Chapter 4 - The Car Under the Tarp
By midnight, Evelyn Cross's house was surrounded by police lights.
The photographs from the search reached Hale's tablet before the scene itself was finished being processed.
Rebecca's sedan looked strangely small beneath the gray tarp.
One rear wheel was muddy.
The driver's window was half an inch open.
A strip of Rebecca's green scarf was caught in the trunk seal.
I recognized it immediately because Lily had chosen that scarf for Rebecca's birthday the previous winter.
My first thought was that somebody had slammed the trunk while Rebecca was near it.
My second thought was worse.
Maybe the scarf had been placed there so I would think exactly that.
Hale warned me not to build stories around objects before the lab did its work.
"Evidence tells you what it can prove."
He said.
"Fear tells you everything else."
I asked whether the car had been wiped.
The exterior had normal prints and smears.
The steering wheel had been cleaned more thoroughly than the rest of the interior.
That imbalance interested the forensic team.
The driver's seat was pushed farther back than Rebecca ever kept it.
She was five foot four.
Whoever last drove the car had likely been taller.
A toll receipt in the console was stamped the night Rebecca vanished.
The toll booth sat on the road between our house and Evelyn's property.
The receipt time was 10:38 p.m.
That placed the car in motion hours after Rebecca told Lily a caregiver was coming.
It also meant somebody had chosen a staffed toll lane instead of the electronic pass already mounted on the windshield.
Hale believed the driver may have wanted the trip charged to cash and kept off Rebecca's normal travel record.
Small decisions kept revealing planning.
A tarp instead of a garage.
Cash instead of an electronic pass.
A cleaned steering wheel inside an otherwise ordinary car.
None proved where Rebecca was.
Together, they proved someone did not want her movements understood.
I was not allowed there.
Hale made that clear twice.
He said my presence could complicate the search, frighten witnesses, or give Evelyn's attorney a reason to challenge what the officers found.
I told him I did not care about her attorney.
He told me the court would.
So I stayed at the hospital while strangers searched the home of the woman who had spent years telling me family was sacred.
Lily slept in the room beside Tommy.
A nurse brought me coffee I did not drink.
At 12:47 a.m., Hale called.
"The car is empty."
"Any blood?"
"No visible signs of violence."
"Her phone?"
"Not in the car."
"Passport?"
"Not there either."
"Evelyn?"
"Not home."
I stood by the hospital window and watched rain collect against the glass.
"So where is everyone?"
"We're working on that."
I nearly shouted.
Instead, I pressed my forehead against the cool window.
"What was in the car?"
"Two suitcases."
"Rebecca's?"
"One appears to be hers."
"And the other?"
"Children's clothing."
My chest tightened.
"Lily and Tommy?"
"Likely."
"So they were planning to take them."
"It appears someone was preparing for travel."
Hale always refused to hand me the conclusion I wanted.
I had started to understand why.
Conclusions could be manipulated.
Details were harder to lie about.
"Anything else?"
"A red suitcase was found in the detached garage."
I remembered Lily's drawing.
"What red suitcase?"
"You tell me."
I walked into Lily's room and sat beside her bed.
She was awake, staring at the ceiling.
"Sweetheart, do you remember a red suitcase at Grandma's house?"
Her eyes turned to me immediately.
"The papers."
"What papers?"
"Mommy said don't touch them."
"Were they in the suitcase?"
She nodded.
"Did you see who put them there?"
"Grandma."
"Anyone else?"
Lily's fingers tightened around the blanket.
"The shiny man."
The man with the silver watch.
"Did Mommy put anything in the suitcase?"
Lily shook her head.
Then she whispered, "Mommy took something out."
I leaned closer.
"What?"
"A little black thing."
"A phone?"
"No."
She held her fingers two inches apart.
"Smaller."
A flash drive.
A memory card.
A key.
I did not know.
"What did she do with it?"
"She put it in my rabbit."
I stared at her.
"Your stuffed rabbit?"
She nodded.
Lily had owned a white stuffed rabbit named Snowy since she was two.
She carried it everywhere until six months ago, when Rebecca told me Lily had suddenly outgrown it.
I had found that strange.
Lily slept with that rabbit when she had the flu.
She took it to her first day of preschool.
She once made me buckle it into a car seat.
Children did not usually outgrow beloved objects overnight.
Adults made them disappear.
"Where is Snowy now?"
Lily looked frightened again.
"Grandma took him."
"When?"
"After Mommy cried."
"Why was Mommy crying?"
Lily rolled onto her side and looked toward Tommy's room.
