Chapter 8: Gail
Gail Hendricks lived in a small house in St.
Paul, twenty minutes across the river.
She answered the door before I knocked — she must have been watching from the window.
She was in her late sixties, with grey hair and careful eyes, and she held the door open without a word and let me in.
The living room was neat and quiet.
On the mantelpiece there were photographs.
In the center, a young woman with dark hair and a wide smile, standing on a dock somewhere in summer.
Melissa.
I stood in front of the photograph for a moment.
"She was twenty-nine when she met Brian," Gail said from behind me.
"She thought he was kind.
He was, at first.
They always are, I think."
I turned around.
"I'm sorry about your daughter."
Gail nodded once.
She sat down in the armchair across from the sofa and gestured for me to sit.
"I've been trying to do something useful with what happened to her for two years," she said.
"The police looked at the case and closed it.
Accidental overdose.
No evidence of foul play, they said." Her hands were folded in her lap.
"But Melissa didn't use dr*gs.
She never had.
And she was scared in the weeks before she d*ed.
She told me she was scared."
"Did she tell you why?"
"She said she had found something in Brian's files.
Something about money that didn't make sense.
She had hired an attorney — a woman named Carol Vance — and she was going to file papers." Gail paused.
"She d*ed four days before the filing date."
The room was very still.
"The voicemail," I said carefully.
"Charles's voicemail to Melissa.
What did he say?"
Gail reached into the drawer of the side table beside her chair.
She took out a phone — old, a model several years behind — and held it in both hands.
"He said: 'You have made a very foolish decision, Melissa.
People who make foolish decisions against this family tend to find that their lives become very complicated very quickly.
I would encourage you to think carefully about whether this is the path you want to be on.'" Gail looked up at me.
"That was eleven days before she d*ed."
I didn't speak.
"The detective you're working with," Gail said.
"Is he good?"
"I believe so."
"Will he take this seriously?
Not just as evidence in your case, but as — as something that needs to be looked at again?"
"I'm going to make sure of it," I said.
"Gail, I want you to meet my attorney.
I want this phone in her hands today, with a full chain of custody documented.
And I want Carol Vance — Melissa's attorney — contacted to see if those intake notes still exist."
Gail looked at me for a long moment.
"You're not going to settle," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"No."
Something shifted in her face.
Not quite relief.
Something quieter than that, and older.
"Melissa would have liked you," she said.
I looked at the photograph on the mantelpiece.
The young woman on the dock, squinting into the summer light, smiling at whoever was holding the camera.
"I'm going to do everything I can," I said.
"I promise you that."
May you like
Gail stood and held out the phone.
I took it with both hands.
