Chương 4
Sophie leaned back.
“You could just say yes.”
“I could.”
“But you won’t.”
“I believe parts of what Daniel told us. I have concerns about parts.”
Sophie stared at her.
“What parts?”
Evelyn started the car.
“His money.”
“What about it?”
“He told us Margaret gave him twenty thousand dollars in cash.”
“That’s what he said on the recording.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Bank records we subpoenaed last week show Daniel deposited thirty thousand two days later.”
Sophie’s throat tightened.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because we got the records yesterday afternoon.”
“Ten thousand more.”
“Yes.”
“From who?”
“We don’t know.”
Sophie looked out the window.
Traffic crawled down the avenue.
“Maybe Richard.”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe Daniel lied.”
“Also maybe.”
“You played him anyway.”
“I played the part we can support.”
“With what?”
Evelyn glanced at her.
“The deletion happened. The system logs show a manual purge under Daniel’s credentials. The building’s outside IT vendor confirms the purge was unusual. Daniel was head of security. And your father testified this morning that no one at Hale Meridian deliberately erased anything.”
Sophie drank some water.
It tasted faintly metallic from the bottle.
“So he lied.”
“We have evidence that his testimony conflicts with what happened.”
“That means he lied.”
“It means I’m not going to train you to talk like your father.”
Sophie turned toward her.
Evelyn kept her eyes on the road.
“He likes certainty,” she said. “Especially when certainty benefits him.”
They drove three blocks before Sophie spoke.
“What if Daniel took money from someone else?”
“Then we find out.”
“What if the whole thing falls apart?”
“Then part of it falls apart.”
“My father will say all of it was a lie.”
“He was going to say that anyway.”
Sophie picked at the label on the water bottle.
“He’ll tell people I paid Daniel.”
“Yes.”
“He’ll say you arranged it.”
“Probably.”
“He’ll say I’m unstable.”
“He already has.”
Sophie flinched.
Evelyn noticed but did not apologize.
Richard’s attorneys had filed medical records from Sophie’s freshman year at Boston University showing treatment for panic attacks after her mother died. They had not been legally entitled to all of them. That was another fight.
The records did not say what Richard’s public relations consultant had implied to two reporters: that Sophie had a history of delusions.
One of those reporters had printed Richard’s statement anyway.
Evelyn stopped at a red light.
“We knew this would get uglier.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
Sophie stared at the dashboard.
Evelyn’s voice softened.
“You hoped it wouldn’t.”
That was different.
Sophie nodded.
At Evelyn’s office, three people were waiting in the conference room.
Mateo Alvarez, a forensic accountant, had taken off his suit jacket and rolled his sleeves. Priya Shah, Evelyn’s associate, was sitting with two laptops open. Daniel Ross’s attorney, Michael Trent, stood at the window with a paper cup of coffee.
No Daniel.
Sophie looked at Michael.
“Where is he?”
Michael’s expression answered before he spoke.
“I don’t know.”
Evelyn closed the door.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“He left his apartment sometime last night.”
“Did he tell you?”
“No.”
“Have you called?”
“Repeatedly.”
“His wife?”
“Ex-wife. She hasn’t heard from him.”
Sophie sat down.
Evelyn remained standing.
“When did you last speak?”
“Yesterday at six.”
“And?”
“He was nervous.”
“He’s been nervous for three months.”
“More nervous.”
“About what?”
Michael rubbed his face.
“He said someone had been asking questions at his building.”
“Who?”
“He didn’t know.”
“Did he see them?”
“No.”
“Did anyone threaten him?”
“Not that he told me.”
Evelyn looked at Priya.
“Call the marshal’s office liaison. Not because we’re alleging a crime. Tell them a material witness subject to a court order may have been contacted and is currently unreachable.”
Michael said, “Evelyn, he might just be hiding.”
“Then I would like him to hide while answering his attorney.”
Sophie looked at the frozen coffee in Michael’s hand.
“Did my father find him?”
No one answered.
She hated them for the silence.
“Did he?”
Evelyn said, “We don’t know.”
“Everything is we don’t know.”
“That’s where facts start.”
Sophie stood.
“I need a minute.”
She went to the bathroom and locked herself in a stall.
For almost five minutes she did nothing.
She did not cry.
She counted the small hexagonal tiles on the floor until she lost track. Then she started again.
When she came out, a woman from another office was washing her hands.
The woman recognized her.
Sophie saw it happen.
The woman looked away too deliberately.
Sophie washed her hands.
At the door, the woman said, “I’m sorry.”
Sophie stopped.
She did not know whether the woman meant her mother, the lawsuit, the news coverage, the courtroom recording, or simply being recognized in a bathroom.
“Thank you,” Sophie said.
Back in the conference room, Mateo had put a bank statement on the screen.
“We found the extra ten.”
Sophie sat.
Mateo enlarged a transaction.
“Daniel deposited thirty thousand in cash on March nineteenth. We knew that. Yesterday we got records from an LLC called Briar Glen Consulting.”
Evelyn’s face tightened.
“What is it?”
“Three-member Delaware company formed nine months ago. Its account shows a ten-thousand-dollar cash withdrawal March eighteenth.”
“That proves nothing.”
“Correct.”
“Who controls it?”
“That’s the interesting part.”
Mateo clicked.
A corporate services firm was listed as registered agent. Behind that sat another entity.
Priya leaned closer.
“Oh.”
Sophie looked between them.
“What?”
Mateo said, “The beneficial owner is not Richard.”
“Who?”
“Charles Venn.”
The name took Sophie a moment.
Then she recognized it.
Margaret’s financial adviser.
Not Hale Meridian’s.
Margaret’s.
Evelyn sat down slowly.
Sophie said, “Grandma gave him all thirty.”
“Maybe,” Mateo replied.
“Daniel said twenty.”
“Yes.”
“Why lie about ten thousand dollars if he was confessing?”
Nobody answered.
Priya closed one laptop.
“Because the ten thousand bought something else.”
Evelyn looked at her.
“Such as?”
“The copy.”
May you like
Sophie’s pulse changed.
Daniel had told Evelyn from the beginning that the surveillance video itself no longer existed. He claimed he had purged the footage from the building server and destroyed the local backup at Richard’s direction.
