Chapter 6: The Man Named Victor
I showed the photograph to Collins that evening.
She studied it for a long time without speaking.
Then she turned the phone slightly, as though a different angle might tell her something more.
"You don't recognize him?"
"Never seen him."
"Anna never mentioned a Victor?
Friend, colleague, old acquaintance?"
"No."
Collins set the phone on the table between us.
We were in a small conference room at the precinct, two floors below where Michael was being held for questioning.
The building smelled of old coffee and floor cleaner.
"The message says there are things about Anna's final months you don't know," she said.
"That's either someone who genuinely has information, or someone trying to pull you away from the case at a critical moment."
"Or both."
"Or both." She picked up her pen.
"Did you respond?"
"Not yet."
"Good.
Don't.
Not until we know who he is." She wrote something down.
"Can you forward me the message and the photograph?"
I did it while she watched.
Her phone buzzed on the table.
She glanced at it, then looked up.
"I'm going to run the number and the image.
Give me twenty-four hours."
"What if he contacts me again?"
"Tell him you need a few days.
Family emergency.
Which is true." She paused.
"If he pushes, that tells us something."
I nodded.
I looked at the photograph again before I put my phone away.
Anna's face.
The careful way she was holding the envelope.
She looked calm.
She looked like she was doing something she had thought through.
"She was protecting something," I said.
"Or someone," Collins said.
I drove back to the hospital.
Lily was awake, sitting up in bed, working on a drawing she'd asked the nurse to bring her paper for.
She was drawing our house.
The front garden.
The old oak tree near the gate.
"Dad," she said, without looking up.
"Is Uncle Michael in trouble?"
I sat down beside her.
"Yes, sweetheart."
"Because of what he did to the money?"
I looked at her.
"Who told you about the money?"
"Nobody." She kept drawing.
"I heard you and the detective talking last night.
I wasn't all the way asleep."
I should have been more careful.
"Yes.
Because of the money."
She was quiet for a moment.
She added a small figure under the oak tree.
A woman with long hair.
"Is that Mom?" I asked.
"She used to sit there in the summer," Lily said.
"With her book.
She'd read until it got dark."
"I remember."
Lily set down the pencil.
She looked at the drawing for a moment.
Then she looked at me.
"Did Uncle Michael make Mom sad?
Before she got sick?"
The question landed somewhere I wasn't prepared for.
"Why do you ask that?"
"Because once I came downstairs at night and they were arguing in the kitchen.
Mom was crying.
Uncle Michael was saying he was sorry but it didn't sound like he meant it." She picked up the pencil again.
"I didn't tell you because Mom saw me on the stairs and she shook her head.
Like I shouldn't say anything."
I sat very still.
"Do you remember what they were arguing about?"
"Money," Lily said simply.
"He kept saying it wasn't fair.
That he deserved some too." She paused.
"Mom said it wasn't his money to deserve."
I looked at the drawing.
The woman under the oak tree.
The careful way Lily had drawn her, slightly apart from the house, as though she was watching over it from a distance.
"Lily," I said.
"Would you be willing to tell Detective Collins what you just told me?"
She considered this seriously.
"Would it help?"
"Yes.
I think it would."
She nodded.
"Okay." She picked up the pencil and added a small bird in the tree above the woman.
"Dad?"
"Yes?"
"I miss her."
"I know, sweetheart." I put my arm around her carefully, mindful of the IV.
"So do I."
Collins arrived within the hour.
She sat across from Lily with her notepad and asked her questions gently, the way you might ask a child about a favorite book.
Lily answered each one clearly and without hesitation.
When Collins left, she stopped in the doorway and looked back at me.
"She's going to be a remarkable person," she said quietly.
"She already is."
Collins nodded once.
Then: "Victor's real name is Victor Hale.
He was Anna's attorney.
Not Ruth.
A different one.
May you like
He handled something separate, about eight months before she died." She paused.
"I think you need to hear what he has to say."
