Chapter 3 - WHAT DEREK WAS LOOKING FORNobody spoke for several seconds after Derek’s voice came through the laptop.
“Keep her down there until I find the papers.”
My wife’s voice pounded from behind the basement door.
“Derek!”
Three hits.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
“You have no right to be in my house!”
On-screen, Margaret stood with both hands over her mouth.
“I don’t like this.”
Derek turned toward her.
“You wanted this fixed too.”
“I didn’t agree to this.”
“You agreed the moment you called me.”
The recording crackled.
Then Derek disappeared upstairs.
My knees weakened.
Detective Chen pulled out a chair.
“Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
I wasn’t.
My daughter had been somewhere in that house.
My disabled father had been somewhere in that house.
And my wife had been locked in our basement while her mother stood outside the door.
Chen paused the video.
“We need to treat this as an active homicide investigation.”
Margaret made a choking sound from the living room.
Derek shouted, “That video proves nothing!”
Officer Barnes immediately told him to stay where he was.
I turned.
Derek was standing in the doorway.
His face had gone gray.
“You locked my wife in the basement.”
“I didn’t.”
“I just watched you.”
“My mother did.”
Margaret stared at him.
“Derek.”
He ignored her.
“And Emily was alive. You heard her. Alive. So whatever happened later—”
“You were searching my house.”
He stopped.
“For papers.”
Nothing.
“What papers?”
“That’s enough,” Margaret said.
Her voice no longer sounded offended.
It sounded frightened.
Chen stepped between us.
“Mr. Mercer, I suggest you stop talking until counsel arrives.”
Derek’s eyes stayed on mine.
“You don’t know what Emily was doing.”
“Then tell me.”
He smiled strangely.
“She wasn’t the woman you thought she was.”
I lunged.
Barnes caught me around the chest.
“Mr. Cole!”
Derek didn’t move.
That smile remained.
He wanted me angry.
Wanted me irrational.
Maybe violent.
I forced myself to step back.
“You’re right,” I said.
His expression shifted.
“I don’t know everything Emily was doing.”
I pointed toward the laptop.
“But apparently she knew enough to scare you.”
Derek said nothing.
Chen ordered Margaret and Derek separated.
Two more detectives arrived.
Our home became a crime scene again.
And for the first time, this time it actually felt like one.
Lily was taken upstairs with a child-services specialist who had come to speak with her carefully and without leading questions.
I hated letting her out of my sight.
But I hated even more the possibility that my fear might influence what she remembered.
Dad stayed beside me.
I crouched by his wheelchair.
“You knew about the camera.”
Two blinks.
“You saw them lock Emily downstairs?”
His face tightened.
One blink.
No.
“Did you hear them?”
Two.
Yes.
“Were you upstairs?”
No.
“Living room?”
Yes.
“What happened?”
His frustration was immediate.
Dad had always been a storyteller.
Before his stroke, he could turn a trip to the hardware store into twenty minutes of entertainment.
Now every trapped word made him furious.
Chen brought a letter board.
Dad could point.
Slowly.
Painfully.
He began spelling.
D-E-R-E-K.
Then:
D-E-S-K.
“Derek searched the desk?”
Yes.
Emily kept household files in a built-in desk beside the kitchen.
“What was he looking for?”
Dad spelled:
E-M-I-L-Y.
P-A-P-E-R.
“Emily’s papers?”
Yes.
Then:
B-A-N-K.
I frowned.
“Bank papers?”
Yes.
Derek managed a financial-services company with his business partner.
He handled investments for wealthy clients.
Emily had never invested with him.
At least not that I knew.
Then I remembered.
Three months earlier, Emily had asked me a strange question at dinner.
“What would you do if someone you loved stole money?”
I had assumed she was talking about one of the true-crime podcasts she listened to.
I had joked, “Depends how much.”
She didn’t laugh.
I suddenly felt sick.
Chen noticed.
“What?”
I told her.
“When?”
“Maybe June.”
“Did she mention her brother?”
“No.”
But there was more.
Two weeks later, Emily had started keeping her office locked.
She had changed her laptop password.
She had seemed distracted.
I had thought she was planning something for my birthday.
God.
How much had I missed?
The technician resumed reviewing the camera files.
Most were mundane.
Emily carrying laundry.
Dad moving through the hallway.
Lily dancing with her doll.
Me leaving for Denver three days before Emily died.
Then another clip.
The day before her death.
Emily stood directly in front of the camera.
