Chapter 4 - The Man Beside the Road
Nobody spoke.
Ana put the phone on speaker.
“Who is this?”
The man laughed softly.
“Mark should have destroyed Abigail's box when he had the chance.”
Ruiz signaled for another officer to trace the call.
I stepped closer.
“You said I should remember you.”
“You were eight.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who are you?”
“You called me Uncle Robert.”
A memory surfaced.
A tall man at Christmas.
Silver cuff links.
My mother's friend.
Then nothing.
“Robert Vale?”
“Richard was my brother.”
Ruiz's eyes sharpened.
“Where are you?”
“You don't need me, Detective. You need what Richard left.”
“What did he leave?”
“Proof.”
The line disconnected.
The trace failed.
But Robert called again two hours later.
This time he gave us a location.
A storage facility outside Oakland.
Ruiz insisted on going first.
Inside unit 206, police found boxes belonging to Richard Vale.
Financial records.
Photographs.
Old tapes.
And a damaged laptop.
One photograph showed my mother meeting Richard at a diner three days before her death.
Another showed Mark and Dr. Keller outside a warehouse.
Then I found the photograph Grandma had described.
My father's car.
Timestamped 11:41 PM.
Eleven minutes before my mother's estimated crash.
The location was less than four miles away.
It wasn't proof of murder.
But it proved he had lied.
Then Ruiz found something worse.
A handwritten statement from Richard.
Emily Darcy called me at 11:36.
She said Mark was following her.
At 11:48, I heard the collision through the phone.
I arrived approximately seven minutes later.
Mark was already there.
He told me to forget what I saw.
I didn't.
I sat on the concrete floor.
My mother hadn't simply driven into darkness alone.
She had been afraid.
She had called someone.
My father had followed her.
“Why didn't Richard go to police?”
Ruiz kept reading.
Then she found the answer.
Mark threatened Richard's family.
Richard had also participated in the financial scheme.
Reporting Mark meant exposing himself.
Cowardice and guilt had kept him silent.
Until Grandma found him.
The next morning, Mark was arrested again.
This time not only for what he'd done to me.
Investigators reopened my mother's case.
Yasmin hired her own lawyer.
Gillian suddenly claimed she had been manipulated by her father.
I didn't care.
I wanted the truth.
Three days later, Ana and I met Ruiz.
“We searched Mark's office,” she said.
“And?”
“We found forged psychiatric documents relating to you.”
Dr. Keller had signed them.
Rachel's evidence matched.
“Will he be charged?”
“We're working on it.”
“And my mother's case?”
Ruiz hesitated.
“There's a problem.”
“What?”
“The collision report says another vehicle left paint transfer on your mother's car.”
“So?”
“The sample was supposedly destroyed years ago.”
“Supposedly?”
Ruiz slid a report toward me.
“Richard preserved another sample.”
My heart accelerated.
“We had it tested.”
“Against my father's car?”
“No.”
I stared at her.
“It doesn't match.”
“Then Mark wasn't the car that hit her?”
“We don't know that anyone deliberately hit her. But the paint came from a different vehicle.”
“Whose?”
“We're investigating.”
Ana looked at the ledger.
“R.V. paid Mark eighty-five thousand dollars before Emily died.”
Ruiz nodded.
“But Richard's records suggest he wasn't paying Mark.”
“What do you mean?”
“The ledger may have been interpreted backward.”
The payment could have been Mark paying Richard.
Or both men moving money for someone else.
Someone above them.
I thought about Yasmin.
She married Mark three years after my mother's death.
Too late.
Dr. Keller?
Possible.
Then Ruiz placed a photograph on the table.
A charity gala.
Twenty-two years ago.
My mother.
Mark.
Richard.
Dr. Keller.
And another woman.
Grandma.
Beside her stood a man I recognized from childhood photographs.
Charles Brennan.
Ana's late husband.
I looked at her.
“Ana?”
She had gone pale.
“I didn't know.”
“You knew all of them?”
“Charles handled some of Abigail's early business.”
“Was he involved?”
“No.”
But her voice lacked certainty.
For the first time, I wondered how far Grandma's secrets went.
That evening, I returned to Ana's house.
I couldn't sleep.
At midnight, I opened Grandma's letter again.
Something bothered me.
Trust Ana.
Why explicitly write that?
Unless Grandma knew I might discover something that made me doubt her.
I checked the envelope.
There was a faint impression beneath the paper.
Something had once been written on the sheet above it.
I shaded the indentation with a pencil.
Letters appeared.
C.B.
DO NOT TELL ANA UNTIL YOU KNOW.
My blood went cold.
I heard footsteps outside my bedroom.
Ana?
I folded the paper.
The door opened.
Rachel Keller stood there.
Her face was white.
“Alana, get dressed.”
“Why?”
“My husband just called.”
“Stephen?”
She nodded.
“He wants immunity.”
“For what?”
Rachel swallowed.
“He knows who was driving the second car the night your mother died.”
I grabbed my coat.
“Who?”
Rachel looked toward the hallway.
“He refused to say over the phone.”
Then the lights in Ana's house went out.
May you like
A car engine started outside.
And someone screamed Ana's name from downstairs.
