Chapter 8 - The Empty Chair
I wanted to go inside the warehouse.
Ortiz refused.
“You can help by staying where we put you.”
It was the kind of sentence people usually said to children.
I stayed in the car.
Two blocks away, officers moved toward a low industrial building with a faded sign over the loading dock.
Danner’s security company occupied the back half.
I watched the entrance until my eyes hurt.
Ruth sat beside me.
Her hands were folded so tightly her knuckles had gone white.
“Caroline hates enclosed rooms,” she said suddenly.
I looked at her.
“When we were kids, a storm shut us in a cellar for hours.
She’s hated them ever since.”
I had nothing useful to say.
So I listened.
“She used to sleep with Lucy’s door open.
Even when the apartment was freezing.
Said she wanted to hear her breathe.”
A radio crackled from the front seat.
The officer turned the volume lower.
Ruth noticed.
“What happened?”
“I don’t have information yet.”
We waited.
Twenty minutes later, Ortiz came to the car.
“They’re not there.”
Ruth closed her eyes.
“But someone was,” Ortiz added.
Inside an office, investigators had found a chair with packing tape stuck to its arms.
A paper cup.
A woman’s gray cardigan.
Caroline’s phone, smashed beneath a desk.
Ruth identified the cardigan from a photograph.
Her sister had worn it the morning she disappeared.
I stepped out of the car because I couldn’t breathe sitting down.
Ortiz followed.
“Daniel, there’s something else.”
She showed me an image on her tablet.
A torn shipping label from a trash can.
Mercer Development Services.
I stared at the name.
Colin Mercer had shaken my hand at a fundraiser six weeks earlier.
Emily stood between us in the photograph.
I remembered him saying, “You’re a lucky man.”
I had thought he meant my wife.
My phone rang.
My chief operating officer, Ben Keller.
I answered because he had called six times.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Busy.”
“Daniel, Mercer just contacted two board members.
He says he has evidence you’ve been leaking privileged information and trying to blame Emily.”
I closed my eyes.
“He says the police found your recording system.”
“My recording system?”
“He’s asking for an emergency meeting.”
Across the street, an officer carried Caroline’s cardigan out in a bag.
I looked at the empty sleeves.
Mercer wasn’t just moving a prisoner.
He was moving the blame.
May you like
Then Ben said, “There’s a recording.
It sounds like you authorized everything.”
