Chương 3
Park nodded as though uncertainty were useful.
“Good. Don’t guess. What else do you remember?”
“He had a cut on his hand.”
“Which hand?”
“Right.”
“What kind of cut?”
“I don’t know. It was bleeding.”
Park looked at the dried smear on the cufflink.
The paramedics entered. One spoke to Mara while the other opened a medical bag. Mara answered questions without taking her eyes off Adrian.
An officer read Nolan his rights.
“I want counsel,” Nolan said.
Victor released him to the police.
Nolan turned once as he was led away. He did not look at Adrian or Victor.
He looked at Mara.
She pressed closer to the table.
Adrian shifted until his body blocked her view.
Park saw that too.
“Mr. Vale, I’m going to need you here.”
“My daughter is going to the hospital.”
“And you will be interviewed separately.”
“I’m going with her.”
“That isn’t your decision yet.”
Mara’s hand closed around her pendant.
Adrian looked down at her. Celia had chosen the pendant, a small silver oval with no photograph inside. Mara had refused to explain why she liked it empty.
“Do you want me to come?” he asked.
Park’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
Mara studied him for several seconds.
“Yes.”
It was not forgiveness. It was not trust.
It was permission for one car ride.
Adrian accepted it as carefully as anything he had ever been given.
The ambulance took them to St. Catherine’s because it had a pediatric emergency department and a secure intake bay. Victor followed in an unmarked sedan with two officers. Detective Park remained at the restaurant while crime-scene technicians photographed the dining room, bagged the cufflink, and removed Nolan’s phone.
Mara sat upright on the stretcher, wrapped in a gray blanket. The paramedic had cleaned the cut beneath her eyebrow but left the dirt on her cheeks until a doctor could document it. Adrian sat near her feet, his back straight despite the swaying ambulance.
The city passed in fragments through the rear windows.
Mara stared at his gold wristwatch.
“Do you know the man?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You know the cufflink.”
“Yes.”
“Is it yours?”
“No.”
“Did it belong to Grandpa?”
Adrian looked at her.
She had been four when his father died. He had not realized she remembered the cufflinks.
“It was part of his set.”
“He wore them in the picture in your office.”
Adrian thought of the photograph: Silas Vale at a charity dinner, one hand resting on Adrian’s shoulder with the casual possession of a man touching property.
“You notice more than people think,” he said.
“People say that when they mean I heard something I wasn’t supposed to.”
The paramedic pretended to adjust a monitor.
Adrian rested his hands on his knees.
“Your grandfather owned six cufflinks with that crest. Two pairs and two spares. I have one pair in a safe. The others are held in the family archive.”
“Who can go there?”
“Not many people.”
“Victor?”
“Yes.”
“Mom?”
“No.”
“Lydia?”
The question came without emphasis.
Adrian turned toward the window.
Lydia Crane had worked for Vale Holdings for eighteen years. Her father had been Silas Vale’s closest adviser. Lydia had attended Mara’s christening and sent books every birthday, always hardcovers, always with a note written in blue-black ink.
“Yes,” he said.
Mara looked at him for another moment.
“The woman on the phone called the man Randy.”
The paramedic stopped pretending not to listen.
“Are you sure?” Adrian asked.
“She said, ‘Randy, you were supposed to wait.’ He said I’d seen too much.”
“What had you seen?”
“Nothing.”
Mara pulled the blanket tighter.
“Maybe he thought I saw his face.”
“Did the woman say anything else?”
“She asked if the mark was done. He said yes. Then she said they needed the picture before eight.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed.
“What picture?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did anyone take one?”
“The man took out his phone. I kicked him.”
The paramedic looked down to hide a smile that vanished almost immediately.
“What happened?” Adrian asked.
“He dropped it. I ran.”
“You fought him.”
“I kicked him.”
“That counts.”
“I was scared.”
“Those things can happen together.”
Mara looked away.
The ambulance turned, and a passing streetlight moved across her injured face.
“You didn’t call me,” Adrian said.
“I didn’t know if he was telling the truth.”
The admission entered him more quietly than a blade.
Mara rubbed the edge of her pendant with her thumb.
“Then I remembered you don’t wear that cufflink.”
“How?”
“You said Grandpa’s crest looked like a dead tree and a prison.”
Adrian almost smiled.
He had said it two years earlier during one of their Saturday lunches, when Mara had asked why his family put the same ugly symbol on buildings, stationery, silver trays, wine bottles, and the iron gates of the old house.
“I said it looked like a prison surrounded by dead trees.”
“That’s worse.”
“Yes.”
“So I ran to the restaurant.”
“How did you know I was there?”
“You’re always there on the first Thursday of the month.”
Adrian did not correct her. He had dinner there every first and third Thursday, usually with Lydia or counsel. Mara remembered because he had canceled a school recital once, explaining that the Thursday dinner could not be moved.
The recital had been nearly a year ago.
He could no longer remember what song she had performed.
At the hospital, a nurse led Mara through a secure corridor while Detective Park’s partner took Adrian to a consultation room. Victor waited outside with his hands folded in front of him.
“You should call Celia again,” Victor said.
“I have.”
“Her building cameras?”
“Get them.”
“Police will object if we reach them first.”
“Then reach them second.”
Victor did not move.
Adrian looked at him.
“What?”
“Nolan passed three screenings.”
“So did you.”
Victor’s expression remained level.
“I hired him.”
May you like
“And now you’ll tell me why he was able to sell access to my daughter.”
“I will tell you when I know.”
