Chapter 7 - THE WINDOW
I called my mother before Ortiz finished reading the message.
"Take Leo upstairs."
"Sarah, what happened?"
"Do it now."
My voice must have frightened her because she stopped asking questions.
"Lock every door."
"Close every curtain."
"Police are coming."
Ortiz was already dispatching officers.
David, who was still at my mother's house, checked the backyard.
He saw no one.
A patrol car arrived in four minutes.
Another followed from the opposite direction.
They searched the block.
No suspicious person.
No parked black SUV.
No silver sedan.
Whoever took the photograph had already left.
I drove there with Ortiz behind me.
My hands shook so badly I had to grip the steering wheel with both hands.
The threat was not subtle.
You have Leo right now.
Keep it that way by staying quiet.
It suggested two things.
First, whoever sent it knew about the temporary safety plan.
Second, they believed Leo could be used against me.
When I reached the house, he was sitting on the upstairs hallway floor with David.
His bear was in his lap.
He looked up at me.
"Is Dad coming?"
I sat beside him.
"Not right now."
"Did he do something?"
I remembered Claire's warning.
Do not question him.
Do not put ideas in his head.
"Someone sent me a scary message."
"The police are checking it."
Leo stared at the bear.
"Dad sends scary messages."
Every adult in the hallway went silent.
I did not ask what he meant.
Ortiz did.
But gently.
"Leo, when you say scary messages, do you mean messages to you?"
Leo shook his head.
"To Mom."
"Did you see them?"
"Sometimes."
"Okay."
Ortiz did not continue.
"A special interviewer is going to talk with you later, and you can tell them anything you remember."
Leo nodded.
Then he looked at me.
"Can I have cereal?"
The ordinary question nearly destroyed me.
"Of course."
While my mother made him cereal, police photographed the exterior of the house and checked neighboring cameras.
Mrs. Palmer's doorbell camera caught a silver sedan stopping across the street for less than a minute.
The driver never got out.
The plate was partially visible.
Enough for police to narrow the possibilities.
The car was registered to Ruth Hale.
My mother stared at the screen.
"She was outside my house?"
Ortiz nodded.
"The registration matches."
"Maybe Marcus borrowed it."
"Maybe."
I remembered seeing a silver sedan pass Ruth's house while Ortiz interviewed her.
"Detective."
I told him about it.
He wrote everything down.
"Could you see the driver?"
"A woman."
"Age?"
"I couldn't tell."
"Hair?"
"Dark."
Ruth's hair was silver.
Natalie had dark hair.
So did thousands of women in western North Carolina.
Still, something was wrong.
Ortiz called Ruth.
No answer.
An officer went to her house.
Her car was gone.
So was she.
At four that afternoon, Leo met with a forensic child interviewer at a children's advocacy center.
I waited in another room.
I was not allowed to watch live.
Neither was Marcus.
His attorney objected to the interview, but because of the active child-welfare inquiry and the reopened death investigation, it proceeded.
The wait was unbearable.
I imagined every possible thing Leo might say.
I also feared the opposite.
What if he remembered nothing useful?
What if grief had scrambled his memory?
What if Marcus had been right about one thing and we were building a nightmare from Rachel's fear?
Then I remembered the forged loans.
The threatening messages.
The loosened railing.
The pills.
The payments to Crane.
No.
Whatever happened on the staircase, Rachel's fear had been real.
The interview lasted seventy-three minutes.
When it ended, Leo came out holding a small juice box.
He climbed into my lap without speaking.
I held him.
Ortiz spoke privately with the interviewer.
Then he asked me to step into the hall.
"He did well."
"What did he say?"
"I can't give you every detail yet."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want you accidentally influencing future statements."
I clenched my jaw.
"Give me something."
Ortiz hesitated.
"Leo heard an argument Monday night."
My chest tightened.
"He says Rachel told him to go to his room and put on headphones."
"He did."
"But one side stopped working."
I closed my eyes.
"So he heard them."
"Parts of it."
"What parts?"
"Marcus told Rachel she was not leaving."
"Rachel said something about police."
"Then Leo heard a glass break."
"After that he heard footsteps on the stairs."
I felt my knees weaken.
"And the fall?"
Ortiz looked at me carefully.
"He heard a crash."
"He did not see Rachel fall."
I exhaled slowly.
"Did he see anything after?"
"Yes."
"What?"
Ortiz's eyes hardened.
"He came out of his room before Marcus called emergency services."
"He saw Rachel at the bottom of the stairs."
I swallowed.
"And?"
"He saw Ruth standing in the hallway."
My heart stopped.
"Ruth was there?"
"According to Leo."
"Marcus told police he was alone with Rachel and Leo."
"I know."
"Did Ruth touch Rachel?"
"Leo said she was holding a blue garment bag."
The navy dress.
I leaned against the wall.
The image assembled itself in pieces.
Rachel falls.
Ruth is present.
Ruth has a garment bag containing the dress that will later hold the hidden phone.
Marcus delays calling emergency services for forty-one minutes after Rachel's last recording begins.
Then Crane receives twenty-eight thousand dollars the next morning.
"Why would Ruth bring the burial dress before Rachel was even pronounced dead?"
Ortiz said nothing.
He did not need to.
If Leo's memory was accurate, Ruth had arrived prepared for a death.
That fact was monstrous.
But it created another problem.
How had Rachel's phone ended up inside the dress if Rachel had been upstairs recording on it shortly before her death?
Someone had moved it after she fell.
Someone who knew Rachel wanted Sarah to find it.
Was that Ruth?
Had Ruth betrayed Marcus?
Or had Rachel given instructions to someone else?
My phone rang.
Claire.
"Marcus filed an emergency custody petition."
The world tilted again.
"What?"
"He is asking a judge to order Leo returned to him immediately."
"On what grounds?"
Claire paused.
"He claims you manipulated Rachel before her death and are now coaching Leo to accuse him."
I laughed in disbelief.
"That's insane."
"There is more."
"What?"
"He attached screenshots of messages that appear to come from your phone."
"What messages?"
Claire read one aloud.
I HAVE BEEN WAITING YEARS FOR RACHEL TO LEAVE HIM.
Another.
IF SHE DOESN'T GET OUT, I WILL GET LEO OUT MYSELF.
Another.
MARCUS WILL LOSE EVERYTHING WHEN I'M DONE.
I gripped the wall.
"I never sent those."
"I believe you."
"But they look real enough to require an answer."
I thought of my garage.
The spare key.
The possibility Marcus had access to my house.
Then I remembered something worse.
Three weeks earlier, my laptop had disappeared for an afternoon.
I had blamed myself for leaving it at the office.
It reappeared on my desk the next morning.
At the time, I thought a coworker had moved it.
Now I was not sure.
Claire continued.
"The hearing is tomorrow morning."
"Marcus wants temporary sole custody."
"And Sarah, there is one attachment you need to see before we walk into court."
"What is it?"
"A photograph taken inside your house."
"It shows Rachel asleep on your couch."
"There is an open bottle of vodka beside her."
I stopped breathing.
Rachel did not drink vodka.
I did not own vodka.
And I knew exactly when the picture had been taken.
May you like
It was from the afternoon Rachel hid the wineglass in my garage.
