Chapter 9: Tatum's Truth
She was already in the conference room when Richard and I arrived at his office.
She was sitting very straight, both hands around a paper cup of coffee she hadn't drunk, and she looked younger than twenty-four.
She looked like someone who had spent the night deciding something and wasn't sure yet if she'd decided right.
Carol sat in the corner with a notepad.
A small recorder was on the table, its red light on.
"You agreed to this being recorded," Richard said as we sat down.
"Yes," Tatum said.
I looked at her.
She met my eyes for a moment, then looked at the table.
"Start from the beginning," Richard said.
Tatum set down the coffee cup.
"I met Walter eight months ago.
He told me he was a property developer.
He said he had a deal coming together — a big one — and once it closed, everything would be different." She paused.
"I didn't know what the deal was.
Not at first."
"When did you find out?" Richard asked.
"About two months in.
He told me his daughter had married well and the husband had a lot tied up in property and accounts, and that when the husband was gone, the daughter would need help managing it." She stopped.
"He said *when the husband was gone*.
I thought he just meant — I thought he meant eventually.
Naturally." Her voice dropped.
"I told myself that's what he meant."
The room was quiet.
"And the document?" Richard said.
"The promissory note."
Tatum wrapped both hands around the cup again.
"Three days after the funeral.
Walter typed it up himself on his laptop.
He had a sample of Owen's signature — from a birthday card, I think, or a letter, something he'd kept.
He practiced it." She looked up at me directly for the first time.
"I watched him practice it.
I didn't stop him.
I didn't say anything.
I just — I stood there."
"You were present when he signed the document himself, using the forged signature?" Richard asked.
"Yes."
"And you're willing to state that in a formal declaration?"
"Yes." She looked back at the table.
"I know that doesn't fix anything.
I know what I did — what I didn't do.
But I'm not going to sit in a courtroom and lie for him.
I'm not going to do that."
I had been watching her the whole time.
The girl who had laughed on my porch.
The girl who had worn my robe like it was already hers.
She looked nothing like that person right now.
She looked like someone who had followed a man through a door and only understood once she was on the other side of it what kind of room she'd walked into.
"Did Walter know you were coming here?" I asked.
It was the first thing I'd said since we sat down.
"No."
"What will you do after this?"
She looked at me.
"Go home.
To my mother's.
I have some things at the house — at your house — but I'm not going back for them."
"I'll have Carol arrange for them to be collected and sent to you," Richard said.
Tatum nodded.
She picked up the coffee cup, seemed to realize it was cold, and set it down again.
"I'm sorry," she said.
Not to Richard.
To me.
I looked at her for a long moment.
"I know," I said.
It wasn't forgiveness.
It wasn't the opposite of forgiveness either.
It was just the truth — I could see that she was sorry, and I could acknowledge it, and that was all either of us had right now.
Richard walked her out.
I sat in the conference room with Carol, who closed her notepad and didn't say anything, which was exactly right.
When Richard came back, he sat down across from me.
"That's the document fraud confirmed by a witness," he said.
"Combined with everything else, the police have more than enough to open a criminal investigation."
"Good," I said.
"Walter doesn't know Tatum came in.
He'll find out soon enough."
"How do you think he'll react?"
Richard considered it.
"He'll try to get ahead of it.
He'll try to contact you again, or contact me, or try to make some kind of deal before it goes further." He paused.
"He may try to pressure Tatum."
"Can you protect her?"
Richard looked at me.
It was a small moment, but something in his expression shifted — a kind of recognition, maybe, that the woman sitting across from him was not the frightened widow Walter had been counting on.
"Yes," he said.
"We can."
We went to the police at two o'clock.
I sat across from a detective named Marsh and I told him everything.
Richard placed the folder on the desk — the camera footage, the text message, the financial report, Tatum's recorded statement, the forensic accountant's preliminary findings.
Detective Marsh looked through it methodically.
He asked clear questions.
He wrote things down.
At the end, he looked up and said: "We'll be in touch with Mr.
Voss."
I walked out of the station into the afternoon light with Richard beside me and Carol two steps behind, and I thought about Owen sitting in this same city six weeks before he died, doing everything he could to make sure that if the worst happened, I would not be alone in it.
He had been right about Walter.
He had been right about all of it.
May you like
And he had made sure I would have what I needed to fight back.
I just hadn't known, until now, how much he had already done.
