Chương 2
“About Vanessa?”
Daniel glanced at the detectives.
Rebecca followed his glance.
“They already know.”
Vanessa said, “Rebecca, this isn’t—”
“Please.”
Rebecca’s voice was so quiet that Vanessa stopped.
Rebecca looked at Daniel again.
“I’ve known since January.”
He stared at her.
January had been seven months ago.
“You never said anything.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Rebecca looked toward the memorial.
Daniel followed her eyes.
A brown teddy bear sat beside the backpack. One ear folded forward. Ava had slept with it until she was six and afterward insisted she had only kept it because the bear would feel abandoned.
Rebecca said, “Because our daughter had started asking me if you were going to leave us.”
Daniel’s anger disappeared.
Not softened.
Removed.
The silence left behind was worse.
Hale opened the evidence folder but did not remove anything.
“Mr. Mercer, before we discuss the messages, I need to tell you what happened Thursday.”
Daniel’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table.
“I want Rebecca to tell me.”
Rebecca looked almost relieved not to be protected from it.
She walked toward one of the chairs near the living room entrance, then stopped before reaching it. Sitting seemed to require more energy than standing.
“Ava was at the Hendersons’ after day camp.”
Daniel knew the family. Two houses down. Their daughter Mia was in Ava’s class.
“She was supposed to stay for dinner,” Rebecca continued. “I had a migraine. I’d told her I’d pick her up at seven.”
Daniel searched his memory for Thursday and found spreadsheets, hotel carpeting, Vanessa’s perfume, a conversation with their lawyers about regulatory exposure.
Rebecca rubbed her thumb against her wedding ring.
“At six forty, she called me and said Mia’s brothers were being annoying and she wanted to come home. I told her to wait. She said she could walk. It’s less than half a mile.”
Daniel pictured the road automatically.
Stone walls. Old trees. Curves. Almost no shoulder in places.
“No.”
Rebecca’s eyes closed.
“I told her no. I told her I was coming.”
“What happened?”
“She waited.”
Daniel could hear something mechanical in the kitchen. The refrigerator compressor, perhaps. The ordinary noise offended him.
“She waited twelve minutes,” Rebecca said. “Then my car wouldn’t start.”
He stared at her.
“Battery.”
She nodded once.
“I went inside for the spare key to your Range Rover. I couldn’t find it. I called the Hendersons. Ava had already left.”
Daniel’s hand slid from the table.
“She walked?”
“She and Mia started walking together. Mrs. Henderson found out and drove after them. She picked up Mia first because Ava told her she could see our gate.”
Rebecca stopped.
Hale watched her carefully but did not interrupt.
Rebecca swallowed.
“A delivery van came around the curve too fast. The driver swerved when he saw her. He hit the stone wall first. The back end swung around.”
Daniel’s gaze moved toward the urn again.
“No.”
“She was alive when I got there.”
His head snapped toward Rebecca.
She pressed her lips together.
“For twenty-six minutes.”
Daniel’s face tightened.
Rebecca’s voice changed then. It lost its careful distance.
“She kept asking me why her hands were cold.”
Daniel made a sound he would not later remember making.
Rebecca looked at the floor.
“I told her the ambulance was coming.”
He crossed the room before he knew he was moving.
Rebecca lifted her face as he approached, and for one terrible second he thought she might let him hold her.
She stepped back.
Daniel stopped.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“Rebecca—”
“You don’t get to say that yet.”
He stared at her.
She wiped the tear from beneath one eye with the heel of her hand, angry at it.
“I called you from the road. I called you from the ambulance. I called you from the emergency room. I called you when they took her upstairs. I called you after the doctor came out.”
Daniel reached into his jacket.
His phone was there.
Heavy.
Normal.
He pulled it out.
Thirty-two percent battery.
No missed calls from Rebecca.
No unread messages.
He opened their message thread.
The last visible exchange was from Wednesday.
Rebecca: Ava’s camp changed pickup tomorrow. Check your email.
Daniel: In meetings. Send to Claire.
Claire was his executive assistant.
Nothing after that.
Daniel looked up.
“You didn’t call this phone.”
Rebecca’s face became still.
“I called it thirty-seven times.”
He looked at Vanessa.
She was staring at the floor now.
Hale said, “Mr. Mercer, put the phone on the table.”
Daniel looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because we have reason to believe communications on that device were altered.”
Daniel did not move.
“By who?”
Hale glanced toward Vanessa.
“I’d rather explain what we know than give you a conclusion before we’ve finished.”
Vanessa found her voice.
“Good. Because you don’t know.”
The detective looked at her.
“We know enough to ask you to stay.”
“You said I’m not under arrest.”
“You’re not.”
“Then I can leave.”
“You can.”
The uniformed detective near the door shifted his weight but remained where he was.
Hale continued, “And if you do, we will document that choice, execute the warrant already being prepared for your devices, and contact counsel for Mercer Rowan because some of the access appears to involve corporate systems. Or you can sit down, keep your phone in view, and have your attorney meet you here.”
Vanessa’s face hardened.
Daniel had seen that expression across negotiation tables. She used it when she realized leverage had shifted but was not prepared to concede.
“My attorney will be here in forty minutes.”
“Fine.”
Hale nodded toward the living room.
“You can wait there.”
Vanessa looked at Daniel.
He looked away.
She walked past the memorial without touching anything.
Her red heels clicked across the marble, too sharp for the room. Daniel noticed one tiny stain near the bottom of her dress where airport coffee had splashed when their car braked outside baggage claim.
May you like
An hour earlier he had teased her about it.
That fact seemed obscene now.
