Page 103 of Wrong Mail

“Then we’ll look at Westburn.” His voice stays even. “And if she was looking into something else, we’ll look at that. Right now we don't know.”

“Then why bring up David?”

Rodriguez puts one hand on the tablet.

“Because she was inside the hospital where your husband works three days before she disappeared. Because Christopher Brockwell publicly accused your husband of having a relationship with her. Because Brockwell is now dead. And because your husband's name is already attached to another investigation involving that hospital.”

I stare at him.

“You think David had something to do with Julia disappearing.”

“I think we have loose ends, Mrs. Grant. This is one of them.”

“What about Chris?”

“For almost a week, Chris Brockwell was the obvious answer. He had a history of violence toward her. He made a scene at your party. He disappeared when she did, then turned up dead in a motel.” He pauses. “That gave us a very tidy story.”

“And now?”

“Now I'm less interested in tidy.”

He turns the tablet slightly beneath his hand.

“Julia walked into that hospital three days before she disappeared because she was trying to learn something. Until we know what that was, I'm not assuming it has anything to do with your husband. I'm also not assuming it doesn't.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“Anything she told you. Anything she was worried about. Anyone she was looking into. You were her closest friend.”

“I've told you what I know.”

“Then I need to speak to David.” He looks at me. “Where’s your husband, Mrs. Grant?”

"Out," I say. "He had to meet with a lawyer." It sounds like a lie even though it might be true. That is what David has made of me. I can't say anything about him anymore without hearing how it would play to a jury.

Rodriguez lets the answer sit there, weighing what it's worth, which is nothing. "Have him call me when he's back," he says. "Today." He sets a card on the island. I glance out the window. The marked car is still idling at my gate. Rodriguez doesn’t tell me if this is a routine visit. He doesn’t tell me anything that would let me breathe. The machine has started moving toward this house. I can feel it, like a tide coming in, slow and then all at once.

Rodriguez picks up his tablet and heads out.

I stand in the open doorway as he gets into his SUV. A moment later, both vehicles turn around in the driveway and pull away.

I don’t check the app. I already know the dot can’t tell me the one thing I need to know. Where my husband was on Tuesday, when Julia disappeared.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

I've watched the last video message Julia sent me so many times, her words have stopped being words. Nothing's come since. I keep opening it as though it might reveal something.

It doesn’t.

In it, she is in a dim bathroom, the phone held too close to her face, with the rest of the room out of frame. The bruise over her left eye looks worse than I remember.

I scroll up the thread, past the video, past the unanswered calls and the texts that delivered and were never read. I stop at the last ordinary thing we said to each other, before any of this.

She’d asked me when the renovations would be done. I sent her a photo of the sealed wing and wrote, next spring, at this rate. She wrote back that she'd bring the wine to the unveiling. That is where the thread stops, in the plastic and a joke about wine, and tonight I can't stop looking at it.

I switch off the video as thunder rumbles overhead.

The storm has been climbing all evening. By ten it is on top of the house. The thunder is no longer a rumor out over the water but a thing that shakes the glass in the frames. The power has been stuttering since nine. The lights dip and come back, dip and come back. Each time the house goes dark I hear the storm move through the house, the plastic at the end of the west hall lifting and settling like something breathing in its sleep.