Chapter 9 - THE VIDEO WITHOUT AN END
The phone examiner recovered several files.
Ruiz called me the following afternoon.
“We have a video we need you to identify.”
I drove to the station alone.
Caroline appeared on the screen wearing her green raincoat.
I knew that coat.
I had donated it six months earlier because seeing it on the hook hurt too much.
She stood beside a car in a wet parking lot.
The camera shook.
“Give it back, Mason.”
He laughed behind the phone.
“You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
“That money belongs to the trust.”
“It’s a temporary loan.”
“You forged Daniel’s approval.”
A woman stepped into frame.
Victoria.
Not the soft-spoken woman who brought soup to my house.
This woman looked irritated.
Practical.
“Caroline, get in the car. We can discuss this somewhere dry.”
“No.”
“You’re embarrassing yourself.”
Caroline reached toward the phone.
The image swung away.
Then black.
I waited.
Ruiz stopped the file.
“That’s the end of this recording.”
“Where was it?”
“A restaurant parking lot on Route Nine.”
“How long before the crash?”
“Twenty-three minutes.”
I stared at the blank screen.
Caroline had been alive.
Angry.
Trying to protect our daughter’s money.
And I had spent eleven months blaming a curve in the road.
“Did Mason record himself committing fraud?”
“He may have been trying to intimidate her. We don’t know.”
“Find him.”
“We’re looking.”
“Look harder.”
Ruiz let that pass.
Then she showed me a still image recovered from the phone.
A photograph of my study.
The trust documents.
My driver’s license.
My signature copied onto a sheet of white paper.
Underneath sat a prescription bottle.
Mine.
A sleep medication I had stopped taking weeks earlier.
“Was this bottle usually in your study?”
“No.”
“Did Victoria ever prepare your medication?”
I thought of the tea she brought upstairs.
The way I slept through phone calls.
The mornings I couldn’t remember going to bed.
I gripped the edge of the chair.
Ruiz closed the folder.
“We need you to see a doctor today.”
As I stood, my phone rang.
Unknown number.
Then a message appeared.
MASON: Your wife should have taken the deal.
May you like
A second message followed.
You still can.
