Chapter 6: The Detective and the Driver
Detective Reyes had a small office that smelled like old coffee and printer paper, and she listened to everything I said without writing a single note until I finished.
Then she picked up her pen.
"Say that last part again," she said.
"The exact words."
"The timing was good," I repeated.
"That's what my sister heard him say.
On a phone call.
Right after he was notified about the accident, before he came to the hospital."
Reyes wrote it down.
"And your sister — she's willing to make a formal statement?"
"I don't know yet.
She called me.
I haven't spoken to her in person since this morning."
"We'll need her to come in if she is." Reyes set her pen down and looked at me directly.
"I want to be honest with you, Ms.
Nicole.
What your sister heard is not evidence on its own.
It's one sentence, heard secondhand, from a witness who has her own complicated position in this situation."
"I understand that."
"But." She pulled a folder from the side of her desk.
"The hit and run.
The vehicle was caught on a traffic camera two blocks from the intersection.
We have a partial plate.
We've been running it."
She turned the folder toward me.
There was a photograph — grainy, taken from above, a dark sedan moving through an intersection.
"We haven't been able to identify the driver yet," she said.
"But we identified the registered owner of the vehicle three days ago."
I looked at the photograph.
"Who is it?" I asked.
Reyes looked at me for a moment.
"The vehicle is registered to a Marcus Teller.
Does that name mean anything to you?"
I turned it over.
Marcus Teller.
I didn't know a Marcus Teller.
"No," I said.
"He has no prior record.
No connection to you that we've found so far." She paused.
"But he does have a connection to your fiancé.
They went to college together.
We found it through social media — there are photos going back about eight years."
The room was very quiet.
"Brandon knows the driver," I said.
"Brandon knows the registered owner of the vehicle.
We don't yet know if Teller was driving at the time of the accident.
The vehicle may have been borrowed or stolen.
We're still working it."
"But you're looking at Brandon."
Reyes didn't answer that directly.
"We're looking at all connections.
That's standard." She closed the folder.
"What I need from you right now is a full written statement — everything your sister told you, everything you observed about Mr.
Brandon's behavior before and after the accident, any financial or legal documents you have access to." She glanced at my coat pocket.
"You mentioned a lease agreement."
I took it out and set it on her desk.
She looked at it without touching it.
"Is this the original?"
"Yes."
"I'm going to need to keep this."
"Take it."
She picked it up with two fingers and set it to the side.
"I want to ask you something, and I want you to think carefully before you answer.
In the weeks before your accident — did Brandon ever talk about your finances?
Your insurance?
Any accounts in your name?"
I thought about it.
"My life insurance," I said slowly.
"He asked me about it.
Maybe six weeks ago.
Said we should make sure everything was updated before the wedding.
I thought he meant —" I stopped.
"What did you think he meant?"
"I thought he meant it was responsible.
Planning ahead."
Reyes nodded, her expression giving nothing away.
"Is he listed as beneficiary?"
I closed my eyes.
"Yes," I said.
She wrote that down.
I sat in that small office with the smell of old coffee and the sound of the pen moving across paper, and I thought about a man who had visited me once in ten days, who had sent texts about mild colds, who had signed a lease with my sister three weeks into my hospitalization, who had taken a phone call the day I was h*t by a car and said the timing was good.
I thought about Lily in that hallway, hearing something she wasn't supposed to hear.
I thought about how close I had come to not walking back out of that hospital.
"Ms.
Nicole." Reyes was watching me.
"Are you all right?"
"No," I said.
"But I'm here."
She nodded slowly.
"That matters." She slid a blank statement form across the desk.
"Take your time.
Write down everything."
I picked up the pen.
Outside the precinct window, the city moved past in the ordinary way cities do — cars, pedestrians, a woman pushing a stroller, a man checking his phone.
All of it normal.
May you like
All of it unchanged.
I started writing.
