Chương 8
Daniel read the name.
His own.
Maya grabbed the phone from his hand.
“They went public?”
Daniel stared at the screen.
The accusation was no longer inside police reports.
No longer inside conversations.
It was everywhere now.
His name had become a story people could share before anyone knew the truth.
Then his phone rang.
Officer Ortiz.
Daniel answered.
“Mr. Mercer,” she said.
Her voice was different.
More serious than before.
“Where are you right now?”
Daniel looked at Maya.
“Home.”
A pause.
Then:
“You need to listen carefully.”
The room seemed to shrink around him.
“The person who sent those photos just changed the situation.”
Daniel stood.
“How?”
Ortiz hesitated.
“Because the original camera footage was just recovered.”
Maya stepped closer.
Daniel gripped the phone.
“And?”
Another pause.
“The footage shows you were not alone in that hallway.”
Daniel felt every muscle in his body go still.
“Who was I with?”
Ortiz did not answer immediately.
When she finally spoke, her voice had lost its professional distance.
“Daniel, you need to tell me something.”
“What?”
“Why does the person standing beside you in that video look like someone who died three years ago?”
Daniel did not answer because the question made no sense inside the room he was standing in.
Maya watched his face change and slowly lowered the phone she was still holding.
“Daniel?”
He looked at her but did not really see her.
The image from the hallway stayed in his mind.
Not the person beside him.
Not yet.
Only the impossible shape of the moment.
A dead person standing in a place where Daniel had never been with anyone else.
“That’s not possible,” he said.
Officer Ortiz did not argue.
That frightened him more than if she had.
“Mr. Mercer, I need you to stay where you are.”
“Who is it?”
“Daniel.”
“Who is it?”
There was a pause.
A long one.
“I’m sending someone to your apartment.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I know.”
The call ended.
Daniel stared at the phone until the screen went dark.
Maya reached for the chair and sat down.
Neither of them spoke for several seconds.
The refrigerator hummed in the corner.
A car passed outside with music loud enough that the bass shook the window.
Someone laughed on the sidewalk below.
The ordinary sounds made everything worse.
“I need you to tell me what’s happening,” Maya said.
Daniel put the phone on the table.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not enough anymore.”
He looked at her.
The words were sharper than he expected.
Maya looked away first.
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
She rubbed her forehead.
“I’m not sorry for asking.”
Daniel sat across from her.
For years, Maya had been the person who protected him from making his problems smaller.
She had done it when their father disappeared.
She had done it when Daniel dropped out of community college for a year because he was embarrassed about failing a class.
She had done it when he lost his first job and told everyone he “just wanted a change.”
She had always known when he was hiding.
The problem was that this time Daniel was not hiding something from her.
He was hiding from himself.
“I don’t know who that person is,” he said.
Maya nodded.
“But someone does.”
Daniel looked back at the photo.
The hallway appeared almost empty.
Almost.
The person beside him was only visible from the side.
A shoulder.
Part of a face.
A familiar posture.
The way the person stood with one hand slightly raised.
Like they were explaining something.
Daniel leaned closer.
“Can you send me the picture again?”
Maya frowned.
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
She watched him for a moment.
Then she forwarded the image.
Daniel opened it on his own phone and enlarged the figure.
The quality was terrible.
The pixels broke apart.
The details became worse the closer he looked.
But there was one thing he could see clearly.
The jacket.
A dark work jacket with a faded patch near the shoulder.
Daniel stopped moving.
Maya noticed.
“What?”
He did not answer immediately.
“Daniel.”
“That jacket.”
“What about it?”
He swallowed.
“I’ve seen it before.”
Maya stood again.
“Where?”
Daniel searched through memories that did not want to come forward.
Not because they were hidden.
Because they were ordinary.
A hallway.
A conversation.
A person walking away.
A moment he had dismissed because it seemed too small to matter.
“North Valley,” he said.
Maya stared.
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
Then he looked at the image again.
“But I think so.”
The knock on the apartment door came twenty minutes later.
Both of them froze.
Daniel had lived there for six years.
He knew the sounds of the building.
The pipes.
The elevator.
The neighbor who always dragged his feet in the hallway.
This knock was careful.
Not friendly.
Not aggressive.
Official.
Maya moved closer to the door.
Daniel held up a hand.
He checked the peephole.
Officer Ortiz stood outside with another officer.
Daniel opened the door.
Ortiz looked past him at Maya.
“Is she family?”
“Yes.”
“I need to speak with both of you.”
Daniel stepped aside.
The second officer remained in the hallway.
That detail did not escape him.
Neither did the fact that Ortiz looked tired.
Not suspicious.
Tired.
She entered and placed a folder on the table.
“I want to be clear before we continue.”
Daniel waited.
“The footage does not prove you committed a crime.”
His shoulders relaxed slightly.
Then she continued.
“It proves someone used your identity in a way we did not understand before.”
Maya crossed her arms.
“What does that mean?”
Ortiz opened the folder.
“The hallway camera was not broken.”
“We figured that out,” Daniel said.
“No.”
She looked at him.
“You figured out someone wanted you to believe it was broken.”
She removed a printed image.
“The camera was physically covered for eleven minutes.”
Daniel looked down.
“By who?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine.”
May you like
Ortiz placed another photograph beside it.
This one was from the security footage.
