Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN IN THE COFFIN
Julia Serrano agreed to meet only after Mara arranged protective measures and explained that she could bring her own attorney. She insisted on a public office with windows facing the street. She arrived carrying a battered canvas bag and wearing the wary expression of someone who had spent too many years anticipating footsteps behind her.
Dominic didn't attend the first meeting. It was Victoria's request, and he honored it. Victoria sat beside Mara, her shoulder still stiff, her hair loose around her face. Julia stopped in the doorway when she saw her.
"Oh, thank God," Julia whispered.
"You knew I was alive?" Victoria asked.
"I hoped. I was told you were dead. Then a bank record showed a transfer under your name four months later. I knew someone was using your signature, but I couldn't tell if they had you alive somewhere or were forging the whole thing."
Julia took a seat and gripped her bag. "The woman in the car was named Elena Ruiz. She cleaned the Callahan offices after hours. She had a little boy. She was saving to become a licensed practical nurse."
Victoria pressed both hands against the table. "How do you know?"
"Because she asked me to help her apply. Because I gave her a reference. And because the night the car burned, I saw her get into the back seat. Gideon told her there was an emergency cleaning job at the airport."
Mara asked about time, location and the vehicle. Julia supplied details carefully, distinguishing what she'd seen from what she learned afterward. She had witnessed Elena get into a sedan outside the office, but she had not seen the explosion. Her account made the identification scheme plausible. It did not yet establish who caused the fire.
"The next morning," Julia said, "Gideon told me Elena had gone back to Mexico. He offered me money to sign a statement that she'd been with me at dinner. I refused. Two men searched my apartment that night. I left before sunrise."
"Did you report it?" Mara asked.
"I tried. The officer I spoke to called Arthur Callahan before I finished talking. I heard his name. I walked out and kept walking."
Victoria covered her mouth. A woman with a son had vanished into the machinery built to erase Victoria. She had spent four years imagining unknown remains inside her coffin; knowing a name made the weight almost unbearable.
"Her boy," Victoria said. "What happened to her boy?"
"A sister took him. I think they moved to Michigan. I haven't dared contact them."
"We will locate him through counsel," Mara said. "We won't surprise him with this."
Julia opened her bag and removed a folded laundry invoice, a photograph of Elena smiling beside a bus stop and a small notebook. She explained the notebook held the original reference numbers for transfers that later appeared under Victoria's signature. Some were trust payments, some were payroll entries and some were expenses billed to a company named Meridian Shelter Services.
"Meridian," Victoria said. "That name was on the property notices."
"It was an umbrella for properties people were forced to leave," Julia answered. "The contracts said temporary housing. They bought the buildings at distressed prices afterward."
Mara read the entries, then stopped at one. "This is a payment to Gideon Frost six months after Arthur was declared dead."
"He was never dead," Julia said. "I heard him on the phone last spring. He was asking whether the Callahan witness list had been destroyed."
Victoria looked up sharply. "You spoke with Gideon?"
"Only once. He called the repair shop, asked for an old account number and said he'd come see me if I didn't cooperate. I gave the number to my lawyer and changed my work schedule. He never arrived."
When the meeting ended, Victoria called Dominic. He answered before the second ring.
"How was it?" he asked.
"Hard. We have a name. Elena Ruiz. She was a mother."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't tell me you're sorry until we know what happened and do something useful with it."
"You're right."
She sat alone after hanging up. For years she'd treated survival as a private achievement: one night, another job, another document copied before it vanished. Now her own survival could not be separated from a woman who hadn't escaped. She wanted to go home to Celeste's greenhouse and sleep for a week. Instead she asked Mara about the options for contacting Elena's family and compensating them without binding them to anyone's version of events.
Mara nodded. "We'll ask what they want. There may be civil claims and victims' assistance. First they deserve accurate information."
That evening Dominic met Liam in an office across the street from Gallagher headquarters. They examined the altered payment order recovered from the attackers. Forensic comparison showed the signature had been transferred from an older scanned document. Dominic's name had been placed on an instruction dated during a period he was overseas.
"Somebody wants to frame you for ordering the assault," Liam said.
"Or use the document to keep me from cooperating."
"Thomas says Arthur isn't dead."
"What do you believe?"
Liam hesitated. "I believe Thomas knows more than he's admitted. I also believe he's frightened. I've known him twenty years. When he's angry he talks. When he's afraid he becomes polite."
Dominic remembered the foyer conversation. Thomas had been painfully polite.
"We need to find Gideon," Dominic said.
"The police are already running his known addresses."
"Good."
Liam regarded him. "You're not going to ask me to bring him here first?"
"No. He's a witness or a suspect. I don't get to decide which by hurting him."
Liam nodded, something like relief passing over his face. "Victoria would approve."
"This isn't a performance for her."
"Then maybe it's the first right thing you've done for yourself in a while."
Dominic went home late. He entered the dark kitchen and found Victoria at the table with a mug of tea. She'd been discharged into Celeste's care that morning but had returned to collect her belongings and speak with investigators about the library. They were not alone; a plainclothes officer waited nearby.
"You should be resting," Dominic said, immediately regretting the instruction. "Sorry. I mean, are you getting enough rest?"
She raised one eyebrow. "A miraculous improvement."
He pulled out a chair, keeping a careful distance. "Julia told you about Elena."
"She did. I keep thinking of the boy."
"We have a foundation that can help."
"Not your foundation. Not yet. Anything connected to your companies could compromise the claims. Mara will advise us."
"All right."
Victoria held her mug in both hands. "I used to think you could solve anything by deciding it should be solved. Tonight I know you can't even make tea cool faster by ordering it."
He looked at the steam. "I've tested that theory."
She laughed, softly and involuntarily. The sound made him remember their old apartment in Lincoln Park, where she'd read aloud ridiculous newspaper headlines while he cooked breakfast. He held the memory carefully instead of trying to make the present resemble it.
"I need to ask you something," she said.
"Ask."
"When you thought I was dead, did you ever wonder whether I left voluntarily?"
He considered the cruel precision of the question. "For a week. Before they told me there were remains. We argued before you left. I thought perhaps you needed space. Then the call came. I hated myself for the argument."
"I hated myself for trusting your father."
"He should not have been able to use us against each other."
"And yet he did."
He nodded. There was nothing else honest to say.
An hour later Mara called with a new development. Investigators had located Elena Ruiz's son, now nineteen, and established contact through his guardian. The young man wished to learn the truth, but he wanted time before meeting anyone from the Gallagher or Callahan families. Victoria understood immediately.
"Tell him he has all the time he needs," she said.
After the call, Dominic stood in the hallway and watched Victoria fasten the black veil over her face for the last time. She was returning the disguise to the evidence office, where its fibers might help establish how long she'd been in the house.
"You don't need it anymore," he said.
"I know."
"What does that feel like?"
She held the lace between her fingers. "Like standing in the sunlight after a winter so long you forget that being seen can hurt."
He wanted to tell her she looked beautiful. Instead he said, "You don't have to be seen by me unless you choose."
She folded the veil. "I know that too."
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At dawn a police detective called. Gideon Frost's rental vehicle had been found abandoned near a marina. There was blood on the driver's seat, but no body. In the glove compartment investigators had recovered a photograph of Thomas Gallagher beside Arthur Callahan, taken only three months earlier.
On the back someone had written: THE OLD MEN HAVE AGREED ON ONE LAST FUNERAL.
