Chapter 7: What He Thought Would Save Him
The arrest warrant was executed the following morning.
Robert had spent the night at a hotel downtown — his credit card confirmed it later.
He had also made fourteen phone calls between 9 p.m.
and midnight.
His youth baseball co-coach.
Two men from his office.
His brother in Phoenix.
Gerald Fitch four separate times.
He was building something.
I knew how he worked.
He was assembling witnesses, calling in favors, constructing the version of events he planned to present.
Hargrove called me at 7:42 a.m.
"They picked him up at the hotel," he said.
"He came out voluntarily.
Fitch was already there."
"How did he look?"
A pause.
"Calm.
Very calm."
That was Robert.
Calm was his armor.
Maya was in a temporary placement — a hospital-affiliated family shelter two miles away, somewhere safe and quiet while the legal process began.
I was staying in a room down the hall from her.
Neither of us had slept much.
I told her about the arrest over breakfast.
Toast neither of us ate.
"He'll make bail," she said.
"Probably.
But there are conditions.
He can't contact us.
He can't come near the house."
"He'll find a way around it." She said it without bitterness.
Just fact.
"He always does."
"Maya, look at me."
She looked up.
"He doesn't have the recordings anymore.
He doesn't control what Patricia says.
He doesn't control what Dr.
Lawson's imaging shows.
He has lost the thing he always counted on most."
"What's that?"
"No one knowing."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Fitch called me a troubled teenager," she said.
"On the news.
There was a reporter outside the hotel when they took him in.
Fitch made a statement."
I hadn't seen it.
I pulled out my phone.
A local news clip, forty seconds.
Gerald Fitch in a gray suit, standing on the hotel steps, reading from a prepared statement.
*"Mr.
Hale is a respected member of this community, a dedicated husband and stepfather, and a man of unimpeachable character.
These allegations originate from a deeply troubled young woman with a documented history of emotional difficulties, and we are confident that the full facts will exonerate Mr.
Hale completely."*
Maya watched me watch it.
"Documented history," she said.
"He had me see a therapist two years ago.
He told her I had attachment issues and trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy.
He sat in on the first session and told her I'd been making up stories since I was small." She paused.
"I only went twice.
She looked at me differently after he talked to her."
"That therapist is going to be contacted," I said.
"She'll say what he told her to say."
"Maybe.
Or maybe she'll remember what she actually saw in that room and decide she doesn't want to be part of this."
Maya broke a corner off her toast and didn't eat it.
"There's something I didn't put on the drive," she said.
I waited.
"About eight months ago, I found something in his desk.
He keeps it locked, but I found the key once when he left his jacket on the chair." She looked at the table.
"There was a folder.
It had my name on it.
Inside were printed emails.
Between him and someone I didn't recognize.
About me." She swallowed.
"About how to handle me if I ever said anything.
What to say to make people doubt me.
It was like a plan.
Written out."
The toast sat between us.
"Did you photograph it?" I asked.
"I was too scared.
I put everything back exactly how I found it and I never touched his desk again." She finally looked up.
"But I remember the name on the emails.
The person he was writing to."
"Who?"
May you like
"A woman named Diane Hale." She held my eyes.
"His first wife."
