Chapter 4
Thomas Mercer had been my best friend for twenty years.
By four that afternoon, he was officially a suspect in my wife’s death.
Detective Torres ordered me not to contact him.
I obeyed for exactly forty-three minutes.
Then Thomas sent me a video.
It showed the front of my company headquarters.
My company.
My employees.
My life.
Thomas appeared on camera.
“Daniel, I don’t know what’s going on, but detectives just arrived with a warrant. If you did something, tell me before they tear this place apart.”
I watched it twice.
He looked confused.
Angry.
Maybe frightened.
But Thomas had always been good in a crisis.
That was why I trusted him with hundreds of millions of dollars.
Torres took the phone from me.
“He’s fishing.”
“For what?”
“To see how much you know.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. But neither do you.”
That hurt because she was right.
Sophia was asleep in the bedroom with a police officer stationed outside the secure residence.
I sat at the kitchen table.
“I need to understand how Rachel fits into this.”
“We’re working on it.”
“She nearly killed my daughter yesterday.”
“I know.”
“And now I learn she may have known my wife was in danger.”
“Yes.”
“Why hasn’t she told you everything?”
“Her attorney shut down questioning.”
“Offer her something.”
“That isn’t your decision.”
“Then let me talk to her.”
“No.”
“Detective—”
“Absolutely not.”
I stood.
“She wants me.”
“That makes you useful to her, not safe around her.”
“I don’t care about safe.”
“I do.”
Torres pointed toward the bedroom.
“And she does.”
Sophia.
I sat back down.
Torres softened.
“Daniel, you cannot become reckless now.”
“My wife is dead because I ignored her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know I was sleeping with Rachel while Claire was trying to protect my company.”
“You made a terrible mistake.”
“I made several.”
“That doesn’t mean you killed your wife.”
I looked away.
The guilt had lived inside me since the funeral.
Now it had teeth.
At five thirty, Torres received authorization to examine Claire’s wrecked vehicle.
It had been stored in an insurance salvage yard after the investigation because litigation involving the trucking company had never been fully resolved.
We drove there together.
I left Sophia with two officers at the safe residence.
She cried when I left.
So did I after closing the door.
The salvage yard smelled like rust and hot metal.
Claire’s SUV sat beneath a large covered structure.
I had not seen it since the accident.
The driver’s side was crushed.
The windshield was fractured.
The entire front end looked folded.
For a moment, I couldn’t move.
Torres watched me.
“You can stay back.”
“No.”
I walked closer.
I remembered Claire choosing that SUV because it had the best safety rating she could find.
I remembered teasing her for researching child-seat crash tests for three weeks.
I remembered her laughing.
Then I remembered identifying her body.
I turned away.
A forensic mechanic named Dr. Samuel Price joined us.
“We pulled the original mechanical inspection.”
“And?” Torres asked.
“There were inconsistencies.”
“What kind?”
“The vehicle showed loss of braking ability before impact.”
I stared at him.
“The original report said the truck crossed the median.”
“It did.”
“So what does braking matter?”
“Because Mrs. Bennett had approximately seven seconds to react.”
Torres folded her arms.
“And she didn’t brake?”
“Not effectively.”
I stepped forward.
“Are you saying the brakes failed?”
“I’m saying we need to inspect what remains.”
The examination took nearly two hours.
I waited outside.
At sunset, Dr. Price returned.
His face told me before his words did.
“We found evidence that a brake line was deliberately compromised.”
My knees weakened.
Torres asked, “How?”
“A small cut positioned where it would worsen with pressure and vibration.”
“Could it happen accidentally?”
“Not like this.”
I stared at Claire’s ruined SUV.
“So somebody murdered my wife.”
Dr. Price didn’t answer.
Torres did.
“That is now a serious possibility.”
I laughed once.
It sounded broken.
“A possibility?”
“We still need evidence connecting a person to the tampering.”
I pulled out my phone.
The photograph showed Thomas beside Claire’s vehicle that morning.
“Like this?”
“It proves proximity.”
“He was under the hood.”
“We don’t know that.”
The anonymous message had said he was.
But anonymous accusations weren’t proof.
Torres looked toward the car.
“We need the original service records and any available security footage from where this photo was taken.”
“I know where.”
She turned.
“Where?”
“Our company parking garage.”
Claire sometimes met me at the office.
