Chương 4
Daniel picked it up and put it back with the others.
Then he walked to the door.
The broken lock was still there.
The damage was still fresh.
But now he knew something he had not known an hour earlier.
Someone had wanted him to find the letter.
And whoever that person was had not only entered his apartment.
They had counted on him opening it.
Daniel Mercer almost threw the envelope away before he opened it.
He had already made it halfway across the courthouse parking garage when he stopped beside his car, annoyed at himself for carrying it around like it was something fragile. The brown paper packet sat on the passenger seat, untouched, while his keys remained in his hand.
He had received angry letters before. Anonymous complaints. Former clients who believed accountants could somehow reverse bad decisions after the damage was done. People who wanted someone to blame because accepting their own mistakes was harder.
This felt different.
Not because of the handwriting.
Not because of the sentence written across the top page.
Because the document inside had a date.
April 14, 2018.
Daniel stared at the numbers until they stopped looking like numbers and became a memory.
That was the day Laura died.
He looked back at the photocopy.
The signature at the bottom was supposed to be his.
Not exactly.
The first name was correct. The last name was correct. But the middle initial was wrong.
Daniel Mercer had never used a middle initial on professional documents.
Not once.
He read the page again, slower this time. The document claimed he had approved a transfer connected to one of Laura’s final cases. A transfer he had no memory of authorizing. A transfer that investigators had questioned six years ago.
A transfer that had helped create the story everyone believed.
His story.
The story where Daniel Mercer had hidden something.
His fingers tightened around the paper.
For years, he had accepted that the investigation had ended because there was nothing left to fight. The police had reached their conclusion. The firm had protected itself. People who once called him a friend had stopped returning messages.
But this page had one problem.
It contained a mistake nobody should have made.
A person pretending to be him had copied his name.
And whoever did it had not known him well enough to know how he signed.
Daniel folded the paper and put it back into the envelope.
That was the first thing that bothered him.
Not the accusation.
The mistake.
Someone had built a lie and gotten a detail wrong.
His phone rang before he reached the elevator.
Mara Ellis.
He watched her name appear on the screen.
Six years ago, he would have answered immediately.
Six years ago, he believed she was the one person who would tell the truth when everyone else decided they already knew it.
Then she had sat across from investigators and explained why she thought Daniel had been hiding information from Laura.
She had not accused him of murder.
She had not destroyed him with one sentence.
She had done something worse.
She had sounded reasonable.
Daniel let the call end.
A message appeared seconds later.
I know you found it.
He stared at the screen.
A second message followed.
The signature is wrong.
Daniel stopped walking.
The courthouse hallway behind him emptied as employees left for the evening. A man in a suit hurried past while talking about dinner reservations. Two teenagers laughed near the entrance because one of them had dropped a drink on his own shoes.
The world kept moving.
Daniel hated that.
He typed three words.
How do you know?
He deleted them.
Instead, he put the phone away.
Mara had always been good at finding the sentence that made him respond.
He refused to give her that satisfaction.
But he also did not go home.
That was the part he could not explain.
He told himself he was only checking records. He told himself he wanted to know whether the document was real before deciding what it meant.
He told himself many things while driving downtown.
The archive room beneath Mercer Accounting and Advisory had not changed much. The company had moved offices two years earlier, but Daniel kept the old storage space because he trusted paper more than computers.
His employees teased him about it.
“You know scanners exist,” his assistant Jenna had told him once.
“I know,” Daniel had replied.
“Then why do you have twelve filing cabinets?”
“Because paper does not forget its password.”
She had laughed.
He had not meant it as a joke.
Now the room felt smaller than he remembered.
He unlocked the cabinet containing files from 2018 and stopped.
There were reasons people avoided old places.
Sometimes it was because of what happened there.
Sometimes it was because of who they became there.
Daniel pulled out the Laura Mercer investigation folder.
The first thing he noticed was the weight.
Six years ago, it had felt like carrying a brick.
Tonight, it felt lighter.
That bothered him more.
He opened the folder.
Reports.
Emails.
Copies of interviews.
Notes from attorneys who no longer worked with him.
He turned pages carefully.
Then he found something that made him stop.
A page was missing.
Not torn out.
Removed.
The binder clip held empty space where something had once been.
Daniel leaned closer.
He had reviewed this folder dozens of times after the investigation ended.
He knew every page.
Or he thought he did.
A sound came from the doorway.
“You always did that when you were scared.”
Daniel did not turn immediately.
“Mara.”
She stepped inside.
She looked exhausted, not dramatic. Her coat was wrinkled. Her hair was pulled back quickly, like she had done it while distracted.
Six years ago, she had dressed like someone preparing for court even when she was only meeting for coffee.
May you like
Now she looked like someone who had forgotten what day it was.
“You followed me,” Daniel said.
