Chương 4
He immediately looked toward the garage.
“What?”
“Emma says the man carried something out.”
“What?”
“A black object. About this size.”
She showed him.
Michael’s face changed.
Not dramatically.
He simply stopped blinking.
Rachel saw it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
Michael looked at Emma in the back seat.
“Can we talk inside?”
Rachel unlocked the doors.
Emma stayed so close to Rachel on the walk to the house that their shoulders bumped twice.
Michael checked the side gate, the garage door and both ground-floor windows.
He had always checked houses like that. It was partly his work. He noticed warped frames, loose hinges, missing screws.
During their marriage, Rachel had found the habit reassuring.
Near the end, it had started to feel like another way he noticed every broken thing except them.
At the garage, he crouched near the repaired lock.
Then he went inside.
Rachel remained at the threshold with Emma.
Michael walked directly to the metal shelving unit.
He pulled down the gray storage bin.
The lid was already crooked.
He opened it.
Tax folders.
An old wireless router.
Two computer mice.
A yellow legal pad.
No hard drive.
Michael stared into the box.
“You took it,” Rachel said.
He shook his head.
“I thought you packed it with your office stuff.”
“No.”
“You told me you were taking everything company-related.”
“I took the paper files from the desk.”
“And this?”
“I forgot it was here.”
“What was on it?”
Michael did not answer.
Rachel watched his face.
“What was on it?”
“Backups.”
“Of what?”
“The business.”
“Meaning?”
“Accounting. Contracts. Payroll. Vendor stuff.”
Emma shifted behind Rachel.
Rachel said, “Go inside, honey.”
Emma’s hand closed around Rachel’s hoodie.
“No.”
“You can see us through the kitchen window.”
“No.”
Michael stepped away from the shelf.
“It’s fine. She can stay.”
Rachel looked at him.
“You don’t get to decide that.”
His mouth opened.
Then closed.
Emma looked between them again.
Rachel hated that too.
She crouched.
“Kitchen. Door locked. I’ll be right here.”
Emma hesitated.
“Two minutes?”
“Two minutes.”
Emma went.
Rachel waited until she saw the kitchen light come on.
Then she turned back to Michael.
“What was on the drive?”
Michael sat on the edge of his old workbench.
“Everything through last year.”
“And Derek knew it was here?”
“He might have.”
“How?”
“Because he used to come over.”
“At one sixteen in the morning?”
“Obviously not.”
“Michael.”
“I don’t know.”
“You looked like you knew something.”
He shook his head.
“I looked like I remembered that the drive existed.”
“That is not the same face.”
He gave her a tired, humorless look.
“You’ve become very confident about my faces since we separated.”
Rachel folded her arms.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Turn this into us.”
He rubbed his forehead.
For several seconds he said nothing.
Then, “The company books are a mess.”
Rachel waited.
“That is not news.”
“More than normal.”
“How much more?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out.”
A small drop of water fell from the garage roof and darkened the concrete between them.
Rachel looked up.
It had started drizzling.
Michael stared at the gray bin.
“Derek handles vendor payments.”
“So?”
“So there are invoices I don’t recognize.”
“What kind?”
“Subcontractors. Materials. Equipment rentals.”
“Are they fake?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long have you known?”
“A few weeks.”
Rachel stared at him.
“Before the break-in?”
Michael did not answer.
“That means yes.”
“I noticed some inconsistencies.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“Why would I tell you?”
The question came out sharper than he intended.
Rachel’s expression changed.
Michael exhaled.
“That sounded bad.”
“It sounded accurate.”
“It was company business.”
“Company business that was apparently stored in my garage, where somebody broke in while our daughter was sleeping.”
“I didn’t connect those things.”
“Because you decided the break-in might be me overreacting.”
Michael looked away.
Rachel let the sentence remain where it had landed.
Rain began ticking softly against the garage roof.
Michael stood.
“I need to call the detective.”
“You need to tell him exactly what you just told me.”
“I will.”
“Not your cleaned-up version.”
His jaw tightened.
“What does that mean?”
“It means the version where you say you noticed financial inconsistencies before someone entered the garage and a company backup disappeared.”
“I know how to talk to the police.”
Rachel laughed once.
It surprised both of them.
“Do you?”
He looked at her.
The anger drained almost immediately.
“No,” he said.
The next morning, Detective Naomi Bell called Rachel at 8:07 while Rachel was making Emma toast.
Rachel nearly dropped the butter knife when she saw the number.
Bell had a calm voice and a habit of asking a question, then allowing silence to do part of her work.
She had already spoken with the security company.
The original recovered file had been preserved.
The camera timestamp matched the account log.
Bell wanted Rachel and Emma at the station later that morning so a child interviewer could speak with Emma separately.
Rachel looked at her daughter.
Emma was pouring too much syrup onto a waffle even though Rachel had made toast.
“Does she have to?”
“No,” Bell said. “But if she’s comfortable talking, it may help. I’d rather have someone trained for child interviews do it once than have five adults keep asking her the same questions.”
Rachel felt heat rise into her face.
She had asked Emma about the man three times the previous night.
She had asked what he carried twice.
“Okay.”
“One other thing. Mr. Michael Carter contacted me last night.”
Rachel looked out the kitchen window.
Rainwater still clung to the patio chairs.
“He told you about the drive?”
“He did.”
“And the accounting problems?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m asking some additional questions.”
“That’s all you can tell me.”
“For now.”
Rachel buttered the same piece of toast for too long.
When she hung up, Emma said, “Are we going to the police?”
Rachel turned.
May you like
“How did you know?”
“You make that face.”
