Chapter 17 - WHAT DERERICK CALLED LOVE
Dererick asked to speak to me.
The prosecutor said no.
Helen said absolutely not.
Ortiz said it would be a terrible idea.
I agreed with all of them.
Then Dererick made his cooperation conditional on one thing.
He wanted me behind the observation glass while he talked.
He did not need to see me.
He only wanted to know I was there.
"It's manipulation," Helen said.
"Of course it is."
"Then don't give it to him."
I looked at the closed interview room door.
"If it makes him talk, I'm using his manipulation instead of letting him use mine."
Helen hated that answer.
So did I.
At 11:03 p.m., I stood behind one-way glass with Helen and watched my husband sit beneath fluorescent lights.
He looked smaller without our house around him.
Without the wedding photographs.
Without the kitchen where he had made tea.
Without people who believed his concern meant love.
Ortiz entered the room.
"Anna is here."
Dererick closed his eyes.
"Can she hear me?"
"Yes."
He nodded.
Then he looked directly at the glass even though he could not see me.
"I'm sorry."
My stomach turned.
Ortiz sat across from him.
"Start with Atlas."
Dererick laughed softly.
"Straight to business."
"Start."
He did.
He said he met Martin Hale seven years earlier after losing money in a failed investment business.
Hale offered him consulting work.
At first, the assignments involved research.
Background checks.
Observation.
Social engineering.
"You mean stalking," Ortiz said.
Dererick looked down.
"Yes."
Then Hale asked him to become closer to a target.
A woman named Cassandra Bell.
Dererick dated her for five months.
He collected information.
He encouraged routines that made her dependent on him.
He helped create photographs showing her increasingly impaired.
"Did you kill Cassandra?"
Dererick's face tightened.
"No."
"Did you know she would die?"
Silence.
"Dererick."
"I knew there was going to be a final event."
My hands curled into fists.
"What did you think that meant?"
"I told myself it meant hospitalization."
Ortiz stared at him.
"And after she died?"
"I tried to quit."
I almost laughed.
He continued.
Hale told him he was already implicated.
The photographs.
The payments.
The surveillance.
If Dererick went to police, Hale would make him the sole suspect.
So Dererick stayed.
He helped with Elise.
He dated her.
He watched Meredith document her.
He photographed her.
He claimed he did not administer the substance that preceded her death.
He claimed Hale handled the final event.
"But you knew," Ortiz said.
Dererick closed his eyes.
"By then, yes."
My throat tightened.
There was no confusion in that answer.
No misunderstanding.
He knew.
He stayed.
Listening to Dererick confess was different from discovering evidence.
Evidence had distance.
A spreadsheet could be read clinically.
A timestamp could be highlighted.
A photograph could be enlarged.
His voice carried memory with it.
Every "yes" came from the same mouth that had said wedding vows to me.
When he admitted drugging me, I remembered him asking whether I wanted honey in my tea.
When he admitted moving my body, I remembered falling asleep against his shoulder on airplanes.
When he admitted cutting my clothing for planted evidence, I remembered him kneeling on the bedroom floor to repair a loose button on my coat because he said he liked taking care of me.
The mind does not store betrayal in separate folders.
It drags old tenderness into the room and forces it to stand beside the truth.
During a break in the interview, I went to the restroom and vomited.
Helen waited outside without speaking.
When I emerged, she handed me water.
"You can leave."
"No."
"You don't have to hear the rest."
"I do."
"Why?"
I looked at my reflection.
"Because he spent years deciding what I was allowed to know about my own life."
That was the answer.
The truth hurt.
I still wanted ownership of it.
When the interview resumed, Ortiz asked Dererick about specific mornings.
He remembered some by date.
That devastated me more than his earlier claim that he had lost count.
He remembered the night before my mother's birthday because he had to make sure I seemed functional at lunch.
He remembered delaying one session because I had an early board meeting.
He remembered taking photographs after our anniversary dinner because Hale wanted "domestic continuity."
The phrases were sterile.
The memories were not.
"Did Anna ever consent to any of this?"
Ortiz asked.
"No."
"Did she know she was being documented?"
"No."
"Did she know you were communicating with Hale?"
"No."
"Did she know Meredith was sharing information?"
"No."
Each answer removed another possible excuse.
No misunderstanding.
No mutual experiment.
No therapeutic intervention gone wrong.
He had known I did not know.
That was the core of it.
Then Dererick tried to explain when he believed he fell in love with me.
"It was after Maine," he said.
I almost laughed from disbelief.
Maine had been our first trip together.
We rented a cottage near the coast and spent four days walking in rain because the weather forecast was wrong.
I had considered it one of the happiest memories of my life.
"Why Maine?"
Ortiz asked.
Dererick looked toward the glass.
"She got sick on the second night. Nothing Atlas-related. Just a fever. She kept apologizing for ruining the trip."
I remembered.
He made soup.
Changed the sheets.
Drove thirty minutes to find an open pharmacy.
"I realized I cared what happened to her even if the case disappeared."
My eyes filled with tears despite myself.
Then Ortiz asked the only useful question.
"What did you do after realizing that?"
Dererick said nothing.
