Chapter 4: What Ruth Found
Ruth arrived within the hour.
She didn't ask questions on the phone and she didn't ask them when she walked in either.
She just looked at my face, set her bag down on the kitchen counter, and put the kettle on.
"Tell me everything," she said.
"Start from the call."
I told her.
All of it.
The police.
The hospital.
The belongings.
The scar.
The elevator button.
The lock app.
The fingerprint.
The black bag.
The phone.
What Christopher had said about Daniel Rowe.
Ruth listened without interrupting.
When I finished, the tea was cold in front of both of us.
"Show me the lock app," she said.
I handed her my phone.
She scrolled through the entry log slowly, the way she scrolled through case files at work.
Ruth was a paralegal.
She had spent fifteen years learning how to read documents that people hoped no one would read carefully.
"Forty-seven entries," she said.
"Yes."
"Mostly between eleven at night and four in the morning."
"Yes."
She zoomed in on one of the dates.
"This one.
March fourteenth.
Christopher was with you?"
"We were both home.
I remember that night.
We watched a film and went to bed early."
"And the third fingerprint entered at 1:17 a.m."
"I was asleep."
Ruth set the phone down.
She picked up her tea, realized it was cold, and set it back down.
"Penelope," she said.
"What do you actually know about Christopher's family?"
I thought about it.
"His parents divorced when he was young.
His father remarried.
He didn't talk about his father much.
He said they weren't close."
"Did you ever meet the father?"
"He p@ssed before Christopher and I got together.
At least that's what Christopher told me."
Ruth nodded slowly.
"And you never questioned it."
"Why would I?"
"You wouldn't." She wasn't saying it to be unkind.
She was just stating a fact.
"Okay.
The message on the prepaid phone — 'It's done.
She didn't wake up.' What do you think that means?"
"I think someone wanted me unconscious last night.
I think the medication, the milk — I think I was supposed to sleep through whatever was planned.
And I think when the police called and I answered, something went wrong."
"Wrong for who?"
"I don't know yet."
Ruth was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, "What was in the estate?
The one Christopher said Daniel needed his help to access?"
"He didn't say."
"He didn't say," she repeated.
"A man enters your home forty-seven times in the night.
Your husband gives that man his ID, his truck, his wedding ring, and his watch.
That man ends up d@ad.
And your husband's explanation is: inheritance.
Property.
He didn't want to get into it."
When she laid it out like that, it sounded exactly as wrong as it was.
"I need to know who Daniel Rowe actually was," I said.
Ruth reached into her bag and pulled out her laptop.
"That's why I brought this."
She was fast.
She always had been.
Within twenty minutes she had found a Daniel Rowe, thirty-one years old, last known address in Trenton, New Jersey.
Two prior crjme charges — both financial.
One for fraud, one for impersonation.
Both resolved without conviction.
"Impersonation," I said.
"Yes."
I looked at the screen.
The photograph in the public record was small and low quality.
A man with dark hair and a narrow face.
I had never seen him before.
Or had I.
"Ruth." I leaned closer.
"Can you make that bigger?"
She enlarged the photo.
I sat back in my chair.
"What?" Ruth said.
"His jaw," I said.
"The way his jaw sits.
The shape of his forehead." I pressed my fingers to my mouth.
"He looks like Christopher."
Ruth looked at the photo again.
Then at me.
"Half-brothers," she said quietly.
"Same father.
Christopher said same father."
We looked at each other across the table.
"If they looked alike enough," Ruth said carefully, "and if Daniel was experienced at impersonation—"
"Then how long," I said, "has Christopher actually been Christopher?"
May you like
The kettle clicked off behind us.
Neither of us moved to pour it.
