Chương 5
Elise asked several questions about access.
Daniel answered each one without irritation.
Nora watched him.
He looked older than he had three nights ago.
Not dramatically older.
Just less polished.
There was stubble along his jaw, and his suit jacket had a wrinkle near one pocket.
“Where is Claire?” Nora asked.
Daniel looked at her.
“At the house.”
“You’re still living together?”
“No.”
“Where are you?”
“A hotel.”
Nora regretted asking.
It was none of her business.
Daniel rubbed his thumb against the edge of the table.
“Claire says you’ve been harassing her.”
“I haven’t.”
“She says you contacted people who work for her.”
“I did.”
“How many?”
“Three.”
“Why?”
“To confirm expenses.”
“Hotel expenses?”
Nora looked at Elise.
Her attorney nodded once.
Nora opened a folder.
The documents inside were not explosive.
That was the first thing she needed Daniel to understand.
Real evidence rarely arrived with its meaning printed at the top.
There were invoices from a boutique hotel in Georgetown. Car-service receipts. Calendar entries. A reimbursement request from Claire’s private account. Two emails between Claire and Daniel’s chief financial officer, Nolan Pierce, discussing schedule changes.
All ordinary on their own.
Together, they showed that Claire and Nolan had been in Washington on three nights when Claire had told Daniel she was in Boston visiting her mother.
Daniel read each page.
He said nothing.
Nora slid another paper across the table.
It was a printout of the old security request.
Requested by: C. Mercer.
Reason: accidental recording of private domestic event.
Daniel’s eyes stayed on the page.
“Rachel told me Claire accused her of hitting her,” Nora said. “This was eleven days after that.”
Daniel looked at her.
“I remember.”
The room went quiet.
Nora had not expected those words.
“What do you remember?”
“Rachel came to the house. Claire was there.”
“Why?”
Daniel looked down.
“Because I had moved out.”
Nora understood.
His affair with Claire had not been a rumor by then.
Rachel had known.
Daniel continued.
“Rachel wanted to talk. Claire said she should leave. They argued. I was upstairs for part of it.”
“What did Claire tell you happened?”
“That Rachel grabbed her.”
“Did you see it?”
“No.”
Nora felt anger rise.
She did not hide it quickly enough.
Daniel saw.
“You believed her.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He looked at Nora for a long time.
Then he said, “Because I needed Rachel to be the unreasonable one.”
Nothing moved in the room.
Even Elise stopped writing.
Daniel continued before Nora could speak.
“If Rachel was irrational, then I didn’t have to look very closely at what I was doing to her.”
The answer was ugly.
That was why Nora believed it.
He did not ask to be forgiven.
“I told myself our marriage had already ended,” he said. “It hadn’t. Not to her.”
Nora closed the folder.
“You don’t get points for figuring that out after she died.”
“I know.”
The phrase irritated her.
She almost told him so.
Instead she said, “Claire used that.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe.”
Daniel’s eyes lifted.
Nora disliked how much uncertainty remained.
She wanted the world to divide into the people who had hurt Rachel and the people who had not.
It refused.
Elise interrupted.
“Mr. Mercer, Nora also has an email from Rachel.”
Nora looked at her.
Elise waited.
This was why Nora had hired her.
Not because Elise was warm.
Because she did not let Nora hide inside hesitation.
Nora opened her laptop.
The email had been sent forty-one hours before Rachel died.
It was short.
Nora, I know you’re angry with me. You should be. I’ve been impossible. But if Claire ever tells Daniel I touched her, please find the video before you believe either of us. I’m done trying to convince people with words.
Daniel read it once.
Then again.
His face did not change until he reached the last sentence the second time.
Nora looked away.
There was a clock on the wall with no second hand.
She hated clocks without second hands.
Rachel had hated them too.
She used to say they made offices feel dishonest.
The memory arrived so suddenly that Nora pressed her fingernail into her thumb.
Daniel leaned back.
“Why didn’t you show me this before?”
“Because I found it three weeks ago.”
“No. I mean years ago.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“It was sent to you.”
“To an old foundation address I stopped checking after Rachel died. The archive migration restored it.”
Daniel’s gaze returned to the screen.
“What video?”
“I don’t know.”
“The deleted foyer recording?”
“I think so.”
“But you don’t know.”
“No.”
He nodded.
It disappointed her that he insisted on uncertainty.
It also made her trust him more.
Elise said, “We need to separate what is known from what is suspected.”
Nora folded her arms.
“Claire threatened to bury me with Rachel.”
Daniel looked at her.
Now she told him.
Exactly.
No embellishment.
When she finished, Daniel stood.
For a second Nora thought he might leave.
Instead he walked to the window.
Traffic moved six floors below.
A delivery cyclist waited at a red light.
Finally Daniel said, “Did she mention Rachel before you showed her the email?”
“No.”
“Did she know you had found it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could she?”
“Maybe. I contacted the company technician whose name was on the deletion request. He refused to talk to me, but he might have told someone.”
Daniel turned.
“His name?”
“Mark Leland.”
Daniel knew it immediately.
Nora saw that.
“He still works for us?”
“No. Retired three years ago.”
“Do you know him?”
Daniel gave a tired laugh.
“He installed the original system in that house.”
He looked back at the traffic.
“Rachel liked him.”
Nora remembered.
Mark used to bring lemon candies in a metal tin and complain about people who mounted television screens too high.
She had forgotten that.
Daniel took out his phone.
Elise said, “Do not contact him yet.”
He stopped.
May you like
“Why?”
“Because the first thing everybody does in these situations is run around warning witnesses that they suddenly matter.”
