Chapter 3 - THE CALL BEFORE THE NEWS
Christmas morning arrived without sunrise.
The storm left a low gray ceiling over Colorado, and the city seemed to wake beneath it one emergency siren at a time.
By 6:30 a.m., I had slept exactly thirty-eight minutes in a chair beside a vending machine.
Alvarez woke me by placing a bottle of water on my knee.
“You are drooling on government property.”
“I’ll reimburse the chair.”
“You also have seventeen missed calls.”
“Only seventeen?”
“You are losing popularity.”
I stood, stretched the stiffness from my back, and checked my phone.
Six calls were from Dad.
Four were from Jason.
Two were from numbers I did not recognize.
One was from my stepmother, Linda.
The remaining four belonged to reporters.
Jason had also sent three text messages.
CALL ME.
Then: THIS IS SERIOUS.
Then, ten minutes later: ERICA IS LYING TO YOU.
I showed the messages to Detective Park.
She photographed the screen and asked me not to delete anything.
“You think he knew her bus route because he was tracking her?” I asked.
“I think we have a question, not an answer.”
“Fair.”
“Do you know whether your brother had access to her personal information?”
“Ask her.”
Erica was awake when we returned.
She looked worse after a few hours of rest, not better.
Bruising had darkened across her ribs, and the doctors had confirmed a small fracture in her wrist.
Park asked about company devices.
Erica nodded immediately.
“When Ridgeway fired me, they took my work laptop and phone.”
“Personal phone?”
“I kept mine.”
“Did you ever install company software on it?”
Erica’s expression shifted.
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“Email security, authentication, mobile document access.”
“Device management?”
“Probably.”
Park wrote something down.
“Did Ridgeway remove it when you left?”
“They told me they did.”
That answer hung in the room.
I looked at Erica.
“Could they still see your location?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could Jason?”
“I don’t know.”
Park did not speculate.
She simply said they would examine the broken phone if Erica consented.
Erica did.
At 7:12 a.m., a trooper called from the crash scene.
The tanker remained too unstable to enter safely.
Walt’s hospital belongings had been secured.
There was no silver USB drive in the bag.
Erica closed her eyes when she heard that.
“He had it.”
“You are sure?” I asked.
“I watched him put the envelope inside his jacket.”
“What kind of jacket?”
“Brown canvas, heavy lining, bright orange reflective strip across the back.”
I remembered Walt in the cab.
I remembered cutting through part of his coat because the fabric had snagged beneath the crushed seat frame.
I remembered paramedics removing layers as they worked on him in the snow.
I looked at Alvarez.
“The jacket may still be at the scene.”
Captain Ellis arranged access as soon as hazardous-materials crews declared a limited section safe.
By 9:00 a.m., I was standing again near mile marker 214.
Daylight made the wreckage look worse.
The charter bus lay against the median like a discarded toy.
Broken glass glittered across the snow.
The tanker had been stabilized with heavy recovery equipment, but half the road remained closed.
Yellow evidence flags marked debris fields on both sides of the highway.
I stayed where investigators told me to stay.
This was not my scene anymore.
My role had ended when the last casualty left in an ambulance.
Still, I could not stop seeing the night before layered over the morning.
The little boy gripping my sleeve.
Walt fading in the cab.
The wind moving the tanker beneath us.
Park walked over carrying a clear evidence bag.
Inside was a torn piece of brown canvas.
“Part of the driver’s coat.”
“Any envelope?”
“Not yet.”
We followed the debris path toward the shoulder.
A search team worked in a slow line through the snow.
Every few feet, someone stopped to examine metal, plastic, clothing, or personal property.
Twenty minutes passed.
Then a trooper raised one hand.
“Detective.”
Park moved toward him.
He was kneeling beside a snowbank several yards below the road.
Half buried beneath wind-packed snow was a white paper envelope.
My pulse kicked.
Park stopped me before I got closer.
“Let them photograph it.”
I did.
The envelope was damp, torn along one edge, and stained with road grit.
When the technician finally lifted it, there was nothing inside.
No USB drive.
But there was writing on the front.
Not a phone number.
An address.
My father’s address.
I stared at it.
“That is Dad’s house.”
Park looked at me sharply.
“Are you certain?”
“I grew up there.”
Below the address, Erica had written one line in block letters.
IF I DON’T GET THERE, TELL RICHARD DONOVAN TO READ HIS EMAIL.
Park photographed the envelope again.
I felt something hot and ugly rise behind my ribs.
Erica had not merely planned to confront Jason.
She had planned to put the truth in front of Dad.
And Dad had asked me not to come home.
A search continued for the drive.
Nothing.
At 9:43 a.m., Linda called me again.
This time I answered.
“Claire?”
My stepmother sounded as if she had been crying.
“What is it?”
“Your father is losing his mind.”
“That is not an emergency.”
“Please don’t be like that.”
“I’ve been awake all night pulling people out of a wreck.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
“Then say what you called to say.”
Linda took a breath.
“Jason says that woman is trying to frame him.”
“Did Jason tell you that before or after he called emergency dispatch looking for her?”
Silence.
“What?”
“He knew Erica was on the bus before the news showed her.”
“That can’t be right.”
“It is.”
“I’m sure there is an explanation.”
I looked at the envelope in the evidence technician’s hands.
“Of course you are.”
“Claire, please.”
“Did Erica email Dad?”
Linda did not answer.
There was no reason for my heart to start pounding, but it did.
“Linda.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“The truth would be new.”
Her voice dropped.
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
“You saw the emails?”
“I saw one.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
“What did it say?”
“That she wanted to come to the house and talk about Jason.”
“What did Dad do?”
“He never saw it.”
I opened my eyes.
“What?”
Linda started crying harder.
“I deleted it.”
The cold around me seemed to disappear.
“Why?”
“Because Jason told us she was unstable.”
“So you deleted an email addressed to my father.”
“I was trying to protect Christmas.”
The phrase was so absurd that I almost missed what came next.
“I told Jason she had contacted us.”
Every piece shifted at once.
“When?”
“The same day.”
“You told Jason that Erica planned to come to the house Christmas Eve.”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me not to worry about it.”
“What exactly did he say?”
Linda sniffed.
“He said he would handle her.”
I looked at Detective Park.
She could not hear Linda, but she could see my face.
“Linda, did Dad know you deleted the email?”
“No.”
“Did he know Erica planned to come?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you tell him afterward?”
“No.”
I wanted to believe her.
I wanted one person in that house to have been merely foolish instead of dishonest.
Then Linda said, “Claire, there is something else.”
I waited.
“Jason came over the next morning.”
“Why?”
“He said he needed to use your father’s office printer.”
“And?”
“I found one page in the tray after he left.”
“What page?”
“I didn’t understand it.”
“Linda.”
“It looked like a passenger itinerary.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“Whose name was on it?”
May you like
She began to cry again.
“Erica Bennett.”
