Chương 7
“What did you do?”
Daniel watched a leaf scrape across the driveway.
“I worked for him.”
“At the dealerships?”
“Among other places.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m getting an attorney before I answer.”
Parker exhaled.
“That’s your right.”
“Did Victor mention a ledger?”
The pause was brief but real.
“What ledger?” Parker asked.
Daniel ended the call.
He entered the house through the garage.
Nothing looked disturbed. The kitchen counters were clean. Toby’s cereal bowl remained in the sink from the previous morning, three swollen loops of oat cereal stuck to the bottom. A spelling worksheet lay beneath a magnet on the refrigerator.
Daniel armed the alarm behind him and walked room by room.
In the living room, the couch cushions sat exactly as he had left them. Toby’s game controller rested on the rug. Upstairs, the beds were untouched. Nora’s photograph remained on Daniel’s dresser, her smile caught halfway between patience and laughter.
He checked the window latch in the kitchen.
Locked.
Then he saw the flour.
A faint white streak marked the black metal handle of the basement door.
Daniel kept flour in a sealed container above the refrigerator. Three weeks earlier, after finding the kitchen window open, he had dusted the basement latch and the inside of the garage access panel. It was an old habit, one he had been ashamed to still possess.
Someone had opened the basement door.
He did not touch the handle.
He called Elias.
“House is compromised.”
“Are you inside?”
“Yes.”
“That was stupid.”
“I live here.”
“That’s emotionally true and tactically irrelevant.”
“Can you get here?”
“Six minutes.”
“You said forty last night.”
“I wasn’t six minutes away last night.”
Daniel looked through the window. “You’re watching the house.”
“I prefer ‘nearby.’”
“Bring gloves.”
He ended the call and called Officer Parker.
The police arrived before Elias did.
Two officers entered the basement while Daniel waited in the kitchen. Elias drove past without stopping, his gray sedan reflected briefly in the window.
Officer Parker came upstairs ten minutes later holding a clear evidence bag. Inside was a cigarette butt.
“Do you smoke?” he asked.
“No.”
“Your sister?”
“No.”
“Any visitors who do?”
“Not inside.”
Parker placed the bag on the counter.
“The basement window was forced. There are marks on the frame. Nothing obviously stolen.”
“They weren’t stealing.”
“What were they looking for?”
Daniel looked at Nora’s spelling reminder still written on the refrigerator whiteboard, though she had been dead for twenty-six months.
TUESDAY—TOBY LIBRARY BOOK.
He had never erased it.
“Paper,” he said.
“What paper?”
“A ledger that may contain evidence of crimes committed by my father and others.”
Parker stared at him.
“You want to explain why you didn’t mention this yesterday?”
“Because I believed it was destroyed.”
“But now?”
“Now I think Victor believes it survived.”
“Did it?”
“I don’t know.”
Parker lowered his voice.
“Mr. Sinclair, this has moved beyond a family assault.”
“It was always beyond that.”
“You need to tell me everything.”
“No. I need to tell an attorney everything.”
“Your son may still be at risk.”
Daniel’s restraint cracked.
“My son is at risk because your department allowed Victor to walk out after he put an eight-year-old’s face into concrete.”
“He didn’t walk out. He was never detained.”
“That distinction matters only to the person leaving.”
Parker’s cheeks reddened.
“We don’t arrest people because we dislike their explanation. We need probable cause. Your son’s account matters. The medical findings matter. The scene matters. So does the fact that your father voluntarily came in with an attorney and provided an alternative explanation.”
“He manufactured one.”
“Then help us prove it.”
Daniel looked at the cigarette butt.
Victor despised smoking. He had fired a salesman for lighting a cigarette beside a company car.
The butt had been left on purpose.
“Who smokes unfiltered Camels?” Daniel asked.
Parker glanced at the evidence bag.
“You recognize it?”
“I recognize the kind.”
“Who?”
“A man named Paul Renner.”
“Address?”
“I don’t know.”
“Phone?”
“No.”
“Connection to your father?”
“He used to clean problems.”
Parker’s expression flattened.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you should search his name.”
“Why would he leave a cigarette behind?”
“He wouldn’t.”
“Then why mention him?”
“Because Victor wants me to think Renner was here.”
Parker rubbed his forehead.
“You understand how this sounds.”
“Yes.”
“Do you?”
Daniel walked to the sink and turned off the dripping faucet. He had been meaning to replace the washer for two months.
“It sounds like I’m telling you pieces because the whole thing makes me look guilty.”
“Does the whole thing make you look guilty?”
“Yes.”
Parker studied him.
“Get your attorney,” he said. “Then come to the station.”
Daniel found Elias behind a closed pharmacy three blocks away.
He opened the passenger door of the gray sedan and got in. The interior smelled faintly of leather and peppermint.
Elias handed him a paper cup.
“What’s this?”
“Coffee.”
“I didn’t ask for coffee.”
“You look like a man who forgot coffee exists.”
Daniel drank. It was too sweet.
“You put sugar in it.”
“You used to take sugar.”
“I was twenty-five.”
“People have abandoned beliefs for weaker reasons.”
Daniel set the cup in the holder.
“Renner’s cigarette was in the basement.”
Elias’s face lost its faint amusement.
“Paul’s dead.”
“When?”
“Eighteen months ago. Pancreatic cancer.”
“Victor knows I don’t know that.”
“Yes.”
“He wanted me chasing a dead man.”
“Or wanted police to find a connection between you and a dead man with a criminal record.”
Daniel looked out at the pharmacy’s blank rear wall.
“Victor mentioned the ledger to Parker.”
“Directly?”
“Parker asked what ledger when I brought it up. Too quickly.”
“That isn’t proof.”
“No.”
“Do you remember what was in it?”
“Most of it.”
“Names?”
“Yes.”
“Account numbers?”
“Some.”
“Dates?”
“Enough.”
“Could you reconstruct it?”
Daniel turned toward him.
“No.”
“You didn’t even consider the question.”
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“I considered it seven years ago. That’s why I burned it.”
Elias tapped one finger against the steering wheel.
