Chapter 8: Diane Makes Her Move
Hale's voicemail was forty seconds long.
"Mrs.
Bennett, this is Douglas Hale.
I'm calling as a professional courtesy to inform you that my client has retained additional documentation she intends to submit to the court prior to the motion hearing.
This documentation relates to your conduct during the marriage and is of a nature that my client believes the court will find relevant to questions of parental fitness.
I would encourage you to discuss this with your attorney at your earliest convenience."
I played it twice.
Then I forwarded it to Carol.
Her response came in six minutes: *Come in tomorrow morning.
Nine o'clock.*
---
Carol's office looked the same as the first morning—the same view of the river, the same clean desk, the same quality of attention that made the room feel smaller and more focused than it was.
Ruth's USB drives were no longer on the desk.
They were in an evidence file somewhere, labeled and logged.
"What documentation?" I asked, before I'd fully sat down.
"I don't know yet.
Hale is required to disclose before the hearing, but he has until forty-eight hours prior." Carol set her pen down.
"What I do know is that Diane has been making calls.
Three people from your social circle in the last four years have been contacted.
Two neighbors from the condo building.
And—" she paused— "your former employer."
"I left that job two years ago."
"I know.
Diane is looking for anyone who will say you were erratic, difficult, or unstable.
She's building a character case." Carol's voice was even.
"She's also, I believe, planning to appear at the hearing herself and testify."
"About what?"
"About you.
About the marriage.
About the night of the dinner." Carol looked at me.
"She's going to say you have always been volatile.
That the three sl*ps were part of a pattern of @ggressive behavior she endured for years.
That she struck Lily in a moment of fear—that she believed you were about to become violent and she was trying to manage the situation."
The room was very quiet.
"She's going to say she was afraid of me," I said.
"Yes."
"While holding my two-year-old."
"Yes."
I looked at the river through the window.
A barge was moving slowly east, low in the water.
"What do we do?" I asked.
"We prepare you to testify," Carol said.
"And we prepare something else." She opened a folder.
"I've been in contact with Brooke's internet service provider.
The livestream was hosted through a third-party platform.
That platform retains server-side metadata for all broadcasts—start time, end time, viewer count, and geographic data for every device that accessed the stream."
I looked at her.
"The metadata will show exactly when Brooke's phone went dark," Carol said.
"It will show that the broadcast continued for forty-seven seconds after she pulled the phone under the table—long enough for Ruth and Helen to begin their recordings.
It will also show—" she turned a page— "that one of the devices that accessed the stream that evening was registered to a billing address on North Lake Shore Drive."
I knew that address.
"That's Diane's building," I said.
"It's Diane's unit," Carol said.
"Diane Bennett was watching her own daughter's livestream from her own phone during her own birthday dinner."
I stared at her.
"She saw herself strike Lily," I said slowly.
"In real time.
On her own phone.
Under the table." Carol closed the folder.
"Which means when she hired Douglas Hale three hours later, she already knew exactly what the video showed."
The barge outside had moved out of the frame of the window.
The river was empty.
"She wasn't acting out of fear," I said.
"She was managing the evidence."
"From the moment it happened." Carol picked up her pen.
"That is what I intend to demonstrate at the hearing."
My phone buzzed on the desk between us.
Brooke's name.
I looked at Carol.
She nodded.
I answered and put it on speaker.
"Emily." Brooke's voice was tight and fast, the way it got when she was performing composure.
"I need you to know that whatever Jason told you this morning, he was emotional and not thinking clearly.
He doesn't speak for this family."
"He speaks for himself," I said.
"He's going to regret it.
Mom is going to—" She stopped.
"You need to understand that Mom has things.
Things she's kept quiet about you for a long time, out of respect for Jason.
If this goes to a hearing, none of that stays quiet."
"What things, Brooke?"
A pause.
"Things."
"That's not an answer."
"You know what you did." Her voice cracked slightly at the edge.
"You know what kind of person you are."
"I know exactly what kind of person I am," I said.
"That's why I have thirty-nine exhibits and a physician's declaration and two witnesses and a child psychologist's evaluation and your mother's voicemail, which she left in direct violation of a restraining order." I paused.
"What do you have?"
Silence.
"Tell your mother," I said, "that the hearing is in eleven days.
And that the metadata from her own phone will be entered into evidence."
I ended the call.
Carol was watching me.
"You told her about the metadata," she said.
"Yes."
"That will get back to Hale within the hour."
"I know."
Carol considered this for a moment.
Then she nodded slowly.
"You want her to move," she said.
"You want to see what she does when she thinks you have more than she expected."
"She's been managing this situation since the moment it happened," I said.
"I want to see what she does when she realizes she can't manage it anymore."
Carol looked at me the way she had looked at me on the very first morning, when she'd said *this isn't a divorce file, this is a prosecution.*
"All right," she said.
"Then we wait."
May you like
We didn't wait long.
Hale called Carol at 3:15 that afternoon and requested an urgent settlement conference.
