Chương 6
“Okay.”
“And you’re free to stop the interview.”
“Okay.”
He looked at his notes.
“Do you know someone named Tara Nguyen?”
“Yes.”
“Your coworker.”
“Yes.”
“Grant ever meet her?”
“A few times.”
“Any reason he’d have for accessing records connected to her vehicle?”
Rachel felt her back straighten.
“You found something?”
“I’m asking what you know.”
“That means you found something.”
Morse removed his glasses and rubbed one lens with the edge of his tie.
“Mrs. Hale.”
“Rachel.”
“Rachel. I need your information before I give you context. Otherwise I contaminate what you tell me.”
That sounded like something Grant would say.
Rachel’s face must have shown it.
Morse put his glasses back on.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“My husband talks like that.”
Morse sat back.
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“No. But I don’t need to sound like him to do my job.”
Rachel looked at him differently after that.
She told him about the dentist appointment.
Then she told him other things.
Grant had once asked why Ruth’s neighbor had a suspended registration.
Rachel had not known the neighbor’s registration was suspended.
Grant had known the name of a man Rachel met at a coffee shop to discuss a freelance bookkeeping job, though Rachel had never mentioned the man.
He knew when Emma’s soccer coach had received a speeding ticket.
At the time, Grant made all of this sound ordinary.
Police work made people observant.
Police officers knew things.
That was how he explained it.
Morse wrote everything down.
“Any of those people involved in Grant’s cases?”
“Not that I know.”
“Did he ever tell you he checked databases because he was worried about your safety?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Rachel thought.
“After the coffee shop.”
“What did he say?”
“That the man had a record.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ask?”
“I told Grant he was being creepy.”
“What did he say?”
Rachel looked at the recorder.
“He said creepy was better than careless.”
Morse stopped writing.
For the first time during the interview, his face looked tired.
The audit took six weeks.
Rachel did not know what it found during those six weeks.
That uncertainty was its own kind of weather, though she would have hated anyone who described it that way.
She tried not to check her phone every five minutes.
She failed.
She and Emma moved into Ruth’s apartment permanently for the first month, then temporarily again after a pipe burst in the hall bathroom at their house.
The insurance adjuster came on a Wednesday.
A plumber came on Thursday.
On Friday, Emma asked if the universe was making them move.
Rachel said, “The universe doesn’t care about plumbing.”
“You don’t know.”
“I’m pretty confident.”
Emma was eating cereal from a coffee mug because most of Ruth’s bowls were in the dishwasher.
“I think Grandma’s building is haunted.”
“By bad internet?”
“And old-lady perfume.”
Ruth called from the bedroom, “I can hear you.”
Emma whispered, “Ghost.”
Ruth shouted, “Still hearing you.”
For three minutes, life felt stupid and ordinary.
Rachel noticed because ordinary had become rare.
Then her phone rang.
Grant’s sister.
Rachel stared at the screen until it stopped.
A voicemail appeared.
She listened despite knowing better.
“Rachel, it’s Leah. I’m not asking you to call me back. I know I’m not supposed to pass messages from Grant and I’m not doing that. I just... Mom’s not doing well. She saw the news story. She thinks Grant’s going to prison. I don’t know what to tell her. I’m not blaming you. I just think there are people getting hurt who weren’t in that kitchen. That’s all.”
Rachel listened twice.
Then a third time.
Ruth watched her from the doorway.
“Delete it.”
“I should.”
“You’re not going to.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Rachel put the phone down.
“Because she’s right.”
Ruth’s eyes sharpened.
“No.”
“People are getting hurt.”
“That doesn’t make her right about what you should do.”
“She didn’t tell me what to do.”
“She didn’t have to.”
Rachel turned away.
Grant’s mother had sent Emma birthday cards for eleven years.
She had sat beside Rachel during a miscarriage and held a bowl while Rachel vomited from anesthesia after surgery.
She was not responsible for her son.
She would still be devastated by what happened to him.
Both things could be true.
That was another problem with leaving.
Nothing became clean just because it became necessary.
The first criminal case conference took place in late September.
The prosecutor, Anne Calder, spoke carefully.
Grant faced serious charges arising from the assault, but the final shape of the case would depend on evidence, admissibility, witness cooperation, and decisions Rachel did not control.
Rachel appreciated the lack of promises.
She also hated it.
“What happens if I don’t testify?”
Calder folded her hands.
“We still have the emergency audio, medical evidence, responding deputies, physical evidence from the kitchen, your mother’s phone call, and potentially Emma.”
“No.”
Calder paused.
“I’m not saying we would call her.”
“You said potentially Emma.”
“I need to be honest about possibilities.”
“No.”
Bell, seated beside Rachel, looked at her.
Rachel heard her own voice rising.
“She’s eleven.”
“I know.”
“She already thinks she did something wrong.”
Calder nodded.
“Which is one reason we would be very cautious.”
“Cautious isn’t no.”
“No,” Calder said. “It isn’t.”
Rachel stood.
Her chair rolled backward and hit the wall.
Pain went through her side, dull now rather than sharp.
“I need a minute.”
In the hallway she walked to a vending machine and stared at rows of chips without seeing them.
Bell came out after a while.
She did not stand too close.
Rachel said, “Grant told me this would happen.”
Bell waited.
“He said if I ever turned this into a case, Emma would get dragged through court and strangers would decide whether I was a good mother.”
“He told you that before the kitchen?”
“Months before.”
“Write down exactly what you remember.”
Rachel laughed without humor.
May you like
“Everything becomes evidence with you.”
“Not everything.”
