Chapter 6 - What Thomas Saw
The videotape was gone.
But the case changed the investigation.
Until that moment, detectives had suspicions.
They had fragments.
Old reports.
A dead child.
A missing sister.
A father killed in a suspicious crash.
Now they had proof that Thomas Grant believed he had recorded Evelyn on the night Emily died.
Whether the tape still existed was another question.
Whether Sarah still had it was the question terrifying everyone.
Diane Foster survived surgery.
She refused to speak.
Not because she couldn’t.
Because she wouldn’t.
Detective Collins questioned her at 9:15 the next morning.
Diane asked for an attorney before Collins finished introducing herself.
At 10:02, an attorney arrived.
Philip Crane.
Taylor’s divorce lawyer.
When Collins told me, I thought I had misunderstood.
“Crane is representing Diane?”
“Yes.”
“The same man supposedly representing Taylor?”
“Yes.”
“And he thinks that’s normal?”
“He says Taylor terminated their attorney-client relationship this morning by email.”
Taylor stared at Collins.
“I didn’t send anything.”
“We know.”
“Then who did?”
“We’re working on it.”
Everything led back to someone accessing Taylor’s accounts.
Someone had filed documents in her name.
Sent messages in her name.
Controlled the story in her name.
Evelyn was obvious.
But Sarah’s warning kept echoing.
The person Mom is working for.
There was someone else.
Someone we had not seen yet.
Someone powerful enough to make Diane afraid.
Taylor was released from the hospital that afternoon.
A judge approved a temporary protective order.
She was not allowed to return to the house.
Neither was I.
The house remained an active crime scene.
Lily was discharged to me.
When the nurse removed her hospital bracelet, Lily asked one question.
“Are we going home?”
I hesitated.
“My apartment.”
She looked disappointed.
“My unicorn blanket is at Mommy’s.”
“We’ll get you another.”
“I want that one.”
“We’ll get it when police say we can.”
She nodded.
Then she asked,
“Is Mommy coming?”
Taylor stood a few feet away.
For the first time since the divorce, the three of us occupied the same room without anger.
Taylor looked at me.
I looked at Lily.
“You want her to?”
Lily nodded.
I knew the legal problems.
The investigation.
The lies.
The years of Evelyn’s influence.
I also knew Lily had nearly died believing she was being punished for being bad.
She needed safety more than she needed adults protecting their pride.
“Yes.”
I looked at Taylor.
“Mommy can come.”
Taylor cried quietly.
That evening, the three of us entered my two-bedroom apartment.
It was nothing like the house.
No finished basement.
No mountain view.
No three-car garage.
No walk-in pantry.
Just fourteen hundred square feet above a dental office.
Lily walked inside and looked around.
“Grandma doesn’t have a key?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Can we lock the door?”
I locked it in front of her.
She checked it herself.
Then she smiled.
That smile hurt more than tears.
Taylor slept on the couch.
Lily slept in my bed.
I slept in a chair beside the door.
At 2:13 in the morning, I woke to find Taylor standing in the kitchen.
She was holding a glass of water.
“Can’t sleep?”
I asked.
She shook her head.
“Neither can I.”
For a while, we said nothing.
Then Taylor whispered,
“I thought divorcing you would protect you.”
I leaned against the counter.
“It nearly destroyed us.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She convinced me you would fight her.”
“I would have.”
“That’s why.”
I stared at her.
“She said if you fought, she’d destroy your career.”
“She had photos.”
“What photos?”
“Nothing real.”
“Things she could twist.”
“You drinking at a company party.”
“You arguing with a contractor.”
“That time you punched the garage wall.”
I remembered.
Three years earlier.
After learning my mother had cancer.
I hit the wall once.
Stupid.
Private.
Evelyn had photographed the dent.
“She kept everything.”
Taylor continued.
“She said she could make you look violent.”
“She nearly did.”
“I know.”
“And when that didn’t scare me enough, she started threatening Lily.”
“Why didn’t you go to police?”
Taylor looked at me.
“My uncle was police.”
Her answer was simple.
Devastating.
“I grew up believing police reports were whatever Gordon said they were.”
“He taught me that evidence could disappear.”
“That witnesses could change their minds.”
“That truth was just paperwork written by whoever got there first.”
I had no response.
Taylor leaned against the opposite counter.
“When you told me Mom was controlling, I hated you.”
“Because part of me knew you were right.”
“Then why defend her?”
“Because admitting you were right meant admitting my entire childhood was wrong.”
That was the first time I understood Taylor’s loyalty to Evelyn.
It was not love.
It was architecture.
Evelyn had built the walls of Taylor’s reality before Taylor was old enough to question them.
Breaking those walls meant risking everything outside them too.
At 6:30 the next morning, Collins arrived with coffee.
She looked like she had not slept.
“We found something on Gordon’s computer.”
“What?”
“A scanned letter from Thomas.”
Taylor sat up.