"Because Grandma said she was going to lose us."
I tried to keep my breathing steady.
"Lose you how?"
"I don't know."
"Did Grandma say anything else?"
Lily closed her eyes.
For a moment, I thought she had decided not to answer.
Then she whispered, "She said Mommy was weak like Grandpa."
Thomas Cross had died of a heart attack.
At least, that was what the family had always said.
I did not let my mind run further than the evidence.
Not yet.
At 2:11 a.m., Hale arrived at the hospital with a clear evidence bag.
Inside was a white stuffed rabbit.
One ear was torn open along the seam.
"We found it in the red suitcase."
Lily sat upright when she saw it.
"Snowy."
Hale handed the bag to a forensic technician, not to us.
"We need to process it first."
Lily began to cry.
I held her while the technician carried Snowy away.
Twenty minutes later, Hale returned.
"There was a microSD card inside the stuffing."
The words gave me my first clean breath in hours.
Rebecca had hidden evidence.
Whatever else she had done, whatever documents she had signed, she had hidden something from Evelyn.
That did not make her innocent.
It made the story more complicated.
The card was encrypted.
Hale's digital forensics team could access it, but not immediately.
I asked whether I could try passwords Rebecca might use.
He refused because too many failed attempts could trigger protections.
So again I waited.
Waiting was becoming its own form of punishment.
At 3:30 a.m., Dr. Shaw updated me on Tommy.
His fluids were helping.
His breathing was stronger.
The sedating compound was clearing his system.
He might be ready to leave intensive monitoring by morning.
I thanked him.
Then I went into the hospital bathroom, locked the door, and cried for the first time.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
I gripped the sink and let the tears come because my son was alive and my daughter had spent days believing I might never return.
Then I washed my face and went back to them.
At sunrise, Nora called.
She had stayed at the office all night.
"I found something else in the travel records."
"What?"
"Your original Thursday flight was canceled from an internal company account."
"Whose account?"
"Marcus's."
I closed my eyes.
"When?"
"Five days ago."
"Before Rebecca called him?"
"Yes."
That mattered.
It meant Marcus had acted before the recorded conversation where Rebecca tried to bring me home.
"Did he rebook me?"
"He moved you to Saturday morning."
"I never saw that."
"Because I moved you back after you called me yesterday."
I remembered.
I had asked Nora to find any seat home because I was tired of Denver.
I had not known I was undoing someone else's plan.
"Why did Marcus cancel my flight?"
"He entered a note saying client request."
"Which client?"
"No client name."
I called Marcus immediately.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
I called his wife.
She answered after the fourth ring.
"Daniel?"
"Is Marcus there?"
"No."
"Where is he?"
"I thought he was with you."
"Why would he be with me?"
"He left last night after a call from Rebecca."
I stopped moving.
"Rebecca called him?"
"Around eleven."
"From what number?"
"I don't know."
"What did she say?"
"I only heard his side."
"Tell me."
Marcus's wife sounded confused.
"He kept saying, 'You weren't supposed to go back there.'"
My hand went cold around the phone.
"Back where?"
"I don't know."
"Anything else?"
"He said, 'If Daniel sees the files, we're finished.'"
I looked through the glass at Detective Hale, who had just entered the hallway.
I put the call on speaker.
"Did Marcus say where he was going?"
"No."
"What did he take with him?"
"His laptop."
"Anything else?"
She hesitated.
"A gun."
Hale stepped closer.
"Ma'am, this is Detective Hale. I need you to stay inside your home and not contact your husband. Officers are coming to speak with you."
The call ended.
Hale was already moving when his own phone rang.
He answered, listened, and swore for the first time since I met him.
"What happened?"
He looked at me.
"The forensic team opened the first folder on the memory card."
"What's on it?"
"Video."
"Of what?"
"Your locked room."
My heart started pounding.
"Show me."
"Not yet."
"Hale."
"Daniel, listen to me."
His voice sharpened.
"The first clip is dated six weeks ago."
"And?"
"Your wife is in the room."
I waited.
"So is Evelyn."
"Who else?"
Hale's eyes did not leave mine.
"A man wearing a silver watch."
"Can you see his face?"
"Yes."
"Who is it?"
Hale turned his phone toward me.
The image was grainy, but the face was clear enough.
The man standing beside my mother-in-law was not her attorney.
It was not my CFO.
It was Marcus Venn.
My oldest friend at the company.
May you like
The man who had canceled my flight before my wife ever asked him to.
And in the frozen frame on Hale's phone, Marcus was holding a stack of documents while Rebecca sat on the mattress with her hands shaking.
