Chương 2
“I have not taken it. I have ordered you not to destroy evidence while officers determine whether legal process is required. You may comply, or I may consider whether your conduct interferes with these proceedings.”
Vanessa looked at Evan.
He did not look back.
She placed the phone on the table.
The baby stirred when Lily shifted him higher. His face tightened, then relaxed. Lily put two fingers beneath the blanket to feel the rise of his ribs. She had performed that check perhaps a hundred times since leaving the hospital. She knew the pediatric nurse had told her newborn breathing was irregular. She knew the pauses that frightened her lasted only seconds. She knew all of that, and still she checked.
Naomi opened the red folder and removed the photograph attached behind the first tab. It showed the prenatal jar in a sealed evidence bag on a stainless-steel laboratory counter. Beside it sat the metal pill crusher recovered from a locked drawer in Evan’s home office.
Lily could not look at the photograph for long.
Three months earlier, she had washed that jar in the kitchen sink after vomiting on the bathroom floor. Evan had stood behind her with a glass of water and said, very gently, that she needed to stop making herself sick.
At the time, she had apologized.
The first police officers arrived eleven minutes after the recording played. They entered through the side door and spoke privately with the bailiffs. Spectators whispered despite repeated warnings from the clerk. Someone near the back began crying, not loudly, but with the embarrassed, irregular breaths of a person trying not to be noticed.
Most of the spectators had come because the Reed custody dispute had already become a small local spectacle. Evan’s company owned apartment buildings, a riverside hotel, and half of a downtown block awaiting redevelopment. Claudia sat on museum boards. Vanessa ran public relations for Reed Holdings and had spent the previous week telling reporters that the family’s only concern was the safety of the child.
Now a court deputy collected everyone’s names.
Evan tried to stand when Detective Elena Ruiz approached his table.
Marcus caught his sleeve. “Stay seated.”
The detective introduced herself, then asked whether Evan would agree to speak with her in a consultation room.
“No,” Marcus said.
“I asked Mr. Reed.”
“And I’m advising him not to answer.”
Evan’s eyes remained on Lily. “She doesn’t understand what she’s doing.”
Lily felt Naomi’s fingers close around her wrist.
Detective Ruiz glanced at the baby, then at Evan. “Is that your answer?”
Marcus stepped between them. “His answer is no.”
Ruiz nodded. “Then remain available.”
Claudia requested her own attorney. Vanessa asked three times whether she could leave. Marcus stopped speaking to Evan except in whispers so brief they sounded like breaths.
Judge Bell recessed the hearing until the officers finished their initial work. She instructed that Lily be taken through the judge’s corridor rather than the public hallway. Before leaving the bench, she looked at Lily for a long moment.
“Mrs. Reed, do you have a safe place to go?”
“My sister’s house.”
“Does Mr. Reed know the address?”
“He knows where she used to live.”
“Used to?”
“She moved in May.”
Judge Bell looked at Naomi.
“We have arranged transportation and security,” Naomi said. “The location will not be disclosed.”
The judge gave one short nod. “Good.”
Evan laughed.
It was not a loud laugh. It contained no amusement. It was the sound he made when a waiter brought the wrong wine or an employee offered an explanation he considered beneath the conversation.
“Security from me,” he said.
Lily turned her head.
For one second she saw the man she had married: handsome, wounded, offended that she could misunderstand him so completely. It was the expression that had ended arguments before they became arguments. He would look hurt, and she would begin assembling reasons to forgive him.
Then she saw his hand.
His fingers had crushed the edge of the wooden table hard enough to whiten the knuckles. She had seen those same fingers on the monitor, tapping powder from the crusher into her vitamins.
She faced forward again.
In the judge’s corridor, Naomi took the baby while Lily signed the emergency order. Lily resisted at first, tightening her arms.
“I’m right here,” Naomi said.
“I know.”
“You need both hands.”
“I can sign with one.”
“You haven’t eaten.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
Naomi waited.
She was not a comforting woman by nature. She wore practical black shoes and kept tissues in her briefcase but never offered one until somebody asked. During their first meeting, she had told Lily that fear was not evidence and sincerity was not a legal strategy. Lily had disliked her for nearly an hour.
Now Naomi held the baby without bouncing him or making soft noises. She supported his head, watched his face, and let Lily complete the signature at her own speed.
The pen left a small blot beside the date.
Lily stared at it.
“Does that matter?”
“No.”
“It looks altered.”
“It looks like a pen.”
“They’ll say I changed something.”
“No one will say that.”
“They say everything.”
Naomi set the signed page aside. “Then let them waste their breath.”
Detective Ruiz entered carrying the sealed flash drive that had been inside the red folder. She had dark hair pulled into a low knot and a pale indentation across her nose from glasses she was not currently wearing.
“Mrs. Reed, I need to confirm one thing before you leave. The camera account was registered to you?”
“Yes.”
“Under what email?”
Lily gave it.
“And you had not accessed the recordings between February and last Friday?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Evan changed the home network password. The cameras stopped appearing on my phone. He said the subscription expired.”
“Did you believe him?”
Lily looked at Naomi.
“You can answer,” Naomi said.
“I believed whatever took the least energy.”
May you like
Ruiz’s expression changed slightly.
Lily hated that expression. Nurses had worn it. Her sister had worn it. Even strangers had worn it after the custody story reached the news. It was sympathy mixed with the need to decide how damaged she might be.
