Chapter 8 - Someone Had Been Inside
The officers treated my apartment like a crime scene within minutes.
They photographed the cut lock, the scattered folders, the message on the ceremony program, and the narrow scratches around the front deadbolt that I had missed when I came in.
One officer dusted the cabinet while another walked through every room with a camera.
I stood in the hallway with Elena, my left arm pressed against my chest, and tried to understand why someone would steal old military paperwork that could mostly be requested again.
Then I remembered the envelope I had kept in the bottom drawer.
It contained a copy of Marcus Reed's last letter to me.
My stomach turned.
"What is it?" Elena asked.
"Marcus's letter is gone."
She knew immediately which letter I meant.
Marcus had written it before our deployment as part of a tradition in our unit.
Everyone wrote one letter to be delivered if they did not come home.
Most people joked about it.
Marcus did not.
His letter had gone to his wife, Dana, but months later she mailed me a copy of the final page because he had mentioned me by name.
Porter is going to blame herself if anything happens to me, he had written.
Do not let her.
She carries everybody like they are her responsibility.
Someday that will break her if nobody makes her put the weight down.
I had read those lines hundreds of times.
Now they were in someone else's hands.
Detective Cole arrived just after six.
She looked at the program on my bed and then at me.
"Who knew where you kept these files?"
"My father."
"Anyone else?"
"Linda knew I had a cabinet.
Kyle had been here twice, years ago."
"Did any of them have a key?"
"Dad used to.
I changed the locks last year."
"Why?"
I almost said because Linda walked in without warning.
Then I realized how absurd it sounded that I had normalized it.
"Because Linda used the old key without asking."
Cole wrote it down.
"When?"
"About fourteen months ago."
"What happened?"
"I came home and found her in my kitchen.
She said Dad had given her the key.
I told her never to do it again.
She said family didn't need permission."
Cole's pen stopped.
"Did she leave?"
"Eventually."
"And you changed the lock?"
"The next day."
Cole looked toward the front door.
"Then whoever entered this time either defeated the lock or had access to a newer key."
A uniformed officer stepped into the room holding a tablet.
"Detective, building manager has exterior camera footage."
We all moved into the living room.
The footage showed the entrance from the parking lot.
At 2:14 that afternoon, a dark blue SUV pulled into a visitor space.
I recognized it before the video sharpened.
My father's vehicle.
Elena whispered, "Of course."
The driver's door opened.
A person wearing a baseball cap stepped out.
The camera angle never caught a clear face.
The figure was about my father's height.
Maybe Kyle's too.
The person entered the building carrying nothing.
Twenty-three minutes later, the same person exited with a black document bag.
Detective Cole paused the frame.
"Is that your father's bag?"
I looked closer.
The bag had a small tan leather patch near the handle.
I had given Richard one like it for Father's Day five years earlier.
"It looks like it."
"Looks like is not enough."
"I know."
Elena pointed to the lower corner of the screen.
"Can you zoom on the shoes?"
The officer did.
Brown loafers.
My father wore brown loafers constantly.
So did thousands of other men.
Nothing about the image was conclusive.
That made it worse.
My phone rang.
Dana Reed's name appeared on the screen.
I answered immediately.
"Dana?"
"Natalie, are you somewhere private?"
Her voice was shaking.
I looked around the room full of police officers.
"Private enough.
What's wrong?"
"Somebody emailed me."
My stomach dropped.
"What did they send?"
"A copy of Marcus's letter."
Elena's face changed.
I put the call on speaker.
"What did the message say?"
Dana inhaled.
"It said, 'Ask Sergeant Porter why your husband died while she got a medal.'"
No one in the room moved.
"Dana, I am so sorry."
"Stop."
Her voice hardened.
"Do not apologize to me for them."
I closed my eyes.
"The letter was stolen from my apartment today."
"Then I am forwarding the email to the police."
"Please do."
There was a pause.
Then Dana said something I did not expect.
"Whoever sent it does not know what Marcus told me before he deployed."
I opened my eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"He told me if something happened to him, you would be the one who tried to save him after everybody else had accepted he was gone."
My throat closed.
"Dana."
"He knew you, Natalie.
Better than your family seems to."
I looked at the stolen-file drawer.
"They are going to use him."
"Then they are going to regret choosing his widow as an audience."
Dana ended the call only after promising to send everything to Detective Cole.
Ten minutes later, another officer found something under my desk.
A tiny plastic fragment.
It was black, rectangular, and no larger than my thumbnail.
The crime-scene technician picked it up with tweezers.
"Looks like part of a USB drive casing."
I stared at it.
"I don't keep drives under my desk."
They bagged it.
Cole turned to me.
"Until we know who was here, you should not stay in this apartment."
"I can stay with Elena."
"Good."
I began packing a small bag with my right hand.
Elena helped without asking.
When I reached the closet, I noticed an empty space on the top shelf.
A gray archive box was missing.
My breath stopped.
"No."
Elena looked up.
"What?"
"The after-action copies."
"You had them here?"
"Only the portions I was given during the award review."
"Were they classified?"
"No.
Redacted and cleared.
But they included witness statements."
"Whose?"
"Hayes.
Daniel.
Yours.
Mine."
Elena went still.
"Marcus?"
"A radio transcript from his final minutes."
For the first time, she looked frightened.
Not for herself.
For what could be done with a partial transcript.
My phone buzzed again.
This time the notification came from a social-media account I did not recognize.
A new video had been posted.
The title read:
PURPLE HEART SERGEANT LEFT WOUNDED TEAM LEADER TO DIE.
I pressed play.
Static filled the audio.
Then Marcus's voice came through, strained and weak.
"Porter, leave me."
My own voice answered.
"I can't."
The clip cut there.
Then text appeared on a black screen.
SHE LEFT HIM ANYWAY.
My knees nearly gave out.
Elena caught my shoulder.
"That is not the full transmission."
"I know."
"They cut the next line."
I knew that too.
Marcus's next line had been the one I still heard in dreams.
Get Hayes out.
That is an order.
I had obeyed only after Marcus made me choose between staying with him and saving three other wounded people.
Whoever stole my file had removed the sentence that explained everything.
Detective Cole watched the clip once.
Then she looked at the broken USB fragment on the evidence table.
"I think whoever came in here copied your files before taking them."
"Why take them if they already copied them?" Elena asked.
Cole's answer was quiet.
"Because they do not just want their version online."
She looked at me.
May you like
"They want you unable to prove the rest."
