Rowan shrugs. “If he was, he didn’t make a move.”
I say nothing about the camera still hidden beneath a bike seat at the Ridgeway Shopping Center. I can’t retrieve it until we finish here and I know the area is clear. Wade could be waiting for me to return and sort out where he must have been parked when he snapped that photo of our guys.
I feel the burner phone weighing down my jacket, and I come so damned close to telling them everything. About finding it in my dining room and about the photo from the Ridgeway and the video of Mitch, and before that, the photo of me asleep on the sofa and the reference to our case from last year. Baby Doe. The case he could only know about by accessing my online materials. Now he is studying them. Learning from them.
Aaron says something likeput it behind youand asks us to go over everything we have and don’t have in the search for the 404. He wants us to come up with a new way forward, look for stones we haven’t overturned. “I don’t like that we’re still waiting around for him to make his next move. We have to get out in front. Stop playing defense.”
We both agree and retreat to a conference room.
“Coffee?” Rowan asks me before sitting at the table where we’ve laid out the file.
“Sure.”
I don’t need coffee, but I’ll take the chance to be alone.
Running side by side with the urge to drive back to the Ridgeway and collect that camera are new emotions that have my heart exploding. I don’t even know what to call them.
I take out the burner phone and watch the video of my husband and his mistress again. I study it, looking for anything that might tell me when it was taken. I have nothing to go on except Mitch’s beard, and the leaves that are starting to turn. But they’ve been turning for at least two weeks. Soon, they’ll begin to fall.
I put that phone away and take out the other one. The real one that’s being monitored. I call Mitch at his worksite. I’ve already texted him that the meetup was a bust and confirmed I would pick up the girls from school. I read his messages back about how he’s relieved I’m safe and he loves me. I texted back the same.I love you too.
But now I need to hear his voice.
“Hey, what’s going on?” he asks, sounding worried.
“Nothing. Just had a break,” I tell him. But the truth is that I need to hear the sound of his voice—or, more precisely, how his voice sounds when he has a secret.
He sighs and whispers, “Maybe I should get the girls. You must be spent.”
“I’m okay. How’s the job? Did the marble get there?”
He pauses now because I don’t always remember the things he tells me about his work. Invariably, it involves people and materials not being where they should be when they should be. Subcontractors. Wood. In this case, marble tiles for the foyer.
“Yeah. Finally. Set us back four days.”
My face flushes and tears start to pool, but I fight it, hard. This was how things played out four years ago. I didn’t tell him I knew. I waited. I drew from him moments just like this one where we spoke of ordinary things in ordinary voices. I tried to memorize how he sounded, his tone, and his words. Was he being too kind, too interested? Was he overcompensating to hide? I wanted a benchmark like we take with a polygraph, asking benign questions we know the answers to. We measure heart rate and pulse and sweat when the witness is telling the truth. Four years ago, in those few days when I kept the truth to myself, I collected benchmarks for how my husband sounded when he was cheating.
It’s not the kind of thing you can write down, and I find that I can’t remember. As he speaks to me now, after he’s seen this woman again—Briana—I don’t know if it’s how he sounded four years ago because he sounds like my husband, and then I think maybe he’s just that good a liar. Some people are. Especially when they feel justified.
Rowan comes back soon after I’ve ended the call.
“What?” he asks me. I’m not as good at hiding, and he sees the distress on my face.
“It’s just...”
“I know,” he says. “This was a tough break. But we’re gonna get him, Elise. I promise you that.”
I nod, take the coffee he’s brought me from the kitchen. It’s stale and bitter, but I drink it anyway.
The loneliness has returned. I don’t think it’s ever been this deep. When I learned about Briana the first time, I turned to Rowan. When work had been hard, frustrating, I turned to Mitch. When I need more than they can give, there are friends and my brother, and my girls, of course. That love has guided me through the darkest nights.
Now I keep secrets from all of them, hiding behind another invisible wall.
Rowan sits across from me. He takes a long sip of coffee then makes a face. “Fuck, that’s bad.”
I manage a smile. “Yeah. Seems to be the theme of the day.”
He lays his palms flat on the table. “Okay. I’m just saying it. That was a shit idea from the start.”
