Chương 14
“Try.”
He spent forty minutes repairing one strand badly.
Lucy inspected it.
“That looks awful.”
“Yes.”
“Do it again.”
Richard did.
Anna watched from the couch.
At some point, she fell asleep.
Richard looked over.
Without bruising and tension, he could see Margaret in her face.
Not strongly.
A curve near the eye.
The way one hand rested open when relaxed.
Lucy whispered, “She snores.”
“I heard.”
“Don’t tell her.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise?”
Richard looked at the child.
“Promise.”
A meaningless secret.
A small trust.
It mattered more than he expected.
The investigation widened over the next two weeks.
Halcyon placed Voss and Keene on leave.
Federal regulators announced a review of adverse-event reporting.
Civil attorneys representing former patients filed motions to reopen sealed matters.
The company’s stock dropped, recovered, dropped again.
News vans eventually left Richard’s house.
Online opinion remained chaotic.
Anna was alternately praised, accused, defended, mocked, and psychoanalyzed by strangers.
She stopped reading comments after the third day.
Then started again the fifth.
Richard found her at two in the morning staring at a post claiming she had invented Lucy to manipulate public sympathy.
“Give me the phone,” he said.
“No.”
“You’re hurting yourself.”
“I know.”
“Then stop.”
Anna laughed bitterly.
“You make everything sound so easy.”
Richard sat across from her.
The apartment was dark except for the stove clock.
“I read articles about your disappearance every night for three years.”
Anna looked up.
“I knew they would not contain new information.”
She lowered the phone.
“I read them anyway.”
“Why?”
“I thought suffering through the same facts counted as doing something.”
Anna stared at him.
Richard continued.
“It didn’t.”
She put the phone face down.
They sat in silence.
After a while she said, “Did Mom suffer?”
Richard looked toward the bedroom where Lucy slept.
“At the end?”
“Yes.”
“Some.”
“Did she ask for me?”
“Yes.”
Anna’s face tightened.
“What did you tell her?”
“That I was still looking.”
“You were?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you gave up.”
“I paid Walter for seventeen years.”
Anna blinked.
“Seventeen?”
“He stopped billing after that.”
From the doorway, Walter’s voice said, “Because you were impossible.”
Both turned.
Walter entered carrying takeout.
Anna stared at him.
He stopped.
For a moment, neither moved.
Then Anna smiled.
“You got fat.”
Walter put one hand to his chest.
“Twenty-one years and that’s what I get?”
She started crying.
Not loudly.
Walter set down the food and crossed the room.
Anna stood carefully.
He hugged her.
Richard looked away.
Later, Walter told them what he had never told Richard.
Evan Mercer’s drowning had always bothered him.
The lake was thirty miles off Evan’s likely route.
His rental car had been found at a gas station five miles away.
No phone.
No wallet.
Toxicology showed alcohol but not enough to explain accidental drowning.
The case had been closed because there was no evidence of foul play.
“Could Halcyon have been involved?” Anna asked.
Walter spread his hands.
“Maybe. But don’t build one conspiracy because another crime exists.”
Richard nodded.
Anna noticed.
“You agree?”
“Yes.”
“You used to hate uncertainty.”
“I still do.”
“Then what changed?”
Richard looked at Lucy’s doll on the table.
“Consequences.”
A week later, Marcus Dane was arrested in Missouri.
He had used his own credit card to buy gas.
Richard found this anticlimactic and satisfying.
Dane’s attorney negotiated quickly.
He admitted participating in Anna’s detention.
He claimed Voss told Cole to prevent her from contacting outside counsel until company property was recovered.
He said Anna was not supposed to be seriously injured.
Richard had prosecuted enough violent cases to know how often people used that sentence as if it were moral exoneration.
Dane also admitted helping create messages designed to make Anna’s conduct appear extortionate.
Some messages were real.
That mattered.
Anna had in fact demanded money.
Not for herself.
For a legal defense fund and relocation costs.
But she had written, “If Halcyon wants the files contained, it can pay the cost of protecting the people who found them.”
Voss’s team had edited context before giving screenshots to Cole’s lawyer.
The truth was uglier than innocence and cleaner than blackmail.
Anna had used leverage recklessly.
Halcyon had weaponized it.
Richard asked Anna whether she regretted the message.
“Yes.”
“Why did you send it?”
“I was angry.”
“That’s not a defense.”
“I know.”
He waited.
Anna looked at him.
“Are you going to prosecute me over breakfast?”
“No.”
“Progress.”
The federal case developed slowly after that.
Months, not days.
Richard rediscovered what victims’ families had always hated about legal process.
Delay.
Meetings.
Requests for records.
Motions.
Negotiations.
Grand jury secrecy.
People who knew important things but had lawyers telling them when not to speak.
He had once explained this patiently to families who wanted action.
Now every week without a charge felt like cowardice.
Anna reminded him of his own old speeches.
“Cases aren’t built from anger,” she quoted one morning.
Richard frowned.
“I never said that.”
“You said it on television.”
“Television edits.”
“You said exactly that.”
“I dislike my younger self.”
“You were fifty-eight.”
“Younger.”
Lucy entered the kitchen carrying a school form.
“Grandpa, sign.”
Richard took it.
Anna said, “I’m her parent.”
“You’re on a call.”
“It’s still my form.”
Lucy looked between them.
“Can somebody sign before I’m old?”
Anna held out her hand.
Richard handed over the paper.
That was also progress.
Lucy began second grade at a small public school near Anna’s temporary apartment after protective restrictions eased.
For the first week she refused to remove the red coat in class.
The school counselor did not force her.
By the third week, she hung it on the back of her chair.
By October, she left it in her cubby.
Richard noticed because he picked her up on Tuesdays.
Anna had taken a temporary remote bookkeeping job while her legal status remained uncertain. Her security access to health-data systems was gone and might never return.
She resented that.
May you like
She also accepted it.
Richard learned how school pickup worked.