She looked pale.
She stared into the lens.
Then spoke.
“If you’re watching this, I probably ran out of time.”
Every muscle in my body locked.
Chen turned up the volume.
Emily continued.
“I don’t know exactly what Derek is involved in. I know he used Mom’s accounts. I know Dad’s old estate was involved somehow. And I know he believes I copied records.”
My father gripped my arm.
Emily took a breath.
“Nathan doesn’t know. I didn’t tell him because he’s traveling and because Derek has been unstable.”
She looked over her shoulder.
“I’m taking the records to someone tomorrow.”
The clip ended.
That was it.
I leaned over the table.
My vision blurred.
She had been afraid.
And I had spent those same days complaining from a hotel room because Denver airport coffee was terrible.
Chen replayed one phrase.
“I know Dad’s old estate was involved somehow.”
She looked at Margaret.
“Which dad?”
Emily’s father had died four years earlier.
Thomas Mercer.
He had owned a chain of hardware stores and several commercial properties.
His estate had been substantial.
Derek had served as co-executor with Margaret.
Emily had received her inheritance.
Or so I thought.
“What happened to Thomas Mercer’s estate?” Chen asked me.
“I don’t know.”
My father suddenly tapped hard on the letter board.
T-H-O-M-A-S.
Then:
C-A-L-L-E-D.
“You?”
Yes.
“Thomas called you?”
Yes.
“When?”
Dad struggled.
Chen helped him write numbers.
4 Y-R.
Four years ago.
“Before he died?”
Yes.
“What did he say?”
Dad began spelling.
Slowly.
D-E-R-E-K.
D-E-B-T.
Then:
C-A-S-I-N-O.
I stared at him.
Derek had gambling debt.
Dad nodded.
Then:
T-H-O-M-A-S.
C-H-A-N-G-E.
W-I-L-L.
The room went silent.
“Thomas changed his will?”
Yes.
“Did Margaret know?”
Dad looked directly toward the living room where Margaret sat with another detective.
Two blinks.
Yes.
Something ugly started fitting together.
Thomas learned Derek had gambling debts.
He changed his estate plan.
Yet when Thomas died, Derek still controlled much of the estate.
“Dad, why didn’t you tell us?”
His eyes filled.
He pointed to himself.
Then made the sign we used for stroke.
Timing.
Thomas had called shortly before Dad’s stroke.
Afterward, communication became difficult.
And there was no reason to suspect anything criminal.
Until now.
Detective Chen’s phone rang.
She answered.
Listened.
Her posture changed.
“When?”
Silence.
“Secure it. I’m sending someone.”
She hung up.
“What?” I asked.
“We pulled Derek’s phone records.”
“And?”
“Three calls were made from his phone the night before Emily died to a storage facility outside Charlotte.”
“So?”
“The unit is registered to your wife.”
I stared.
“I didn’t know she had one.”
Chen continued.
“The facility manager just checked it.”
My heart hammered.
“And?”
“The lock was cut sometime within the last four days.”
Derek.
It had to be.
“Was anything inside?”
“A desk, two document boxes, some old furniture.”
“Anything else?”
“One of the boxes is empty.”
Of course.
Chen looked toward the paused image of Emily on the laptop.
“If those were the records she copied, somebody got there before us.”
Dad began tapping the board again.
Hard.
N-O.
“What?”
He spelled:
N-O-T.
O-N-L-Y.
C-O-P-Y.
I leaned closer.
“Not the only copy?”
Dad nodded.
“How do you know?”
He pointed toward Emily’s picture.
Then himself.
Then he spelled one word that stopped my heart.
M-A-I-L.
“You mailed something for her?”
Two blinks.
Yes.
“What?”
He struggled.
Then:
P-A-C-K-A-G-E.
“To who?”
His hand moved slowly.
L-A-W—
Before he finished, the front window exploded.
Glass sprayed across the living room.
Someone screamed.
Barnes shoved me down.
Another officer pulled Margaret behind a wall.
Lily cried upstairs.
Chen drew her weapon.
“Everyone down!”
Dad’s wheelchair tipped sideways as I dragged him behind the sofa.
Outside, tires screamed.
A dark SUV tore away from the curb.
Embedded in the opposite wall was a bullet.
Not random.
Not a warning.
May you like
Someone had fired directly into a house full of police officers.
And my father—the only person who knew where Emily had sent the evidence—was lying beside me with blood on his forehead.
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