Chapter 4: Sixty Thousand Reasons
Detective Reyes came back the next morning with a second officer and a printed document she set on Clara's kitchen table without preamble.
"The transmission log came back," she said.
"The device was activated four days ago at 11:14 a.m.
That matches the time Beatrice brought the plant over."
Clara wrapped both hands around her coffee mug.
"How long was it transmitting?"
"Continuously.
Right up until we pulled it from the soil last night." Reyes sat down across from her.
"Clara, I need to ask you something directly, and I need you to answer me the same way.
Did you and Ethan have any conversation in this apartment in the last four days about his finances?
About the transfers?"
"Yes.
The night before he disappeared.
He came home late.
I asked him about the account.
He said it was a business expense.
I told him sixty thousand dollars wasn't an expense, it was a pattern.
He got very quiet." Clara set the mug down.
"Then he said, 'You don't understand what's at stake, Clara.
You never have.' And he went to bed.
The next morning he was gone."
"Did he say anything else?
Any name?
Any project?"
Clara thought for a moment.
"He mentioned the senior living complex.
Harborview.
He said the project was in trouble and that fixing it required decisions I wouldn't understand."
Reyes wrote that down.
"We pulled Ethan's business records this morning under the missing persons investigation.
The sixty thousand went to a shell company.
The shell company is registered to a holding group." She turned the document to face Clara.
"The holding group lists one director."
Clara looked at the name on the page.
Scott Vance.
She read it twice.
Then she put the document back on the table very carefully, the way you set something down when your hands have stopped being reliable.
"Scott," she said.
"The transfers started eight months ago.
They accelerated in the last six weeks." Reyes watched Clara's face.
"We believe Ethan may have discovered what Scott was doing.
Or Scott believed Ethan was about to."
"And the bag," Clara said.
"The shirt.
The ring."
"We don't know yet.
But the bl00d on the shirt has been sent for analysis.
We'll know within forty-eight hours if it's Ethan's."
Clara stood up and walked to the window.
Outside, Lily was in the building's small courtyard with the neighbor's daughter, the neon-green backpack still on her back even though she had nowhere to go.
"She hasn't taken that backpack off since the night we found it," Clara said.
"Her father gave it to her three days before he disappeared.
She said he told her it was for adventures."
Reyes was quiet for a moment.
"We're going to find him, Clara."
"You don't know that."
"No," Reyes admitted.
"I don't.
But I know Scott Vance drove his mother to this apartment at one-thirty in the morning, before the police were called.
I know that device was placed here deliberately.
And I know that spreadsheet with your name and Lily's name on it was not put there by someone who wanted Ethan found."
Clara turned from the window.
"It was put there by someone who wanted me blamed."
"Yes."
"Which means someone needed a suspect before there was even a crime."
Reyes held her gaze.
"That's exactly what it means."
Clara's phone buzzed on the counter.
She glanced at the screen.
A text from a number she didn't recognize.
*Stop talking to the police, Clara.
You don't know what Ethan did.
You don't know what he owed.
If you keep pushing, Lily loses more than a father.*
Clara held the phone out to Reyes without a word.
Reyes read it.
Her expression didn't change, but she reached for her radio immediately.
May you like
"I need a trace on an incoming text," she said.
"Right now."
