Chapter 9 - NO MORE HALF-TRUTHS
The interview room was too bright.
Clara sat beneath a wall clock that seemed louder every time someone stopped talking.
Across from her, Agent Elena Ward opened the transfer order.
Arthur’s signature was clear.
So was the destination.
A warehouse outside the city, owned by a Costello company.
“Arthur says he believed your brother would be questioned there and released,” Ward said.
Clara stared at the page.
“Was he?”
“No.”
Naomi rested a hand beside Clara’s, close enough to reach if she wanted.
Clara didn’t take it.
“Do you know where Daniel is?”
“Not yet.”
For six hours, Clara answered questions.
Payments.
Meetings.
Names she had kept out of calendars.
When she didn’t know something, she said so. When she did, she stopped trying to make it sound better.
At dawn, Ward closed her notebook.
“You understand some of this implicates you.”
“Yes.”
“Why come forward now?”
Clara looked down at the thin red scrapes across her palms.
“Because I ran out of ways to pretend I was only doing my job.”
In another room, Arthur sat beside a lawyer who kept telling him to stop talking.
“I signed the order,” Arthur said.
His attorney exhaled.
“Then we discuss that privately.”
“I want it on the record.”
Ward studied him.
“Why?”
“Because Julian will say I knew nothing. Or he’ll say I ordered everything. Whatever keeps him alive.”
“What did you actually know?”
Arthur’s mouth tightened.
Enough to have asked more questions.
Enough to have stopped it.
“I knew Daniel was afraid,” he said. “I let them take him anyway.”
By noon, investigators had found irregularities in the pension accounts, property transfers, and demolition contract.
They had also found something worse.
Julian was scheduled to meet Commissioner Warren Pike that night at the rescheduled charity reception.
Ruth had identified Pike as the man who ordered Daniel’s evidence removed.
Ward placed an invitation in front of Clara.
“Do you know where these two talk privately?”
“The east conservatory. Cameras cover the entrance, not the interior.”
“We have surveillance authority. We need the records they’re exchanging.”
Clara touched the invitation.
“Julian won’t bring them if he thinks Arthur is cooperating.”
“We’re still keeping that quiet.”
Before Clara could respond, Naomi’s phone rang.
She listened.
Her face drained.
“The safe apartment was compromised.”
Clara stood.
“Ruth?”
May you like
Naomi swallowed.
“They took her.”
