Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Died Twice
Agent Ortiz took me to a conference room far enough from the ICU that Richard couldn't listen through the wall.
I refused the chair nearest the door.
Standing made me feel less helpless.
“First,” I said, “tell me whether that syringe could have killed Emily.”
“Hospital staff are testing it.”
“Then tell me what you do know.”
Ortiz unfolded a timeline.
Sixteen years earlier, a vehicle carrying Margaret Whitmore had gone off a bridge during a storm.
Police recovered a burned sedan, personal jewelry, and a body identified through compromised dental records.
Richard collected a substantial insurance payment.
His children held a funeral.
His daughter Emily, then seventeen, was told never to discuss her mother's last night alive.
“Why would a woman fake her death?” I asked.
“Money, coercion, leverage, self-preservation,” Ortiz said.
“Sometimes all four.”
“Was she involved in the crash that killed Owen Mercer?”
“That happened five months ago.”
“Then how did Emily recognize her?”
Ortiz pointed to the photograph.
“That's what we're trying to establish.”
The image showed a crowded company demonstration lot.
Owen stood near his father, Aaron Mercer, wearing a yellow raincoat.
Far behind them, a woman in sunglasses climbed from a black SUV.
A silver bracelet glinted at her wrist.
I had spent years learning not to mistake an association for proof.
A bracelet wasn't identification.
A frightened glance wasn't confession.
But Emily's handwriting was another matter.
My wife never wrote a dramatic accusation without documenting why.
“She kept records,” I said.
“Of everything.”
Ortiz looked at me sharply.
“Where?”
I thought of the battered blue recipe binder in our kitchen, the one Emily said contained recipes nobody should be allowed to cook.
I thought of the weekly grocery spreadsheets, carefully labeled by month.
And I thought of the last message she'd sent me.
The lemon tree is still alive, somehow.
At the time, I'd replied with a photograph of the desert and a joke about my terrible gardening.
Now the sentence sat in my mind like a key.
“Possibly at home,” I said.
“Then we need to secure your house.”
“Before her family does.”
Ortiz glanced at her watch.
“They may already have tried.”
She showed me a still image from a traffic camera.
At 11:42 p.m., a company-owned SUV had stopped outside our driveway.
I recognized the vehicle.
It belonged to Brandon.
“Your residence alarm was disarmed using your wife's personal code,” Ortiz said.
“Did Brandon have that code?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
I remembered the day Emily replaced the keypad.
She'd asked me to choose a code she'd never forget.
We'd used the date of our courthouse wedding.
Only the two of us knew it.
I looked at Ortiz.
“Someone got it from her.”
We returned to the ICU as the attending physician emerged.
His expression was less guarded than before.
“The syringe contained a sedative concentration that did not match an active order,” he said.
“Would it have harmed her?”
“Given her current condition, it could have caused serious complications.”
I gripped the back of a chair until its legs scraped against the floor.
Ortiz's phone vibrated.
She read the message and looked toward Margaret, still waiting with her attorney near hospital security.
“The court has confirmed the petition was filed,” she said.
“But the supposed emergency order attached to the hospital fax is forged.”
Margaret's attorney began protesting from the far end of the corridor.
Ortiz ignored him.
“We've also confirmed a more disturbing detail.”
She turned her phone toward me.
On its screen was a scan of the guardianship petition.
It claimed I had threatened Emily during a recorded telephone conversation.
It included my military identification number.
My deployment location.
And an electronic signature that looked exactly like mine.
“Who could access my military records?” I asked.
Ortiz looked grim.
“That is precisely what worries us.”
A soft sound interrupted us.
A nurse called my name from behind the ICU door.
I rushed inside.
Emily's eyes were open a fraction.
Her lips moved.
I bent close enough to hear her breath.
“Don't trust...”
She struggled for air.
“Don't trust who, Em?”
Her fingers moved against my palm.
She whispered a name.
Not Richard.
Not Margaret.
“Daniel.”
Then her eyes closed again.
I'd never met anyone named Daniel who had a reason to frighten my wife.
But Ortiz knew the name immediately.
May you like
She went white.
