Chapter 6: Four Point Three Million Reasons
Marco Reyes was brought in at eleven-twenty.
I knew because I heard the commotion from upstairs — more vehicles, more voices, a brief exchange that ended abruptly.
By the time I came down, he was already in a room off the main hallway, door closed, two men outside it.
Dante was at the table again.
Claire Ashworth had returned.
Luca had a second laptop open now.
"She's asked for representation," Claire said.
"I've advised her to say nothing until her attorney arrives."
"Good," Dante said.
"I don't want her saying something that complicates the official case."
"You're going to the authorities." Claire said it carefully, like she wasn't entirely sure.
"I'm going to do this correctly." He looked at me as I came into the room.
"How much did you hear?"
"Enough."
"She didn't confess."
"She didn't deny it either.
Not really." I sat down.
"When you told her about the witness, she didn't ask who.
She asked what they heard."
Claire looked at me with something that might have been respect.
"That's a meaningful distinction," she said.
"I know."
Dante leaned back.
"Marco will talk.
He has children.
He'll weigh what he's protecting against what he's losing and he'll make the calculation that men like him always make." He said it without contempt.
Just fact.
"What I need from you, Cara, is a formal statement.
Written.
Witnessed.
Everything you heard at Bellini's, in sequence."
"And then?"
"And then Claire takes it to the right people.
People who owe me the courtesy of handling this through proper channels."
"You have people inside the police department," I said.
He didn't answer.
Which was its own answer.
"I'm not comfortable with —"
"The statement goes to the DA's office," Claire said.
"Directly.
I handle that personally.
Whatever other relationships exist, your statement goes through me, and it goes clean."
I looked at her.
She met my eyes without flinching.
"Okay," I said.
---
I spent two hours with Claire at the far end of the table.
She asked every question twice, from different angles.
She wrote everything in longhand first, then typed it.
She asked me to describe the booth, the partition, the exact position I was standing in, the distance between me and Vanessa, whether anyone else had been nearby.
She asked me three times about the exact words.
Each time I said them the same way.
Because they hadn't moved in my memory.
Some things don't.
*Cut just enough.
They'll fail on the mountain road.*
*By midnight, I'll be a grieving widow.*
When we finished, she printed the statement and had me sign it.
Then she signed it.
Then she had Rosa sign it as a witness.
"What happens to me now?" I asked.
"That depends on how quickly this moves," Claire said.
"In the short term, you stay here.
It's the safest option."
"I can't stay here indefinitely.
I have a life."
"You had a life," she said, not unkindly.
"It's going to look different for a while."
She gathered her papers and left the room.
I sat there alone for a moment.
Then Dante came in.
He set a phone on the table in front of me — not his, a new one, still in its packaging.
"Your number is already programmed in," he said.
"If anything happens and you can't reach me, call Luca."
"What's happening with Marco?"
"He's been informed of the financial evidence.
He's been informed of what Vanessa has already said — or rather, what she hasn't said, which amounts to the same thing." Dante sat across from me.
"He asked for an hour to think."
"Will he cooperate?"
"He'll cooperate." He said it without satisfaction.
"He has a wife.
Three children.
He'll tell himself he's protecting them.
He'll be wrong about that — cooperation doesn't undo eleven years of betrayal — but he'll tell himself that, and it'll be enough to make him talk."
"You sound like you almost understand him."
"I understand the calculation." He looked at the table.
"I don't understand the choice."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"You can ask."
"How long did you know about Vanessa?
Not suspect.
Know."
He was quiet for long enough that I thought he wouldn't answer.
"Three weeks," he said finally.
"I found a message on a phone she thought was hidden.
I didn't confront her because I needed to understand the full shape of it first.
Who else was involved.
How far it went." He paused.
"I didn't know about the brakes.
I thought I had more time."
"You almost didn't."
"I know." He looked at me directly.
"Because of you, I did."
I didn't know what to do with that.
So I picked up the new phone and turned it over in my hands.
"There's one more thing," Luca said from the doorway.
We both looked at him.
May you like
"Marco talked." He held up his own phone.
"And it's worse than we thought."