“To Gordon?”
“Yes.”
“Dated two days before Thomas died.”
Collins opened her tablet.
“I won’t read the entire thing.”
“But the important part says Thomas knew Gordon had helped Evelyn hide Sarah.”
Taylor covered her mouth.
“Did Dad know where she was?”
“Eventually.”
“According to this, yes.”
“Why didn’t he bring her home?”
“Because he believed Evelyn would kill her.”
Taylor looked devastated.
“What else?”
“Thomas wrote that he had made copies.”
“Copies of what?”
“The videotape.”
My pulse quickened.
“How many?”
“Three.”
Taylor looked at Collins.
“Where?”
“The letter doesn’t say.”
“One was apparently given to Sarah.”
“One was sent to someone Thomas trusted.”
“And one was hidden.”
“Who did he trust?”
“We’re investigating.”
“Could the hidden one be behind the furnace?”
“Possibly.”
“But Evelyn took it.”
“Possibly.”
I hated that word more every day.
“What about the third copy?”
Collins gave me a strange look.
“That’s where things become interesting.”
She placed another document on the table.
A bank receipt.
Thomas had rented a safe-deposit box at First Mountain Bank.
Two days before his death.
“Is the bank still open?”
“Yes.”
“Does the box still exist?”
“No.”
My hope disappeared.
“It was closed?”
“Six years ago.”
“By who?”
“Someone with a notarized power of attorney.”
I already knew.
“Diane.”
Collins nodded.
“The document bears Thomas’s signature.”
“Fake?”
“Almost certainly.”
“Who received the contents?”
“The bank only recorded that the authorized representative collected them.”
“Any camera?”
“Six years ago.”
“Archived footage is long gone.”
Taylor looked toward the window.
“My mother.”
“Probably.”
“Then she has the copy.”
“Maybe.”
Collins leaned forward.
“But why would Evelyn spend years hunting Sarah for her copy if she already had one?”
That was a very good question.
I thought of the empty videotape case.
The files behind the furnace.
Evelyn’s obsession with Sarah.
“Maybe Thomas hid something different in the bank box.”
Collins nodded.
“That’s what I think.”
“What?”
“We don’t know.”
My phone buzzed.
A message from Andrea.
Judge granted full temporary custody pending investigation.
I should have felt relief.
Instead, I felt exhausted.
Then Collins’s phone rang.
She listened for several seconds.
“Where?”
Her expression sharpened.
“When?”
She stood.
“Send me the image.”
She ended the call.
“What happened?”
Taylor asked.
“Sarah used an ATM card.”
“Where?”
“Denver.”
My heart jumped.
“She’s alive?”
“At least she was forty minutes ago.”
“Did a camera get her?”
“Yes.”
Collins opened the image.
A woman stood at an ATM wearing a baseball cap and dark coat.
Her face resembled Taylor enough that I knew immediately.
Older.
Sharper.
But unmistakably related.
Taylor stared.
“Sarah.”
Then Collins zoomed out.
Someone stood behind Sarah.
A man.
Tall.
Gray coat.
His face partly turned from the camera.
I didn’t know him.
Taylor did.
Her entire body stiffened.
“No.”
“What?”
Collins asked.
Taylor pointed.
“That man.”
“Who is he?”
Taylor’s voice dropped.
“That’s Dr. Adrian Vale.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Collins frowned.
“Should I know him?”
“He was my childhood therapist.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“After Emily died.”
Taylor looked terrified.
“My mother took me to him for almost four years.”
“What does he have to do with Sarah?”
“I don’t know.”
Collins enlarged the image.
The man’s hand rested on Sarah’s shoulder.
Not violently.
Almost protectively.
Taylor whispered,
“He told everyone I had false memories.”
“What false memories?”
“The lake.”
“The freezer.”
“My mother hurting us.”
She turned to me.
“He was the reason no one believed me when I tried to tell a teacher.”
The room fell silent.
Sarah had warned us Evelyn was working for someone.
Maybe she had it backward.
Maybe Evelyn had been working with Dr. Vale all along.
Collins’s phone rang again.
She answered.
Her eyes locked on Taylor.
“What?”
She put the call on speaker.
A digital forensics technician spoke.
“We recovered a deleted email from Gordon Foster’s laptop.”
“Sender?”
“Adrian Vale.”
“Date?”
“Four days ago.”
“What does it say?”
The technician hesitated.
“Only one line.”
Collins looked at Taylor.
“Read it.”
The technician did.
Evelyn has lost control of the Mercer child.
Proceed with the original protocol.
Lily walked into the kitchen behind us.
She was holding her stuffed bear.
“What’s a protocol?”
No one answered.
Then she looked at the photograph of Dr. Vale on Collins’s tablet.
Her face changed.
The bear fell from her hands.
“Daddy.”
I turned.
“What?”
May you like
She pointed at Adrian Vale.
“That’s the man from Grandma’s basement.”
