Lucinda fell abruptly silent.
I couldn’t ignore the pang I felt at seeing our street. The front yard. The lawn and beds, with my fresh mulching. Our home. Without us. Without Allison. “So this video is from the investigation team? Watanabe and Reilly?”
“Yes.”
Lucinda lifted an eyebrow at the unfamiliar names, and I made a mental note to explain later.
“Now, I’ll rewind.” Dom rewound the video, and time ran backward onscreen, our street going from sunshine to darkness and back again at top speed. The Patels walked their rescue greyhounds up and back. The Slater-Dobbs rolled recycling bins back and forth. Everyone drove in and out of driveways, opening and closing SUV hatchbacks and trunks.
Dom slowed the video, saying, “Now, watch. This is what happened eight minutes after you left the house, that first night.”
I watched the dark screen of our street at night, holding my breath. Suddenly a sedan cruised slowly past our house, silent as a shadow. I didn’t recognize the car, which went down our street and vanished around the corner.
My heart started to pound. “Is that them? Veria and company?”
“Yes,” Dom answered.
Lucinda gasped. “You mean, we got out just in time.”
“Correct.” Dom eyed the laptop screen.
“My God.” Lucinda’s hand flew to her mouth, and I felt the gravity of the threat in a way I hadn’t before.
“Dom, who was driving? Was it Milo?”
“No. We believe it’s someone else. Lower-level.”
“Who?” I was already thinking of researching the name.
“I’m not going to divulge that.”
I tried a different tack. “Is lower-level lower than retail-level?”
“It’s the same.”
“How do you know who it was?”
“The license plate.”
I squinted at the video. I could barely see the outline of the car in the darkness, much less read the plate. “How can you tell, in the dark?”
“Our lab did.”
“Aren’t you going to arrest him?” I asked, but I knew the answer from my one year of law school.
“Not enough evidence—”
“Can’t you pick him up anyway? Ask him where Milo is?”
“—and again, we don’t want to tip them off.”
My thoughts raced. “Let me ask you something else. Milo and this organization have been arrested plenty of times, but they always get off. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
Lucinda looked over. “How do you know this, Jason?”
“I researched it online.”
“Hold on.” Dom pressed a key, and the video rewound further. He stopped at another view of the same car, then pointed to the bottom of the screen. “This is him, ten minutes later, circling the block. He did that until midday. We believe they were trying to determine if you were coming back. By now, they’ll have concluded you’ve entered the program. That’s why it’s against procedure for you to go to Allison’s funeral, as hard as that is to deal with.” Dom closed out the video as he spoke.
On impulse, I slid my flip phone from my pocket and took a photo of the screen. Dom turned around at the click. “Jason, did you just take a picture?”
“Yes.”
“Please delete it. I wasn’t supposed to show you that.”
“I won’t tell.” I slipped the phone into my pocket.
Dom looked pained, like I had broken faith with him, but Lucinda glanced over with approval.
So I had chosen the right side. We were united, husband and wife, allowed this tiny act of defiance in return for not burying our murdered daughter.
I wanted to know who that driver was.
Chapter Twelve
I toweled off in the bathroom, reviewing the long, crummy day. Something told me every day from here on out would fit that description. Showering before bedtime used to relax me, but my old routines weren’t working. I had felt uneasy since I had seen Dom’s video of the car cruising our street, but hadn’t had the chance to study my photo or fill Lucinda in on anything, since Ethan was around. I made much of the phones and laptops to distract him, but it only went so far.
I slipped back into my shorts and entered the bedroom, where Lucinda sat cross-legged in bed, her laptop open. She was in a T-shirt, her hair up in a loose ponytail, but she was upset. Her cheery red reading glasses incongruous.
I crossed to her and sat down. “Honey?”
“Everyone’s worried about us.”
“You’re not on Facebook, are you?”
“No, Next Door, the neighborhood Patch. It doesn’t show when you’re online.”
“Oh, right.” I knew the platform, with postings about local contractors, lost dogs, and spotted lantern flies.
“Allison’s friends have been texting her and she’s not replying, so they tell their mom, who tells another mom, who tells another, who calls the Corbuzes or one of the other neighbors, and asks if they’ve seen us, and they haven’t.” Lucinda scanned the screen, miserably. “It’s terrible to put people who love us through this. I feel so guilty. We have to let them worry? Let them wonder?”
“It can’t be helped. You saw the video.”
“I know, but can you imagine how Melissa is feeling? We always walk on Saturday morning. She’s probably texting me and calling.”
I had no reply. Melissa was my wife’s best friend after Allison.
“I just wish we could let her know.”
“That would defeat the purpose.”
“Would it? She wouldn’t tell anybody. And what about the other moms? We were planning for the semifinals, who brings what, all that. They’ll be calling, too.”
“We don’t have any choice.” I sat down, glancing at the TV. A commercial was ending, and the eleven o’clock news came on, with the lead story. The screen showed a burning storefront that I recognized instantly.
“That’s my office!” I jumped to my feet, horrified. Flames raged from the front window of my office and the Chinese restaurant next door. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“No!” Lucinda tore off her reading glasses. “Oh my God!”
The voice-over said, “We’re live in a strip mall in Newtown Square, where fire destroyed several businesses, including a restaurant, a court-reporting business, a nail salon, and a dry cleaner. . . .”
Lucinda rose, stricken. We watched together, stunned.
“Authorities believe the blaze started after hours in the nail salon. No injuries were reported. Fire companies from neighboring Montgomery County were called to the scene. . . .”
“He said ‘after hours,’ right?” I asked, panicky. “So no one was there, right? No injuries?”
“Right, he said that.”
“Man, oh man.” I raked a hand through my wet hair, reeling. The TV screen changed to gray smoke billowing from the restaurant, then the report ended with a photo of an overturned tractor-trailer.
Lucinda touched my shoulder. “Honey, I’m so sorry.”
“What does this even mean? Marie must be so upset.” Marie was my office manager, a first-rate court reporter and single mom.