Chương 3
Daniel placed his phone on the table.
Hale asked, “Do you have another device?”
“My laptop.”
“Where?”
“Suitcase.”
“Leave it there.”
Daniel’s eyes moved toward the silver urn.
“Where is she?”
Rebecca’s expression broke for the first time.
Not dramatically.
Her chin trembled once.
Then stopped.
“There.”
Daniel shook his head.
“Don’t say it like that.”
“I don’t know how you want me to say it.”
“There has to be—”
“There isn’t.”
He stared at the urn.
It was smaller than he thought an urn should be.
That became the first truly unbearable thing.
Ava had been eight years old and still somehow too much person for a house. Shoes in hallways, markers without caps, cereal bowls abandoned beside books, hair ties on every bathroom counter. She sang to herself when brushing her teeth. She read restaurant menus aloud in accents that made no geographic sense. She had once kept three acorns in Daniel’s blazer pocket for two weeks because they were “a family.”
The silver container could have fit inside his briefcase.
He sat down on the marble floor.
Nobody told him not to.
For a while he heard only his own breathing and the faint radio static from one detective’s shoulder.
Rebecca lowered herself into a chair.
Hale moved several feet away, giving them the illusion of privacy.
Daniel stared at the crushed birthday gift.
“What was the funeral like?”
Rebecca’s mouth opened and closed.
He regretted asking immediately.
“There were a lot of people.”
“Who?”
“Her class. Teachers. The Hendersons. My sister came from Denver.”
“Your parents?”
“Yes.”
“My mother?”
“Yes.”
He rubbed both palms over his face.
His mother had been at his daughter’s funeral while he had sat in a London conference room arguing about earn-out provisions.
“Did she have the blue dress?”
Rebecca looked at the photograph.
“No.”
“What did she wear?”
“Daniel.”
“What did she wear?”
“A white dress.”
He nodded.
He did not know why the answer mattered.
“Her shoes?”
“I don’t remember.”
“How can you not remember?”
Rebecca looked at him then.
The cruelty of his question reached him a second too late.
He lowered his head.
“I’m sorry.”
“I was trying to bury our daughter.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
He accepted that.
From the living room came the low murmur of Vanessa speaking on her phone. Her tone was clipped, professional. She was calling an attorney.
Daniel looked toward the sound.
Rebecca followed his gaze.
“You brought her here.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You brought her into this house.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You brought her through the front door with you.”
“Rebecca.”
“I asked the police to wait because I wanted to tell you before they started asking questions. I thought you might arrive alone.”
Daniel looked at the second suitcase by the door.
Vanessa’s.
Red leather tag.
He remembered choosing the luggage store in Manhattan because Vanessa had said hers made her look like a graduate student.
There had been a whole life three hours ago.
He hated the man who had lived it.
Hale returned with a wooden dining chair and placed it several feet from Daniel.
“May I?”
Daniel nodded.
The detective sat.
“The driver who struck Ava stayed at the scene,” Hale said. “He called 911. He has been interviewed multiple times. There is no indication he knew your family or intended harm.”
Daniel felt almost disappointed.
He wanted someone he could hate cleanly.
“Was he drunk?”
“No.”
“On his phone?”
“We’re still reviewing records. He says he looked down at a route alert. We have witnesses and vehicle data. That investigation is separate and ongoing.”
“How fast?”
Hale paused.
“Too fast for that curve.”
Daniel looked at his hands.
“So this isn’t about the accident.”
“No.”
“It’s about the messages.”
“Yes.”
Rebecca leaned forward, elbows on her knees.
“Tell him the rest.”
Hale removed several sheets from the folder.
“We began looking at communications because Mrs. Mercer received a message Friday morning from Ava’s account.”
Daniel’s head lifted.
Rebecca nodded.
“It said, Mom, please stop calling Dad. He already knows.”
Daniel stared at her.
“What?”
“I was at the funeral home.”
Her voice stayed level, which somehow made the words worse.
“I thought I was losing my mind.”
Hale continued.
“Mrs. Mercer brought the phone to us. We confirmed the account had been accessed after Ava’s death.”
Daniel looked toward Vanessa again.
She was visible through the living room doorway now, standing by the fireplace with her back to them.
“How?”
“Through a device already authorized on the account.”
“What device?”
“We’re still completing that part of the forensic work.”
Hale was careful with each word.
“But we traced sessions to the hotel network where you and Ms. Cole were staying.”
Daniel said nothing.
Hale slid a printed page across the table.
It was a list of times.
Thursday, 10:14 p.m.
Friday, 7:06 a.m.
Friday, 11:31 p.m.
Saturday, 2:42 p.m.
Daniel recognized each one.
Ava—or the person he had believed was Ava—had contacted him four times.
He touched the paper beside the first timestamp.
“She told me Rebecca was mad because she broke a lamp.”
Rebecca looked confused.
“What lamp?”
“She said you took her tablet away.”
Rebecca stared at him.
Daniel’s stomach tightened.
“She said that was why I shouldn’t call the house.”
Rebecca turned her face away.
Hale asked, “Did that sound normal?”
Daniel opened his mouth.
Nothing came.
Because it had not.
Ava hated phone calls but loved video chats. If punished, she usually attempted to recruit Daniel as appellate counsel within ten minutes. She never called Rebecca “Mom” in messages to him. She called her “Mommy” when she was upset and “your wife” when she was joking.
Daniel had noticed the messages were short.
He had been grateful.
That was the truth.
He had been grateful his daughter required so little from him during the most important business week of the year.
“No,” he said.
Hale waited.
Daniel rubbed his thumb over the printed timestamp.
May you like
“I didn’t think about it.”
Rebecca made a quiet sound.