Exactly.
He continued the case.
He accepted payments.
He married me.
He drugged me.
Feelings did not become morality simply because they were sincere.
What mattered was what he chose after feeling them.
He chose himself.
Dererick asked for water during the interview.
An officer placed a sealed bottle on the table.
He opened it himself.
The small act hit me unexpectedly.
For weeks, I had treated every drink as a possible threat.
Now the man who created that fear sat under surveillance opening his own bottle because nobody in the room trusted anyone blindly.
It was a tiny reversal.
I held onto it while he kept talking.
Then Ortiz asked about me.
Dererick's breathing changed.
"Anna was different."
I whispered the word to the glass.
"Don't."
Ortiz leaned forward.
"Different how?"
"She wasn't supposed to be my case."
My heart stopped.
"Explain."
"Price identified her. Meredith did the initial profile."
He swallowed.
"I was supposed to make contact at the gala after her father died."
"You were assigned to marry her?"
"Not at first."
"What were you assigned to do?"
"Become trusted."
The phrase sickened me.
"Then what?"
"Evaluate access."
"To her finances?"
"To everything."
I closed my eyes.
Dererick continued.
"After we started dating, Hale realized marriage would create better access to the company."
Ortiz's voice hardened.
"And you agreed?"
"I loved her."
I opened my eyes.
He looked at the glass.
"Anna, I loved you."
I pressed my palm against the cold surface.
How dare he use that word.
Ortiz did not allow the moment to expand.
"You drugged her."
"Yes."
The confession came quietly.
My knees almost buckled.
The room behind the glass became completely silent.
No legal argument.
No explanation.
Yes.
"How many times?"
"I don't know."
"Try."
"More than twenty."
I felt Helen move closer to me.
I did not look at her.
"Why?"
"To create the progression."
"You moved her body?"
"Yes."
"Photographed her?"
"Yes."
"Cut pieces from her clothing?"
"Yes."
"For planting later?"
Dererick hesitated.
"Yes."
Every answer was a door closing on the marriage I had believed existed.
Ortiz asked about the lake house.
Dererick looked sick.
"Saturday was supposed to be the resolution."
"What was supposed to happen?"
He stared at the table.
"They wanted an event that would look consistent with the previous record."
"A fatal event?"
His silence answered.
My hands began shaking.
"And the note?"
"Hale wrote it from samples of Anna's handwriting."
"The suitcase?"
"Prepared in advance."
"The cameras?"
"For selected footage."
Ortiz let the silence stretch.
"You were going to help kill your wife."
Dererick looked at the glass again.
"No."
The word came out desperate.
"I changed it."
I frowned.
Ortiz did too.
"Changed what?"
"The final plan."
"How?"
"I kept delaying it."
"You continued drugging her."
"Because if I stopped, Hale would know."
"Convenient."
"It's true."
Dererick leaned forward.
"The dose that night was supposed to be stronger."
Ortiz's expression sharpened.
"What night?"
"The night she pretended to sleep."
My blood turned cold.
"I reduced it."
He looked at the glass.
"Anna, that's why you were able to wake up."
I almost hit the glass.
He was trying to turn my survival into his mercy.
He had no idea I poured the tea down the sink.
He still believed he had saved me by giving me less.
The arrogance of it was breathtaking.
Ortiz knew the truth from my statement.
She let him continue.
"Why were you photographing her that night?"
"Hale needed updated images."
"And the fabric?"
"For the lake house."
"Then you left the house. Where did you go?"
Dererick hesitated.
That was the question I had waited for since the first night.
"I met Hale."
"Where?"
"Parking garage near the river."
"Why?"
"To give him the fabric and the memory card."
"Did he return them?"
"No."
The lake house evidence suddenly made more sense.
Hale had taken the fabric from Dererick and planted it himself.
That allowed him to abandon Dererick when the plan collapsed.
Ortiz asked where Hale might go.
Dererick gave three addresses.
Two were already known.
The third was not.
An old conference center owned by a Price family trust.
"What's there?"
"The active mirror."
The room behind the glass changed.
Federal agents moved immediately.
"Server?"
Ortiz asked.
"Server, paper archive, client instructions. Everything current."
"Why tell us now?"
Dererick looked at the glass.
"Because Hale marked me for termination."
Ortiz's face hardened.
"So this isn't about Anna."
Dererick's eyes filled with tears.
"Everything is about Anna."
I finally spoke even though he could not hear me through the glass.
"No."
Helen looked at me.
I stared at the man I had married.
"Everything is about you."
Agents raided the conference center before dawn.
Hale was gone.
But the active mirror remained.
Rows of encrypted drives.
Paper files.
Financial ledgers.
Twenty-six active and completed case numbers.
Nine were marked CLOSED.
Four were marked ABANDONED.
Three were marked TRANSFERRED.
Ten were marked RESOLVED.
My case was A-17.
Status: FAILED.
Beside it was an operator code.
DRS.
Dererick.
I scrolled through the list with an agent.
Then one code stopped me.
A-18.
ACTIVE.
The target name had been deleted.
But the family contact field remained.
May you like
LINDA CARVER.
My assistant.
