Chương 4
“That wasn’t my question.”
Daniel looked at her.
“No. I don't know if Victoria had access.”
Ruiz nodded.
“Mr. Carter, Martin Vale says the vehicle belongs to him.”
Daniel stared.
“What?”
“He claims he paid for it.”
“That’s insane.”
“He showed us a document.”
“What document?”
“A purchase agreement.”
Daniel laughed once.
“Then it’s fake.”
“Maybe.”
“It is.”
Ruiz did not argue.
That was worse.
“He also says he has a financial interest in your company.”
“Martin disappeared eleven years ago.”
“That's not an answer.”
“No, he does not have an interest in my company.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“Did your father?”
Daniel said nothing.
Ruiz waited.
“My father founded the original company.”
“With Martin Vale?”
Daniel looked at Victoria.
She had stopped speaking.
She was watching him now.
“Yes,” Daniel said.
Ruiz closed her notebook.
“That’s where we need to start.”
They did not leave the hotel until after midnight.
Martin was taken to the station voluntarily.
Victoria was taken separately.
The police did not arrest her for kidnapping Sophie. Ruiz said the circumstances were too unclear and Sophie's account supported Victoria’s claim that she had restrained the girl because she believed Sophie would otherwise run toward Martin.
Daniel wanted to hate that explanation.
Instead he kept seeing Sophie being pulled sideways when he kicked the cart.
He had done that.
Not Victoria.
The bruise beginning beneath Sophie’s sweater was partly his.
At home, Sophie asked for cereal.
Daniel made scrambled eggs.
She stared at them.
“I said cereal.”
“I know.”
“Then why did you make eggs?”
He looked at the pan.
He had no idea.
He put cereal in a bowl.
Sophie ate three bites.
At 1:36 in the morning she fell asleep on the couch with the television playing quietly.
Daniel sat on the floor beside her.
Her backpack was in an evidence bag at the police station.
He had never seen her without it on a school night. She carried ridiculous things in that backpack: colored pencils, two books, a plastic dinosaur she claimed belonged to a friend, and at least one granola-bar wrapper she refused to throw away because there was apparently a joke printed on the inside.
The empty hook by the front door bothered him.
At 2:04, his phone rang.
Victoria.
He watched it ring.
Then answered.
“Are you home?”
“Yes.”
“Sophie?”
“Asleep.”
A pause.
“Good.”
“Why did you have a padlock?”
Silence.
“Victoria.”
“I bought it downstairs.”
“What?”
“There’s a hardware kiosk in the garage service corridor. Locks, batteries, jumper cables. I bought it after I found her.”
Daniel pictured Victoria Hale purchasing a seven-dollar padlock while an abducted child stood beside her.
It sounded absurd.
It also sounded like Victoria.
“You could have taken her upstairs.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Martin wasn’t alone.”
Daniel stood.
“Who was with him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You told Sophie you were hiding her.”
“Yes.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t know.”
He walked into the kitchen.
“Stop saying that.”
“I would prefer to know, Daniel.”
“You always know.”
“No. I make people think I know. It’s cheaper.”
Under any other circumstances he might have smiled.
“Why did you know Martin?”
Victoria breathed out.
“Your father.”
“What about him?”
“Jack owed Martin money.”
“I know.”
“No. You know the version Jack told you.”
Daniel opened the refrigerator without needing anything.
The light illuminated half a carton of milk and Sophie’s strawberry yogurt.
“What version did he tell you?”
“That Martin stole from him.”
“He did.”
“Then what am I missing?”
“Jack stole first.”
Daniel closed the refrigerator.
Victoria continued.
“They were moving money through construction subsidiaries. Some of it was tax fraud. Some of it was worse.”
“How much worse?”
“Daniel.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“Again.”
“Because your father was careful.”
“He was a drunk.”
“He was a careful drunk.”
Daniel sat at the kitchen table.
“Why did Rachel know?”
The silence on the other end changed.
He heard it.
“Victoria.”
“She found records.”
“When?”
“Before she got sick.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“How long before?”
“About eight months.”
Rachel had been diagnosed eleven months before she died.
Three months.
For three months she had known something about his father and said nothing.
Or perhaps she had tried.
Daniel remembered arguments that had seemed unrelated at the time. Rachel asking why he still kept boxes from the old company. Rachel wanting him to audit accounts that had been closed years earlier. Rachel asking whether Victoria had ever explained how she first heard Carter Development was in trouble.
He had called her paranoid.
Once, cruelly, he had asked whether chemotherapy was making her suspicious of everybody.
He still remembered her face.
Not angry.
Tired.
He had apologized the same night.
The apology had not erased the sentence.
“What records?”
“Old partnership ledgers. Transfers. A settlement agreement that was never filed.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you see them?”
“Some.”
“And?”
“And Martin was supposed to receive a percentage of Carter Development if your father defaulted on a private loan.”
Daniel stood again.
“My father did default.”
“Yes.”
“So Martin owns part of my company?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re board chair.”
“And I’m telling you I don’t know.”
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Martin was legally dead.”
“He’s standing in a police station.”
“I noticed.”
“Why was he declared dead?”
“He disappeared after your father assaulted him.”
Daniel stopped.
“The warehouse.”
“Yes.”
“I thought Martin attacked him.”
“Jack told you that.”
Daniel leaned against the counter.
He could smell burned egg from the pan.
“What happened?”
“Martin confronted Jack about the money. Jack hit him. Martin lost two fingers trying to protect himself.”
Daniel remembered his father arriving home that night.
Blood on his shirt.
Not his blood, he had said.
Daniel had been twenty-eight and desperate to believe him.
“What happened after?”
“Martin vanished.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying—”
“Because I wasn't there.”
May you like
Victoria’s voice sharpened for the first time.
“Your father called me afterward because I was his attorney. I told him to call the police. He refused. I withdrew from representing him two days later. Martin disappeared before anyone could interview him.”
