Chương 2
He booked Diane a car through an app and entered the wrong terminal twice.
A detective named Lena Ortiz arrived shortly before six. She wore a gray suit and carried a notebook thin enough to suggest she preferred listening to displaying paperwork.
“I know who you are,” she told Elias.
“That rarely improves an interview.”
One corner of her mouth shifted. “I’m not interviewing you yet.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Making sure you don’t call three people who will make my job harder.”
He studied her. “Which three?”
“Anyone in the district attorney’s office. Anyone in the state police command. Anyone who still calls you Your Honor.”
“I haven’t called anyone.”
“That puts us ahead.”
She sat across from him. Through the windows behind her, the late light had begun to fade from the hospital parking structure.
“Your daughter said something in the courtyard,” Ortiz said.
Elias kept his face still. “You were told.”
“I heard part of it on an officer’s body camera.”
“She said Julian wasn’t alone.”
“Yes.”
“She looked toward the portico.”
“Where two people were standing.”
“Ruth Bell and Martin Sloane.”
Ortiz wrote down the names, though she almost certainly had them already.
“What is Mr. Sloane’s role?”
“Family solicitor. He manages the estate trusts, the foundation, property matters. He was counsel to my father before he was counsel to me.”
“And Ms. Bell?”
“Housekeeper. She has worked at Ashcombe for twenty-six years.”
“Do you trust them?”
Elias looked toward the closed doors behind which Clara had disappeared.
“That question has become less simple.”
“What happened before you entered the courtyard?”
“I was in the west library. I heard Ruth scream.”
“What were you doing in the library?”
“Reviewing foundation correspondence.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Where was your daughter supposed to be?”
“She and Julian had come to discuss their wedding arrangements.”
“Were you involved in those arrangements?”
“Financially, apparently. Socially, against my will.”
Ortiz glanced up.
“It was a joke,” Elias said.
“Was it?”
“Not a good one.”
She waited.
He disliked silence used as a tool. He had used it himself from the bench, letting a witness hurry to fill the space and expose the weakness in an answer. Ortiz’s silence was gentler and therefore more effective.
“The wedding had become complicated,” he said. “Too large. Too public. Julian’s family preferred spectacle. Clara claimed not to care, then spent weeks changing details.”
“Were they fighting?”
“They were engaged. Of course they were fighting.”
“About money?”
“Everyone at Ashcombe fights about money eventually.”
“That sounds practiced.”
“It is inherited.”
The doors opened. A physician came toward them, removing a surgical cap though Elias had not been told Clara required surgery.
He stood too quickly and had to steady himself against the chair.
“Mr. Ward?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Dr. Shah. Your daughter has a concussion, two cracked ribs, and a fracture in her left wrist. We closed the cut inside her lip. The imaging shows no intracranial bleeding. That’s encouraging, but we’ll monitor her closely overnight.”
Elias heard each item as a separate verdict.
“Was she struck with the mallet?”
“We can’t determine the exact object. Her injuries are consistent with blunt-force trauma and a fall. The facial bruising could have come from more than one impact.”
“Will she recover?”
“We expect her to.”
Expect. The word offered shelter but no guarantee.
“Can I see her?”
“In a few minutes.”
Dr. Shah began to explain concussion precautions. Elias forced himself to listen. Light sensitivity, confusion, memory gaps, nausea, delayed symptoms. He repeated the instructions back because he had spent his life believing accuracy could protect people.
When the doctor left, Ortiz closed her notebook.
“I’ll return tomorrow,” she said.
“You’re leaving?”
“For tonight. Your daughter isn’t ready to be questioned.”
“What about Sloane?”
“He gave an initial statement. Ms. Bell did too.”
“What did they say?”
“That is part of an active investigation.”
“My daughter is in a hospital bed.”
“And that does not entitle you to witness statements.”
Elias looked at her.
Ortiz did not look away.
Years earlier, lawyers had accused him of reducing human distress to procedure. He had considered it an unfair criticism. Procedure was what prevented distress from deciding everything.
Now he understood why people hated doors that closed in the name of procedure.
“Julian said she forced his hand,” Elias said.
“I know.”
“That is an admission.”
“It may be. It may also be a statement made during shock, anger, intoxication, or some combination. We’ll document it. We’ll test it against evidence.”
“He was not intoxicated.”
“You know that because?”
“I know him.”
Ortiz slid the notebook into her bag. “Tonight may not be the best night to measure how well.”
Clara’s hospital room smelled faintly of adhesive and disinfectant. Machines monitored her pulse with small green numbers. Her left wrist was splinted and elevated. Without the lavender dress, her bare shoulders emerging from a hospital gown made her seem younger than twenty-seven.
Elias sat beside her and placed his wedding ring against the edge of the mattress. He had continued wearing it after Diane left, less from hope than from inertia. Removing it would have required a decision, and there had been enough decisions at the time.
Clara opened her right eye.
“Dad.”
“I’m here.”
“My face hurts.”
“I know.”
“Is it bad?”
He considered lying.
“You will frighten children for several days.”
Her eye closed, but her mouth made the smallest movement.
“That bad.”
“Only unusually judgmental children.”
She swallowed. The joke had cost her.
“Julian?”
“In custody.”
Her breathing changed.
“He said—”
“Don’t talk about it yet.”
“He wasn’t—”
“Clara.”
She opened her eye again, angry now despite the exhaustion.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Decide when I get to know my own life.”
May you like
Elias sat back.
She had been twelve the first time she accused him of conducting family discussions like hearings. At sixteen, she had stopped arguing and simply left rooms while he was speaking. At twenty-three, during a holiday dinner, she had informed him that his calm was sometimes only a more respectable form of control.
