Chapter 3: The Voice on the Phone
Emma was asleep in the back of Officer Tran's patrol car, Bunny pressed against her cheek, when I called the number back.
It rang four times.
Then a woman picked up.
"I wasn't sure you'd call," she said.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Carol Deane." A pause.
"I was married to the man who recruited Vanessa."
I stepped away from the house, away from the officers moving in and out of my front door.
The night air was cold.
"What does that mean — recruited?"
"It means she didn't find you by accident," Carol said.
"She was given your name, your address, a photograph of your daughter, and a reason to get close to your family."
My back hit the fence at the edge of the yard.
"Why Emma?"
"Because of what Emma's mother left behind."
I hadn't spoken about Claire in months.
Not to anyone.
"Claire d*ed in a car accident.
There's nothing to leave behind."
"That's what you were told," Carol said.
"But Claire contacted me six weeks before she d*ed.
She said she had found something at her firm.
Financial records that didn't belong to anyone she could identify.
She was frightened."
"Claire was an accountant," I said slowly.
"She was.
And the accounts she found belonged to a man named Victor Hale." Carol's voice dropped slightly.
"My ex-husband."
Ramirez appeared in the doorway.
She looked at me, then at the phone against my ear.
She waited.
"Why are you telling me this now?" I said.
"Because they took the wrong thing from the wrong house," Carol said.
"And now they know it."
"What did they take?"
"A drive.
Small.
Black.
Claire hid it before the accident." She stopped.
"I think she hid it somewhere your daughter would find it eventually.
Somewhere safe.
Somewhere only a child would look."
I turned and stared at the house.
At Emma's bedroom window.
At the bookshelf.
"The stuffed animals," I said.
Carol didn't answer immediately.
"Mr.
Mercer, do not let anyone touch that shelf until I get there."
I was already moving toward the front door when Ramirez stepped fully outside, her hand raised.
"We need to talk," she said.
"Now."
"There's a woman named Carol Deane," I said.
"She says she knows why Vanessa was here."
Ramirez's expression didn't change.
That was the part that stopped me.
"We know who Carol Deane is," she said carefully.
"Then why didn't you tell me?"
She looked at me for a long moment.
"Because until twenty minutes ago, she was a suspect."
The cold moved through me differently after that.
I looked back at the patrol car where Emma slept.
Then at the bookshelf visible through the bedroom window.
Then at Ramirez.
"Was?" I said.
She nodded once.
May you like
"Something changed.
Come inside."
