Chapter 7: What He Said When He Thought No One Was Listening
Three weeks passed.
I stayed with a woman named Ruth — a friend of Carol Simms who had a spare room and a garden and a policy of not asking questions before nine in the morning.
She left fruit on the kitchen counter and didn't comment on the nights I couldn't sleep.
She was sixty-one years old and had survived something she never named, and she understood without being told that some people need quiet more than they need comfort.
The baby grew.
My appetite came back.
My left foot stopped going numb.
Detective Reyes called on a Tuesday.
"We executed the warrant this morning," she said.
"His home office.
His car.
The storage unit registered to Calloway Family Holdings."
"Did you find anything?"
"Enough." A pause.
"There was a second phone.
Prepaid.
In the storage unit, inside a toolbox." Another pause.
"There were messages on it going back nineteen months."
"To who?"
"We're still working through them.
But one of the contacts saved in that phone was listed as J."
Jocelyn.
"She knew," I said.
"The messages suggest she was aware of the account transfers.
There are also three messages from the week before your sister passed.
We're having them analyzed."
I sat down on Ruth's kitchen chair.
The fruit bowl was in front of me.
A pear.
An orange.
Ordinary things.
"He's going to say the phone isn't his," I said.
"His fingerprints are on it.
And the storage unit is registered in his name." A beat.
"Nora, I want to prepare you.
His attorney filed a motion this morning to have the backyard recordings excluded.
They're arguing coercion — that you manipulated the situation to entrap him."
"I was buried in the dirt."
"I know.
The motion won't succeed.
But I want you to know it was filed."
"What happens next?"
"He's being formally charged this afternoon.
Cr*minal @buse, unlawful imprisonment, financial fraud.
The charges related to your sister are still under review — that takes more time.
But the DA is taking it seriously."
I looked at the pear in the bowl.
"Will I have to see him?"
"Not today.
Possibly at a hearing in six weeks.
We'll prepare you before that happens."
After she hung up, I sat at the table for a long time.
Ruth came in from the garden with dirt on her gloves and looked at my face.
"Good news or bad news?" she asked.
"Both," I said.
She pulled off her gloves and put the kettle on.
She didn't ask me to explain.
She just made two cups and set one in front of me and sat down across the table.
"My sister," I said.
"She tried to warn me.
She found out what he was doing and she tried to warn me and I didn't—" The sentence broke apart.
"You didn't know," Ruth said.
"I should have listened.
She called me twice that month and I told her she was being unfair to him.
I told her she didn't understand our marriage." I pressed my hand flat on the table.
"She was trying to save me and I defended him."
Ruth was quiet for a moment.
"She knew you didn't know," she said finally.
"That's why she kept trying."
It wasn't forgiveness.
It wasn't supposed to be.
But it was true, and true was what I needed more than anything soft.
I drank the tea.
That evening, Detective Reyes sent a follow-up message.
One line.
*He made a statement before his attorney arrived.
We have it on record.*
She attached a transcript.
The last line of his statement read: *She was never going to listen to reason.
Some people have to learn the hard way.*
He had said it to a detective.
In a recorded interview.
About a pregnant woman he had buried in the ground.
I read it once.
May you like
Then I forwarded it to Carol Simms.
Then I closed my phone and went to bed and slept for seven hours straight — the longest I had slept in four months.
