Chapter 8: What She Went Back For
Harmon was already on his radio before I could ask the question.
"The girls," I said.
"Officers are still on site," he said, one hand raised to keep me from moving.
He listened.
His jaw tightened.
"She's not at the residence.
Neighbor confirms no one has approached the house." He lowered the radio.
"Your daughters are safe.
The officers have eyes on them."
I let out a breath that felt like it had been held for months.
"Then where did she go?" Lin said.
"We don't know yet." Harmon moved to the door.
"I need to make some calls.
Patricia is outside.
Do not leave this room."
He left.
Lin stood and went to the window and looked out at the parking lot below.
"Her car," she said.
"Is it still there?"
I didn't know what car she had come in.
I had been in too much pain to notice.
Lin watched the lot for a moment.
Then she said, "There's a woman walking very fast toward the far exit.
Gray coat."
"That's her."
Lin had her phone out before I finished the sentence.
She described what she saw to someone — I realized after a moment she had called 911 directly, calmly, with the street-facing exit and the gray coat and the direction of movement.
She hung up and turned back to me.
"I don't know if that helps," she said.
"It might."
She sat back down.
We waited.
My husband was still somewhere in the hospital.
I could feel his presence the way you feel weather — not seeing it yet, but knowing it's coming.
His attorney had filed something.
He had a letter prepared three days ago.
He had been ready for a version of this.
But he had not been ready for forty-one recordings.
Twenty minutes passed.
Harmon came back.
"She went to a storage unit," he said.
"Registered under a different name.
Officers reached her there." He paused.
"She was removing documents."
"What kind of documents?" Carol asked.
She had come in behind him — I hadn't heard her return.
"We don't know yet.
She refused to open the unit voluntarily.
We're getting a warrant." Harmon looked at me.
"Does the name Shu-Fen mean anything to you?"
I went still.
That was my mother-in-law's sister.
She lived in California.
I had met her once, at a dinner two years ago, and she had looked at me across the table with an expression I had never been able to name — not unkind, but watchful, like someone who knew something and had decided not to say it.
"That's her sister," I said.
"Why?"
"The storage unit is registered in that name," Carol said.
"Which means your mother-in-law has been using her sister's identity for storage access." She set a folder on the tray table.
"We found the same name on a lease agreement from four years ago.
Different state.
Different family."
Lin leaned forward.
"She's been doing this for years."
"At minimum four years that we can document," Carol said.
"Possibly longer." She looked at me.
"The woman named Mei — the one I mentioned earlier.
The storage unit address matches the city where Mei's family was living at the time."
The room went quiet in a way that had weight to it.
"What was in Mei's file?" I asked.
Carol was quiet for a moment.
"Mei left her husband eight months after the hospital visit.
She took her daughter and went to her parents in Oregon.
She filed a report there, but by then the family had already moved.
Nothing was prosecuted." She paused.
"She called our unit six months ago.
She wanted to know if anything had ever come of it."
"What did you tell her?"
"That the case was still open." Carol looked at me steadily.
"I'd like to tell her something different now."
Down the hall, a door opened.
I heard my husband's voice again — different this time.
Not performing.
Something underneath the performance had cracked, and what was coming through sounded like a man realizing the room he thought he controlled had different walls than he remembered.
Then I heard his attorney's voice, low and rapid, telling him to stop talking.
He didn't stop.
Carol tilted her head toward the sound and almost smiled.
"He's talking without counsel present," she said quietly.
"That's going to be a problem for him."
Lin looked at me.
I looked at the door.
Whatever he was saying in that hallway, he was saying it into a hospital full of people whose job was to notice things and write them down.
He had never understood that.
May you like
He had always believed that the people around him saw only what he showed them.
He had never considered what they saw when he wasn't looking.