The concrete wall in the photograph had a distinctive blue stripe.
Bennett Development parking level three.
We drove directly there.
Police had already been searching my corporate office.
Employees stood outside in confused groups.
Thomas was nowhere visible.
My operations director, Melissa Grant, rushed toward me.
“Daniel!”
Torres stepped between us.
“Ma’am.”
Melissa stopped.
“What is happening?”
“Where’s Thomas?” I asked.
“He left.”
“When?”
“Maybe an hour ago.”
“Why?”
“He said he needed to speak to you.”
My stomach dropped.
Torres immediately radioed officers.
“Find Mercer now.”
Melissa looked terrified.
“Daniel, what did he do?”
“I don’t know.”
That was still technically true.
We went to the security office.
Our system kept archived footage for five years.
Thomas had insisted on that policy after a theft lawsuit.
The irony almost made me sick.
The security manager searched the date.
June 15, sixteen months earlier.
Parking level three.
11:39 a.m.
Claire’s SUV entered.
11:41.
She walked toward the elevator.
11:42.
Thomas appeared.
He looked around.
Then approached Claire’s SUV.
My heart pounded.
He crouched near the front driver’s side.
He stayed there for thirty-eight seconds.
Then stood.
Torres leaned closer to the screen.
“Can we zoom?”
The manager enlarged the image.
Thomas held something small in his hand.
A dark tool.
He slipped it into his jacket.
My fists clenched.
“Keep playing.”
At 11:45, Thomas entered the building.
At 12:03, Claire returned.
She got into the SUV and drove away.
Three hours later, she was dead.
I stepped back.
Torres immediately called for Thomas’s arrest.
The security manager looked like he might faint.
Melissa whispered, “Oh my God.”
Then another figure appeared on the screen.
At 12:04.
One minute after Claire left.
Rachel walked into view.
She stood where the SUV had been.
Then she pulled out her phone and made a call.
“Can you pull audio?” I asked.
“No audio in the garage.”
Torres pointed at the screen.
“Track her movements.”
Another camera showed Rachel entering a stairwell.
Then leaving the building.
Melissa looked at me.
“She wasn’t employed here then.”
“No.”
“So how did she get into the garage?”
I looked at the access records.
Someone had let her in.
The badge used belonged to Thomas Mercer.
By eight o’clock, police searched Thomas’s house.
He was gone.
His passport was missing.
So was his car.
But inside his home office, they found a locked drawer.
Inside were burner phones.
Bank documents.
And photographs of Claire.
One picture showed her entering an attorney’s office.
Another showed her speaking to a federal investigator.
Torres called me from Thomas’s house.
“Daniel, Claire wasn’t just investigating your company.”
“What do you mean?”
“She contacted federal authorities.”
“When?”
“Eight days before she died.”
“About Thomas?”
“About financial fraud.”
I sat on the edge of Sophia’s bed while she slept.
My hands shook.
“Why didn’t anyone contact me?”
“Apparently Claire asked them not to until she had more evidence.”
“What evidence?”
“We’re still finding out.”
Torres paused.
“There’s something else.”
I braced myself.
“We found a life insurance policy.”
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
I frowned.
“I have several.”
“This one is different.”
“How?”
“It was created using fraudulent documentation.”
“For how much?”
“Twenty-five million dollars.”
“Beneficiary?”
She hesitated.
“Thomas Mercer.”
I stood.
“That makes no sense.”
“We agree.”
“I would never sign that.”
“We don’t believe you did.”
I looked at Sophia.
“If Claire hadn’t died…”
Torres understood.
“You may have been next.”
A sound came from the hallway outside the bedroom.
The officer opened the door.
“Mr. Bennett?”
“What?”
“Someone delivered a package.”
My heart stopped.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“No one knows this address.”
“That’s why we haven’t touched it.”
Torres heard through the phone.
“Daniel, get away from it.”
The package sat outside the secure residence.
Bomb technicians cleared it.
No explosive.
Inside was a child’s stuffed rabbit.
Sophia had owned one exactly like it.
Claire had buried it with her because Sophia had placed it in the casket at the funeral.
I stared at the rabbit through the evidence bag.
There was dirt on one ear.
Cemetery dirt.
Pinned to its chest was a handwritten note.
I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS WHAT CLAIRE FOUND.
May you like
On the back:
THOMAS DIDN’T START THIS.
