Chương 3
“Will she recover?”
“I don’t know.”
Theodore asked, “Was she conscious in there?”
Dr. Shah did not give him a comforting lie. “Possibly for part of the time.”
He stared at the brown coffee stain on the carpet between his shoes.
“She tapped,” he said.
“Yes.”
“She knew where she was.”
“We can’t say what she understood.”
“She said my name.”
Dr. Shah pulled a chair closer and sat, placing herself below Sebastian’s height. “That is encouraging. It does not let me predict the rest.”
Sebastian asked whether the hospital could keep Rosalie’s condition confidential. Dr. Shah said confidentiality applied automatically and then looked toward the television, where a contractor was demolishing a kitchen wall with a sledgehammer.
“The police are asking to speak with everyone,” she said. “The hospital will cooperate with lawful requests. We will also restrict access to Rosalie until we understand how this happened.”
“I am her uncle and emergency contact.”
“You are one of the people listed.”
“One of?”
“Eleanor Vale is the other.”
Theodore stood. “Don’t let Eleanor near her.”
Sebastian’s head turned. “Enough.”
“You heard the message.”
“I heard a frightened young woman speaking without context.”
“She had a gag in her mouth.”
“A strip of fabric was near her mouth.”
“You saw the mark.”
Sebastian’s composure thinned. “Do not convert your fear into certainty merely because certainty feels better.”
Theodore took a step toward him. “You put her in that coffin.”
“No.”
“You had the funeral before anyone could see her.”
“No.”
“You told me not to open it.”
“I believed my niece was dead.”
“You always believe whatever protects you.”
Sebastian’s nostrils flared, but when he spoke again his voice was lower. “And you believe pain gives you permission to accuse anyone in reach.”
Theodore almost struck him. His hand tightened, his shoulder shifted, and for a second the waiting room seemed to narrow around Sebastian’s face. Then the bandage on his knuckle pulled against the cut.
Rosalie had once made him promise that anger would never get to choose what his hands did.
He let his arm fall.
A county detective arrived before noon. Maren Cole wore a navy jacket over plain clothes and carried no visible sympathy. She interviewed Theodore in a consultation room with the hospital social worker present. She asked him to begin with Tuesday’s voicemail and not jump ahead to the coffin.
Theodore jumped ahead twice.
Cole brought him back each time.
He told her Rosalie was his sister, eight years older, and had become the nearest thing he had to a parent after their mother died of cancer and their father drove his car into a bridge abutment eighteen months later. Sebastian had been appointed Theodore’s legal guardian because Rosalie was twenty-two, still finishing graduate school, and living in an apartment with unreliable heat.
He told Cole that Rosalie returned to the estate three months earlier to review the records of the Vale Foundation. Their father had left her a seat on its board. Sebastian had delayed giving it to her, first because she lacked experience, then because the annual audit was underway, then because Eleanor was reorganizing the foundation’s arts program.
“Did Rosalie believe money was missing?” Cole asked.
“She said numbers don’t disappear. People move them.”
“Did she name anyone?”
“No.”
“Did she seem afraid?”
Theodore remembered her checking the rearview mirror twice when she drove him back from school. He remembered her taking the battery from an old clock in her bedroom because its ticking had begun to irritate her. He remembered the way she had stopped talking when Eleanor entered the breakfast room.
“She said she was being watched.”
“By whom?”
“She didn’t know.”
“Did you believe her?”
He looked down at his bandaged hand. “Sometimes.”
Cole waited.
He hated her for waiting.
“No,” he said. “Not enough.”
The detective asked about the morning of Rosalie’s reported death. At four thirteen, Sebastian had knocked on Theodore’s bedroom door. His uncle wore the same white shirt he wore now, though without the suit jacket, and there had been a dark mark near one cuff. He told Theodore that Rosalie had suffered a cardiac event in the guesthouse and that Dr. Mercer could not revive her.
“Did you see her then?” Cole asked.
“No. Sebastian said I shouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“He said she wasn’t presentable.”
“Did you ask?”
“I tried to go downstairs. Eleanor locked the connecting door.”
“Did you see her lock it?”
“I heard it.”
“How did you know it was Eleanor?”
“She said, ‘Please don’t make this uglier.’”
Cole wrote that down.
Theodore told her the coffin arrived before sunrise. The memorial had been scheduled for nine. Sebastian said the family needed privacy before news spread. There would be a small service at the estate, followed by immediate transport for cremation. Theodore had asked why everything was happening so quickly. Sebastian said Rosalie had left written instructions.
“Did anyone show you those instructions?”
“No.”
“Who handled the body?”
“Dr. Mercer. Eleanor. A man from Halpern Funeral Services.”
“Name?”
“I don’t know. He had a mustache.”
Cole closed her notebook. “That may be the first description of a funeral director I’ve ever received that sounded disappointed.”
Theodore looked at her.
She did not smile. Neither did he, exactly, but some pressure moved in his chest.
“What happens now?” he asked.
“We establish the medical facts. We identify who handled Rosalie and when. We secure the estate, the coffin, the vehicles, and relevant records. We talk to people separately.”
“You arrest them.”
“We follow evidence.”
“They almost cremated her.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t see her fingers.”
“No. I saw the video from a guest’s phone.”
“There’s a video?”
“There are several.”
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By early afternoon, the videos were online.
The first clip showed Theodore raising the mallet while mourners shouted. It ended before the glass broke. The caption called him a grieving teen attacking his sister’s coffin. A second clip, posted seventeen minutes later, showed Rosalie’s fingers moving beneath the cracked panel. By three, local news vans had gathered outside the hospital and the estate gates. People who had never met Theodore argued publicly over whether he was heroic, disturbed, violent, intuitive, or lucky.
