Chapter 7: Two O'Clock on a Thursday
Gwen left the house at one fifty-five.
I watched from the upstairs window as she backed her car out of the drive, her sunglasses on, her handbag over one arm.
She looked unhurried.
She looked like a woman with nothing on her mind except an appointment.
The moment her car turned the corner, my phone rang.
"She's clear," Marcus said.
"We're going in."
I went downstairs and opened the front door.
Detective Sousa came in first, followed by two officers and a woman from the bank's fraud division named Patricia Weld.
Gerald was behind them.
He put his hand briefly on my shoulder as he passed.
They moved through the house efficiently and without drama.
Patricia Weld sat at the kitchen table with a laptop and began working through the account records Gerald had authorized her to access.
One of the officers went to the sitting room.
The other went upstairs.
I stood in the hallway and tried to be useful by staying out of the way.
Twenty minutes in, the officer from upstairs appeared at the top of the staircase.
"Mr.
Sterling.
Could you come up, please?"
I followed him to the bedroom.
He had opened the closet on Gwen's side — not the main closet, but the narrow one near the window that she kept locked and had told me held her out-of-season clothing.
It was not clothing.
There was a small fireproof document box on the upper shelf.
The officer had opened it.
Inside were three passports.
Three different names.
Three different photographs, all of the same woman.
There was also a phone — a second phone, a cheap one, the kind you buy with cash.
The officer had already bagged it.
And there was a manila envelope, unsealed, containing what appeared to be several more financial documents.
I could see my name on the top one.
I looked at the passports.
Three names.
Three lives she had built and discarded.
"How many?" I said, though I already knew the answer was more than two.
The officer looked at me carefully.
"We'll need to go through everything before we can say for certain."
Downstairs, Patricia Weld called out: "Detective.
You need to see this."
We all went down.
Patricia turned her laptop to face the room.
"The transfer was scheduled for tomorrow morning.
Four hundred and twenty thousand from the primary investment account." She paused.
"There's also a second transfer.
Smaller.
Sixty-eight thousand from the household account.
That one was set for this morning, but it hasn't processed yet.
If we freeze the accounts now—"
"Do it," Detective Sousa said.
Patricia typed for thirty seconds.
"Done."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Then Gerald looked at me.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't need to.
My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.
I looked at the screen.
A message from Gwen: *Running a little late, traffic is terrible.
Home by 4:30.
Should I pick up anything for dinner?*
Detective Sousa read it over my shoulder.
"Reply normally," she said.
"Tell her that sounds fine."
I typed: *No need.
I'll take care of dinner.*
May you like
I set the phone down.
Forty minutes later, Gwen's car came back up the drive.
