Chapter 7 - THE FIRST WITNESS
Rebecca insisted we treat the ring as possible evidence rather than a message to decode by instinct.
A crime-scene technician photographed its position, collected it, and gave us a receipt.
The engraving matched the words I had placed inside Evelyn's band on our wedding day.
I knew because the jeweler had misspelled forever as foreever, and Evelyn had refused to change it.
She said imperfect things deserved to be kept.
The ring could have been stolen from the burial or copied, and I refused to tell myself a story before the evidence could support it.
But someone wanted me to believe she had survived.
Meanwhile, Leo obtained lawful access to a witness statement Chloe had tried to submit at the campus police office.
It had been entered under the wrong date and marked withdrawn.
The statement described Chad, Brantley, and Wyatt confronting her outside the marine sciences building.
Chad had demanded a copy of her research data.
Wyatt threatened to destroy her scholarship.
Brantley stood apart, repeatedly saying they should leave.
She had declined and started recording on her phone.
The recording stopped after four seconds.
Leo recovered only a fragment from the damaged device, but that fragment mattered.
Chad's voice said, "My father told you what happens if this gets out."
It established motive in a way three family publicists could not explain away.
Rebecca filed an emergency motion asking a judge to preserve university security logs and third-party cloud backups.
That evening, a state judge signed a limited preservation order.
For the first time, we had a legal instrument the families could not erase with a press statement.
Dr.
Reyes came to the hospital after visiting hours.
She carried a bag of groceries and looked as though she had been crying for days.
"I should have protected her," she whispered.
Chloe reached for the alphabet card.
NOT YOUR FAULT.
Reyes sat down beside the bed.
She told us that Professor Vale had discovered sensor data being transferred to a contractor account without university approval.
When he confronted Dean Pike, the dean threatened to close his lab.
Reyes had urged Chloe to withdraw from the project.
Chloe refused because she believed false sensor readings could endanger ships near a busy commercial port.
"She wasn't trying to expose a conspiracy," Reyes said.
"She was trying to correct a dataset."
That simplicity made the assault even harder to forgive.
We asked Reyes whether she recognized the photograph of Evelyn.
She stared at it, then covered her mouth.
"That isn't Evelyn," she said.
"That's Dr.
Eleanor Hale."
I knew the name.
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Eleanor Hale was listed as dead on Vanguard's 2007 extraction roster.
