you grab him?”
“Because he wouldn’t show me what he was holding.”
“And then?”
“He shoved me off.”
“You hit the cabinet.”
“Yes.”
“The axe?”
She closed her eyes.
“I was dizzy. He moved toward Ben again. The fire cabinet was right there. I broke the latch and took it.”
“You broke a hospital fire cabinet.”
“With the extinguisher.”
Nate blinked.
“You used a fire extinguisher to get an axe.”
“It was not my best shift.”
A laugh escaped him before he could stop it.
Celia looked offended for one second, then laughed too.
It lasted less than five seconds.
Both of them stopped abruptly.
Nate looked down at his hands.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t.”
He nodded.
“What happened to what he was holding?”
“I never saw it clearly. Syringe, I think. Small.”
“Did police find it?”
“Not that I know.”
“He could have hidden it.”
“Yes.”
“He could have thrown it away.”
“Yes.”
“He could say you imagined it.”
“He is saying that.”
Nate looked up.
Celia’s jaw tightened.
“My lawyer told me not to talk about the case.”
“You have a lawyer?”
“I have a union.”
“Are you going to lose your job?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because you stopped someone from—”
“Because I hit a man in a patient room and picked up an axe.”
“He attacked you.”
“I escalated.”
“He was—”
“Nate.”
Her voice stopped him.
“I’m not asking you to make me into something better than I was.”
He sat back.
Celia took another drink of bad coffee.
“I was scared.”
“You didn’t look scared.”
“I was holding an axe.”
“Fair.”
“My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped it.”
Nate remembered.
The tremor.
One second before she forced it still.
He had seen it and mistaken control for fearlessness.
“Why didn’t you run?”
She looked toward the cafeteria entrance.
“My patient was in the bed.”
That was all she said.
Nate believed it.
The missing aluminum tube appeared two days later.
Not at Nate’s house.
Not in Marcus’s possession.
A hotel housekeeper found it beneath a bed after a guest checked out under an assumed name that investigators later connected to one of Marcus’s former aides.
The tube was empty.
Nate learned this from Sloan in a windowless interview room.
“Then we lost it.”
“Maybe.”
“It was in there.”
“Your son says your wife placed something in the tube.”
“So whatever she put there is gone.”
“Possibly.”
Nate stared at her.
“Are you doing that to annoy me now?”
“No.”
She slid a photograph across the table.
The aluminum tube had been scratched near the cap.
Nate recognized the marks.
Ben had once tried to open it with pliers.
“What am I looking at?”
“The inside of the cap.”
Sloan handed him a second photograph.
A narrow strip of paper had been taped beneath the inner rim.
On it, in Leah’s handwriting, were five numbers and one word.
Morrison.
Nate stared.
“Who is Morrison?”
“I was hoping you knew.”
He shook his head.
Then stopped.
“Wait.”
A memory surfaced because of the handwriting, not the name.
Leah sitting on the floor in their bedroom sorting documents for taxes.
Complaining that Nate never closed accounts he no longer used.
There’s still a box at Morrison.
What box?
The bank.
Why?
Your father opened it for you before he died.
I forgot about that.
Of course you did.
Morrison Federal was a small bank in the town where Nate and Marcus had grown up.
Their father had rented a safe-deposit box there decades earlier.
After his death, ownership had passed to Nate.
Nate had never used it.
Marcus knew about it.
So had Leah.
Sloan watched his face.
“You know.”
“Yes.”
The bank was ninety miles away.
Investigators arrived before Nate.
The box contained no miraculous confession.
No perfect recording.
No neatly labeled folder reading MARCUS.
It contained Nate’s high-school birth certificate, two old savings bonds, a watch that had belonged to his father, three photographs damaged by moisture, and a sealed plastic document pouch Leah had placed there nine days before the crash.
Inside the pouch were printed invoices.
Copies of approval emails.
Handwritten notes.
A small encrypted storage drive.
And a letter addressed to Nate.
He was not allowed to take the original letter immediately.
Sloan had it copied for him.
He read it alone in his car.
Nate,
If you are reading this because I finally got brave enough to hand it to you, then you can make fun of the drama later.
If you are reading it because something happened to me, I’m sorry.
I know that sentence is going to make you angry, so be angry. You’ve always been good at that.
I didn’t tell you everything because Marcus is your weak spot.
You call him your brother. Sometimes you treat him like your commanding officer, your father, your conscience, and God all at once.
That isn’t fair to him and it hasn’t been fair to me.
I found duplicate invoices inside Northline billing. I found deliveries signed by people who say they never received them. I found one approval you signed based on information Marcus gave you that was not true.
I do not think you knew.
But I also do not think you asked questions because the information came from him.
That matters.
I confronted Marcus. I should not have done it alone.
He told me I was misunderstanding how emergency procurement works. Then he asked exactly what I had copied.
May you like
He has asked three times since.
Yesterday I came home and the garage door was open.
