Chapter 18 - The Man Who Ran
Richard called me from the coast at 2:14 in the morning.
I was sitting on Maya's floor, unable to sleep, when his number appeared. I called Miriam on my second phone before I answered. She told me not to agree to anything and to end the call if he threatened me.
"You enjoying this?" Richard asked.
"No."
"You destroyed a company that employed hundreds of people. You turned your mother into a criminal. You embarrassed your brother."
"You did those things."
He laughed, but it sounded thin. "You're still a little girl. You think the world rewards people for telling the truth?"
I thought of Daniel sitting behind glass. Of Nora, Luis, and Frank. Of Lena hiding above a laundromat, and Otis opening a box he was terrified to touch.
"Sometimes it doesn't," I said. "That's why people have to tell it anyway."
Richard was quiet. Then he tried one last bargain. If I publicly withdrew my accusations, he'd establish a fund for the fire victims. He'd make sure Daniel got lawyers. He'd even sign over the house.
"The house with no baby pictures?" I asked. "Keep it."
His voice dropped. "I could have left you with nobody."
"You did. You just stayed in the room while you did it."
I ended the call.
The next morning federal agents and local police detained Richard at a marina after he traveled from the coastal airport toward the company boat. I saw the news footage on Tessa's screen: Richard in an untucked dress shirt, his wrists behind his back, arguing with an officer who didn't seem impressed by his last name.
I expected to feel free. Instead I stared at the screen and felt twelve years old, waiting to hear his car in the driveway.
Miriam reminded me that an arrest wasn't a conviction. There would be hearings and motions, challenges to documents, questions about memories. Daniel's case had been damaged by decades of bad evidence. Reversing it would take more than Richard in handcuffs.
That afternoon, the prosecutor told us the defense planned to question whether Otis's tape had been altered and whether he could remember an order given twenty-two years earlier.
"He can back out," I said. "If testifying is too much."
Otis shook his head. "I backed out once. I won't do it again."
May you like
Then he put his cane beside the chair and asked the prosecutor a question.
"When do you need me on the stand?"
